Senate draft amendment to liberalize the 10h rule

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In the Senate, the draft act amending the act on investments in wind farms and certain other acts is being processed (print no. 755).

The draft stipulates that, with the consent of the commune council, investments consisting in the construction of wind farms are carried out regardless of the existence or provisions of the local spatial development plan or the study of the conditions and directions of the spatial development of the commune.

According to the proposed wording of Art. 4, the commune council (at the request of the interested investor) would adopt a resolution on the location of the wind turbine, with the principle of a minimum distance of 500 meters in a straight line from a residential building or a mixed-use building which includes a residential function. In the draft act, the decision on the distance of a wind farm from residential buildings or areas that should be acoustically protected is left to municipalities, with the proviso that these authorities, when determining the location of the wind farm, take into account the minimum distance of the wind farm from these areas, i.e. 500 meters and the range of noise emitted by the planned power plant.

At the same time, a derogation from the principle of preparing an environmental impact report for investments in the construction of wind turbines was proposed, the power of which is equal to or less than 20 MW of connected capacity and the distance of the proposed turbines covered by the application is greater than 2 km in a straight line from the existing wind turbines and greater than 500 meters from the border of the area for which the form of nature protection has been established.

Importantly, the draft also introduces in the added art. 8a, a fee to the local community in the amount of 5% of the value of energy generated from each wind farm in a given month, constituting the revenue of the commune in which the wind turbine is located. The fee would be spent on combating energy poverty, building social infrastructure, in particular located in the immediate vicinity of the wind farm.

Senator Stanisław Gawłowski is authorized to represent the Commission in further work on this draft.

The draftwill be processed at the meeting of the Extraordinary Committee for Climate Affairs (No. 69), the Local Government and State Administration Committee (No. 172) and the Legislative Committee (No. 258) scheduled for July 19, 2022.

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