3 March 2023
EU legislators must deliver on faster permitting at the next week’s Renewable Energy Directive trilogue
The European Commission wants wind to be 43% of EU electricity consumption by 2030. But right now new investments and wind turbine orders are falling: the EU only installed 16 GW of new wind in 2022, half of what it should be building for the 2030 objectives.
Permitting remains the key bottleneck for deploying wind at scale. 80 GW of wind energy are today stuck in permitting processes across Europe and it can take up to 10 years for the permitting of a wind farm.
The EU is now discussing changes to its Renewable Energy Directive that can help speed things up. Key negotiations are taking place on Monday 6 March between the EU Commission, the EU Parliament and the EU-27 Member States.
WindEurope together with Eurelectic and SolarPower Europe outlines 5 outstanding priorities that negotiators should factor in the revision of Europe’s 2030 permitting rules for renewables. These are :
- ‘Overriding public interest’ must apply to all renewables until climate neutrality is reached;
- The pipeline of projects stuck in permitting processes must be unblocked;
- Permitting for projects in and outside of renewable ‘acceleration areas’ must be simultaneous;
- Land use designation rules must allow nature-positive renewable energy deployment;
- Permitting rules must be future-proofed for a 2050 EU energy system dominated by renewables.
