Romania simplifies renewables permitting with new law

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Romania has passed a new law that simplifies and speeds up the permitting process for renewable energy projects in the country.

The new regulations were recently adopted by the Parliament, promulgated by a Presidential decree and published in the Official Gazette earlier this month.

The law enables new renewable power plants to be installed inside urban areas without being included in the urban zonal plan (PUZ). An exemption from the PUZ requirement, one of the most time-consuming steps in the permitting process, was previously given only to projects covering an area smaller than 50 ha (123.6 acres) outside urban areas.

Apart from power generation, the newly-adopted exception concerns the storage of electricity and hydrogen production, as well as the construction of transformer stations, cables and connections.

The amendments also allow multiple investment objectives to be regulated under a single urbanism certificate. Thus, developers will only need to obtain approval for all building activities once.

These new measures are aligned with Romania’s targets to lift the share of renewables in its total power generation mix to 34% by 2030. According to data provided by the Romanian National Regulatory Authority in the Energy Field (ANRE), the country had 18.9 GW of power generation assets at the beginning of June, of which nearly 4.5 GW of wind and solar.

 

Source: Renewables Now

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