The lower house of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) is about to vote on important new energy regulations that will unblock the development of onshore wind. The regulations aim to loosen Poland’s restrictive and controversial “10H” distance rule.
10H means the minimum distance between a wind turbine and housing is 10x the tip height of a turbine. For modern onshore wind turbines this means around 2 km. 10H has effectively excluded 98% of Polish territory from onshore wind development.
The Polish Government have proposed lowering the minimum distance to 500 metres, which is broadly in line with the European average. The proposed new regulation would allow municipalities and local communities to build new wind farms at a minimum distance of 500 metres from residential buildings. It will also improve the financial participation of local citizens in onshore wind farms. Developers will have to offer a share of at least 10% of each new wind farm energy to local communities, enabling residents to become prosumers.
Reducing the minimum set-back distance to 500 metres will also boost the Polish economy. It will generate €100-200mn of additional revenue for local municipalities. And it will unlock €17bn worth of orders for products and services along the wind energy supply chain. And wind energy could end up contributing €28bn a year to Poland’s GDP.
The changes to the 10H regulation are expected to be adopted at the next working session of the Sejm on 25-26 January, a governmental spokesperson confirmed last Friday.
(Source: WindEurope)
