According to foreign media reports, the Romanian Parliament has passed the amendment to the country's Land Law No. 18/1991. The amendment, when implemented, will remove regulatory barriers for developers to develop renewable energy projects on agricultural land.
Mihaela Nyergesy, a partner at the Romanian law firm Vlásceanu, Nyerges and Partners, said, "The new regulations are not yet in force, but they should come into force soon. The bill will be submitted to the President for enactment after it has passed the parliament, and the process should No more than 20 days. The regulation will come into force within three days from the date of publication in the Government Gazette.”
The newly issued regulations allow renewable energy projects such as photovoltaics, wind power, biomass, biogas, energy storage projects and substations to be developed on agricultural land with fertility classes III, IV and V. So far, these places have been banned from developing such projects. In addition, it is stipulated that such land can be used for dual-use projects such as power generation and agricultural activities.
For a long time, work on renewable energy projects was only allowed on sites registered as building land within the city.
Nyerges said, “Although there are specific exceptions to this regulation, none of them apply to renewable energy projects. The new law mainly paves the way for agri-PV projects, addressing some of the licensing inconveniences faced by energy project developers. For example , there will no longer be a need for approval to change the destination of the land to a Regional Urban Plan (PUZ) within the city.”
"Instead, a special procedure should be implemented to change the land category from agricultural to buildable," she said. However, the approval time for such a procedure is much shorter compared to the Regional Urban Plan (PUZ) because the relevant Departments should respond with approval or disapproval within 45 days of the application date, otherwise it will be considered a default approval."
The new regulations also reduce the authorization fees for PV projects in the case of dual uses such as power generation and agricultural activities.
Nyerges said, “In the case of dual-use, its land category can be converted from agricultural land to buildable land, it will no longer apply to the entire land allocated to renewable energy projects, but only to the specific part that can no longer be used for agricultural purposes. Land. For PV projects, this is very important because the higher pillar structure allows for agricultural activities or grazing on the PV farm, so there will be very little land area affected.”
But the new law only applies to sites up to 50 hectares in size, she said.
"Such restrictions could have a significant impact on the economics of PV projects, as more cost reductions can only be achieved if PV projects have higher capacity and require larger-scale deployment," she said, noting that the new law Only valid until December 31, 2026. The idea behind applying until the end of 2026 is to stimulate investment in the development of renewable energy projects during the EU budget period (2021-2027) in order to increase the absorption rate of available EU funds. From this perspective, Romania’s PV industry is eagerly awaiting support from the Modernization Fund, which is expected to be launched this autumn after a long delay, following the National Recovery and Resilience Plan launched a few months ago. "