The torrent of new wind and solar energy parks is putting a strain on the ability of the Spanish environmental authorities to gauge their environmental impact.
While the EU Commission’s proposed Nature Restoration Directive will put pressure on farmers to increase biodiversity, one of its directives—to loosen environmental impact study requirements for wind and solar installations—poses a serious threat to the abundance and variety of Europe’s flora and fauna, according to scientists.
“Unfortunately,” Juan Manuel Pérez, a researcher in the Ecology Area of the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, explained to La Información,
the massive development of renewable energy facilities, mainly wind and photovoltaic, without proper planning for their location, could lead to a disproportionate impact on biodiversity that would endanger a multitude of species and ecosystems already threatened by other human activities.
This is one of the conclusions of a paper he and his colleagues published recently in the journal, Conservation Letters. It critiques the EU directives under the RePower plan, introduced in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to accelerate the implantation of wind and solar power in the EU. It includes measures that allow for bypassing previously required environmental impact assessments for the approval of new wind and solar parks. The researchers found that relaxing these requirements was environmentally counterproductive because, if built without foresight, these industrial energy parks could cause as much environmental degradation as they hoped to reduce.
In Spain, which is facing an avalanche of wind and solar parks poised to swallow up thousands of hectares of land, thanks to the EU’s RePower directives, the lack of planning and government oversight is already apparent.
Modesto Berciano with the Alta Valduerna Citizen’s Platform explained the environmental inconsistencies in the solar parks set to occupy 888 hectares surrounding his hometown in Destriana in Northwest Spain. One of the major issues is water.
Solar panels require frequent washing since they have to be squeaky clean to function most efficiently. But, Berciano notes, the area is already short on water. Farmers have had to switch to crops that mature before the hottest days of summer since the Duerna Hydrographic Confederation (the regional water authority farmers turn to for irrigation water), usually shuts off access to the Duerna River by August. Yet, the same water authority has, according to Bercinao, shown no opposition to the large solar park coming into the water region.
“It can’t be that they pull out the red carpet for solar panels for water,” Berciano said in an interview with The European Conservative. “If there’s no water, there’s no water for everyone.”
Also, according to the association, there were clear and basic inconsistencies in the application concerning the Duerna River.
In the solar park company’s report to the General Directorate of Nature Heritage and Forest Policy, it stated: “There are no significant rivers or wetlands in the vicinity of the project.”
But the report from the Duerna Hydrographic Confederation, included in the environmental impact study, said the solar park would sit just 120 meters from the Duerna River and part of the fence would be located in the policing zone under the control of the water authority.
At the other end of northern Spain, in the region of Aragón, El Periodico de Aragón reported in May that a civil servant in the regional environmental department disclosed the true lack of serious evaluation of wind and solar energy projects by the regional bureaucracy.
Speaking anonymously to the newspaper, the technician and civil servant said though he specialized in renewable energy, he had been transferred to another area after refusing to review an environmental impact assessment in 24 hours—a time frame he considered impossible to give a meaningful evaluation.
According to the anonymous whistleblower, the Aragonese Institute of Environmental Management tasked with giving new solar and wind parks the environmental seal of approval had been gutted of experts in energy technologies. He described how proposed projects were approved “from one day to the next, but without a technical report from any official specializing in renewable energy.” He also said the practice had started in the summer of 2022.
Part of the rush is due to the tight deadlines set by Spain’s central government to alleviate the traffic jam of solar and wind projects attempting to move through the bureaucratic process to gain access to the electric grid or get permission to fire up operations. Those projects that don’t meet the deadlines will simply be thrown out of the system. Last January 25th was the deadline for receiving the environmental impact report, a key step to receiving permission to connect to the electric grid.
Moving forward, such studies won’t even be necessary.
In conformity with EU regulations, Spain has been gradually lowering its requirements for environmental evaluations. In March of 2022, smaller installations of up to 75 MW of installed wind power and 150 photovoltaic power were exempted from such evaluations. Then, in December of last year, the requirement was waived for all wind and solar parks not located in a Natura 2000 nature conservation area and whose evaluation lines did not exceed 220 kilowatts or 15 kilometers in length.
The lighter bureaucratic process goes into effect July 2023.
In Destriana, Berciano and his neighbours have managed so far to prevent six of the eight solar parks from getting approval to connect to the electricity grid. But he fears that the company will reapply and, without environmental impact studies taken into consideration, the citizen’s platform will have little to leverage against its opposition.
