The Romanian President has passed a new law to shorten the permitting process for the installation of solar projects on buildable land of up to 50 hectares.
The Romanian President has passed a new law to simplify the permitting process for the development of renewable energy projects on buildable land. This follows the adoption of amendments to Law 50/1991 by the Romanian Parliament in January. These amendments allow photovoltaic, wind, biomass, biomass liquid, biomass gas, energy storage projects and substations to be built on agricultural land with an area of less than 50 hectares. The government's move is intended to remove the requirement to obtain a regional urban plan (PUZ), one of the most time-consuming stages of the permitting process.
With the adoption of Law No. 166/2023 of 10 June 2023, the PUZ requirement for buildable land will also be abolished in Romania and project developers will only have to obtain approval for all building permits once. In the past, for example, if a developer wanted to build a 130 MW project on a 130 hectare plot of land, it had to split the project into three parts and apply for separate approvals for each part.
Daniel Vlasceanu, a partner at law firm Vlasceanu & Partners, told PV magazine: "This is a clear indication of the legislator's intention to support renewable energy development. In addition to exempting PUZ-related requirements, the possibility of developing multiple projects on the basis of a single urbanisation certificate will clearly reduce bureaucracy and aims to simplify permitting for large projects."
Vlasceanu said the new initiative would shorten the permitting process for large renewable energy projects by several months.