“Spain must implement the “higher public interest” in wind energy projects and transpose it into Spanish regulations during 2025 so that the wind energy sector can develop.” This is one of the requests that the directors of the Wind Energy Business Association (AEE) have made to the Government in the Ondas del Viento program.
The European Union has established that renewable energy projects must have priority over other interests, that is, they must be considered as “higher public interest”, a decision that seeks to accelerate the energy transition after the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. However, Spain has not yet transposed this regulation and is already a year behind.
The European Union Regulation 2022/2577, explains Juan Virgilio Márquez, establishes that renewable projects have preference over three main areas when processing them: bird conservation, effects on waters and habitat conservation. However, “this does not mean that renewables take precedence over everything else,” clarifies Márquez, but rather that the importance of the project should be weighed against its possible impacts.
Delays in implementation
Spain, along with other countries such as Bulgaria, France, Italy, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Sweden, is experiencing delays in the transposition of this regulation, which should have been implemented in February 2023. The European Commission has already issued warnings in this regard and it could have consequences since it is a mandatory regulation.
The German case as a reference
Germany is presented as an example of success in the application of the higher public interest and has managed to process seven times more than it allowed five years ago. According to experts, this shows that “if you want to do it, you can do it,” although they recognize that proximity to the Ukrainian conflict has influenced the urgency of its implementation.
Experts agree that it is necessary to establish unique and clear criteria for the processing of projects, avoiding the current “cloud of interpretations” that complicates the development of the sector in Spain. The Government’s priority must be to implement the overriding public interest and transpose it into Spanish regulations during 2025.
