EPP Group wants to speed up renewable rollout

14.11.2022 15:48

EPP Group wants to speed up renewable rollout

Solarpark

The EPP Group wants to massively speed up permitting procedures to build solar-, water-, heat pump-, or wind-energy facilities in Europe faster. Parliament's Energy Committee will today vote on parts of the reform of the EU's Renewable Energy Directive. Championed by EPP Group MEP Markus Pieper, the European Parliament's negotiator for Renewable Energies, MEPs will vote on how to substantially fasten authorisation and permit-granting processes for renewable energy facilities in Europe.

New "Renewable Acceleration Areas" will be defined, in which fast-track-permits within a maximum of 9 months shall be possible. For energy networks linked to these, the maximum length shall be eighteen months. Environmental Impact Assessments shall be done for the whole acceleration area, and not anymore by each individual project as necessary at present.

"This is an important step to speed-up our rollout of renewable energies in the EU", said Pieper. "Permitting procedures in Europe simply take too long. If we want to make our energy supply more sustainable, more speed is necessary. That is also why the aims of last week's proposal by the European Commission to fast-track authorisation processes are welcome, although the proposal as such came too late. The European Parliament will make proposals on how to integrate these into the ongoing reform of the Renewable Energies Directive, without slowing down the process."

The next step for today's proposals will be a vote in the EP plenary in December. "We will then integrate these proposals into the ongoing "trilogue" negotiations for the third revision of the Renewable Energies Directive. We need one single reform of the Renewable Energies legislation that will include all aspects, and we need that as soon as possible. That is why the EPP Group demands the transformation of all parts of the permitting procedures (RED IV) in the Renewable Energy Directive into a regulation." Pieper added.

Note to editors

The EPP Group is the largest political group in the European Parliament with 176 Members from all EU Member States

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