Following the Polish President's veto concerning the amendment to the so-called Distance Act, the wind industry is increasingly facing significant difficulties in approving by relevant military authorities the location of wind energy projects situated within MTCR (i.e. military airport controlled zones) and MRT (military aviation routes), which significantly complicates and prolongs administrative procedures and, in some cases, prevents the location of new wind farms in such areas.

During the parliamentary works on the aforementioned amendment to the Distance Act, we have already mentioned the Ministry of National Defence's proposal to introduce a provision to the above-mentioned regulation explicitly prohibiting the location of wind farms classified as aviation obstacles in MCTR and MRT zones, as well as the related concerns and consequences of such a ban for the wind sector in Poland (please find our article concerning this topic here: Dentons - Wind industry concerns triggered by proposed amendment of the Ministry of National Defense to the draft amendment to the Distance Act).

Although the above-mentioned ban has not been formally introduced into Polish law, investors developing wind projects maintain that the current regulations on MCTR and MRT zones significantly limit the availability of investment areas for onshore wind. The reason for the above is that the Central Military Recruitment Centre (so-called “CWCR”), which is the institution responsible for agreeing local zoning plans, for some time now, has refused to agree on such plans at the adoption stage, if only they provide for the location of wind projects within such MRT zone.

Since the approval by the relevant military authorities constitutes a key element of the procedure for adopting a draft local zoning plan, the agreeing authority (in this case CWCR) may effectively block the adoption of the draft act, because refusal to agree to the draft plan results in the impossibility of its adoption in the scope under consideration. If however, despite the refusal of the competent military authority to agree to such plan, the municipal council still adopts it, in accordance with the provisions of the Act on Spatial Planning and Development, this would, in principle, result in the invalidity of such resolution in whole or in part.

As a result, numerous refusals by CWCR to agree on local plans for wind farms constitute a major challenge to the industry, as MCTR and MRT zones cover significant area of the country (it is estimated that only MRT zones cover approximately 11 percent of the country's area), which effectively blocks the possibility of further development of onshore wind energy projects. It is also worth mentioning that a significant part of the areas covered by these zones are situated in places where conditions for locating wind turbines are very favorable in terms of wind productivity, in particular in the northern parts of Poland.

This practice of the military authorities may not only result in the inability to develop new wind farms, but also it may constitute a significant limitation for the repowering process of existing investments, which, due to the age of certain installations, may require replacement of wind turbines with new ones in the near future.

In this context, the wind industry declares its willingness to actively cooperate with representatives of the defence and security sector, and it calls for the implementation of a number of technical and legal solutions aimed at enabling further development of onshore wind investments, while respecting the country's defence security.

Among such technical solutions it proposed to implement measures compensating interference between wind farm projects and military facilities, which could be financed by the investor developing given project. Examples of such compensatory measures include the construction of new radar stations (so-called "gap-fillers") in locations indicated by the Ministry of National Defence, the modernisation of existing POLRAD radars, as well as the installation of data filtering systems to minimise interference from wind turbines, or the implementation of mobile radars, SDRs, optoelectronic cameras and AI solutions.

At the same time, among the legal solutions, the industry proposes, among other things, introduction of predictable and clearly defined procedures specifying the necessary scope of the above-mentioned compensation, individual assessment of each investment, so that refusals to agree on local plans would not be automatic, as well as the rationalisation of current requirements for airspace protection and radar systems to enable their coexistence with wind projects.

The solutions proposed by the wind industry could, on the one hand, unlock the potential of onshore wind investments, but at the same time, they could also strengthen critical military infrastructure in Poland.