Renewable energy sources in Poland remain bogged down in a maze of procedures, but the first signs of improvement are visible. New regulations could shorten the time needed to prepare investments and increase the transparency of administrative processes. Unfortunately, the government also has proposals that could negatively impact the national permitting system.

According to the latest report by the Reform Institute, titled Investments in renewable energy: Are we finding our way out of the maze of procedures, recently proposed national and EU regulations offer hope for accelerating the issuance of environmental decisions and increasing the transparency of administrative processes.

What could accelerate investments?

The most important positive proposals for change include:

• conducting planning and environmental proceedings in parallel, which could shorten the investment timeline to two years;
• easier repowering of existing wind farms, based on a previously obtained environmental permits;
• digitisation of environmental documentation, enabling online access to data and documents.

According to the report’s authors, these are important steps toward streamlining permitting, which in Poland remains excessively lengthy (estimates suggest it takes 7 years to obtain a full set of permits for an onshore wind farm and up to 3 years for a solar farm).

– Streamlining permitting is the easiest way to increase the share of renewables in Poland’s energy mix. This would make Poland more resilient to future energy crises – says Maria Niewitała-Rej, the report’s lead author.

Legislative Dead Ends

Among the analysed proposals, there were also solutions that raised doubts. The greatest controversy concerned the concept of extending the tacit consent mechanism to environmental proceedings. Ultimately, this idea was withdrawn during work on the so-called Deregulation Act. Its introduction could have hindered environmental protection efforts during project implementation.

Instead, it is essential to provide financial support to the institutions responsible for processing applications. In this context, the report positively assessed the announced increase in fees for issuing environmental decisions, which will help fund Regional Directorates for Environmental Protection, increasingly burdened by a growing number of proceedings. Expanding staff capacity could allow officials to analyze incoming applications more efficiently, shortening processing times without lowering standards.

– Environmental permitting is a bottleneck in the energy transition. However, environmental protection rules should not be relaxed; instead, the administrative permitting process should be systematically improved by strengthening the public institutions responsible for issuing environmental decisions. Knowledge about environmental risks, particularly that derived from actual monitoring, should be easily accessible in digital form, and the environmental approval process should be transparent – explains Marta Anczewska, Head of Energy Policy in Reform Institute.

Experts also highlight the need to refine mechanisms for sharing the benefits of wind energy investments with local communities. The currently proposed model, included in the so-called biomethane law, could lead to unequal treatment of residents living near wind farms, rather than strengthening public acceptance of such investments.

What’s next for the reform of RES procedures?

The first steps toward simplifying procedures have already been taken. Now, however, it will be important to maintain the pace of legislative work and consistently move in the same direction by ensuring coherent guidelines, further digitization, and stable funding for public institutions.

Executive summary of the report is available in English below, with full version available in Polish here.