Please note that, based on this study, a full analysis with updated scenarios and datasets was published here.
Executive summary
- The 10H wind farm proximity rule introduced in 2016 blocked the development on onshore wind projects in Poland, excluding 97% of the land for new investments
- The government is proposing to loosen the rule to a distance of 500m from residential areas
- The proposed change might not be enough to bring wind projects back on track (still limiting the economic potential to 8.8 GW)
- A more progressive law is needed, with proximity thresholds loosened also for natural reserves. This could increase the economic potential to 17.7 GW – a value closer to what Poland needs to decarbonize the energy mix
Context
The development of onshore wind in Poland is a perfect example of how rapid policy changes can accelerate or (in this case) completely block the energy transition. Until 2016, the installed capacity of onshore wind farms increased rapidly, even 1 GW / year. However, these rapid investments did not take into account social acceptance – projects were built close to residential areas, with no public consultations. Eventually, social pressure pushed the government to pass the “anti-wind-energy” bill in May 2016 (Dz.U. 2016 poz. 961). This included a 10H distancing rule – wind turbines could not be placed within a radius of 10 times the total height of the turbine. For the most popular Vestas V80 and V90 turbines, this meant 1000-1500m depending on the hub height. For modern turbines like the Vestas V150 (with total heights exceeding 200m) this would increase to over 2 km!
This, together with changes in taxes and support mechanisms, had a dramatic effect on the deployment of wind in Poland – after 2016 the capacity stagnated at around 5,8 GW, with annual rates of just ~50 MW.
10H law blocks most of Poland from wind investments
Recently, the government started looking into loosening the 10H law. I wanted to analyze how these changes could affect the development of wind energy projects, focusing on land availability. The starting point is shown on the figure below. Under the 10H law, 97% of Polish land is excluded from potential wind farm investments because of the proximity of residential areas and natural reserves (which were also included in the anti-wind-energy bill).
This means that only around 10420 km2 is left for wind turbine investments. In theory, this could still allow the installation of 12 thousand Vestas V150 turbines (reaching over 50GW of capacity, assuming 10 rotor diameter = 1500m turbine spacing). However, the available land is located mostly in central Poland, where wind conditions are average. The most economically attractive areas (in the north) are excluded, pushing the onshore wind sector into stagnation. Adding a threshold of average wind speeds above 7 m/s at 100 m height (for largest farms like Przykona or Lotnisko it’s 7.5 m/s) lowers the available land to 0.22% = 686 km2, allowing for a economically feasible capacity of 3.7 GW. This is 2 GW below the current capacity and shows that there is absolutely no room for expanding the wind fleet in Poland with the current regulations. Interestingly, using Vestas V90 turbines (most popular in the existing fleet) the economic potential is 5.6 GW – almost exactly the capacity today. This shows the model is pretty accurate, despite not taking into account grid connectivity and the fact that some existing turbines were built within the 10H restricted regions.
Methodology
How were these results obtained? Using the GLAES framework (full citation: Ryberg, D.S.; Robinius, M.; Stolten, D. Evaluating Land Eligibility Constraints of Renewable Energy Sources in Europe. Energies 2018, 11, 1246). GLAES can be used to assess land eligibility for renewable energy investments based on a predefined set of criterias. These can include the proximity of roads, settlements, cities, airports, power lines, natural areas and many others. Some examples are shown below:
The full set used in this excercise is described below:
| Category | Criterion | Threshold | Unit | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sociopolitical | Settlements | >2 | km | CLC |
| Commercial Airports | >5.1 | km | EuroStat | |
| Primary Roadways | >300 | m | OSM | |
| Secondary Roadways | >300 | m | OSM | |
| Railways | >300 | m | OSM | |
| Power Lines | >250 | m | OSM | |
| Industrial Areas | >300 | m | CLC | |
| Mining Sites | >300 | m | CLC | |
| Physical | Slope | <8.5 | degrees | EuroDEM |
| Water Bodies | >400 | m | HydroLakes, WWF | |
| Elevation | <1750 | m | EuroDEM | |
| Conservation | Bird | >2 | km | WDPA |
| Habitats | >2 | km | WDPA | |
| Biospheres | >2 | km | WDPA | |
| Landscapes | >2 | km | WDPA | |
| Parks | >2 | km | WDPA | |
| Natural Monuments | >2 | km | WDPA | |
| Woodlands | >0 | km | CLC | |
| Eco | Wind Speed | >4.0 | m/s | GWA |
Criteria set based on: Ryberg, D.S.; Tulemat, Z.; Stolten, D.; Robinius, M.; Uniformly constrained land eligibility for onshore European wind power, Renewable Energy 146 (2020) and Ryberg, D. S., Robinius, M., & Stolten, D. (2017). Methodological Framework for Determining the Land Eligibility of Renewable Energy Sources. ArXiv.
The list of data sources can be found below:
| CLC | Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. European Environmental Agency (EEA). (2012). Corine Land Cover (CLC) 2012, Version 18.5.1. |
| EuroStat | GISCO. “Transport Networks: Airports 2013”. Eurostat. Published Jan. 2013. Retrieved Oct. 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/transport-networks |
| OSM | OpenStreetMap contributors. “Planet dump”. Accessed Oct. 2017. https://planet.osm.org |
| EuroDEM | European Evironment Agency (EEA). “Digital Elevation Model over Europe (EU-DEM)”. Published Oct. 2013. Accessed Oct. 2017. https://www.eea.europa.eu/ds_resolveuid/ca503256de1b4231b029e4145d0a8b7b |
| HydroLakes, WWF | GISCO. “Hydrography (LAEA)”. Eurostat. Published 2014. Accessed Oct. 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/elevation/hydrography-laea |
| WDPA | UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Cambridge, UK. (2016). Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) |
| GWA | Technical University of Denmark. “Global Wind Atlas V1.0”. Published 2015. Accessed Oct. 2017. https://globalwindatlas.info/downloads/gis-files |
Will 10H be lifted?
The government is proposing changes in the 10H rule – allowing local authorities to lower the settlement proximity limit down to 500m. Assuming all communities support the change, the land exclusion decreases to 88%, adding an extra 27 thousand square kilometers of land available for wind projects.
Importantly, this adds some land in the north, where economically viable projects could be developed:
The technical potential for installing wind turbines (again Vestas V150) is increased 3-fold, up to 38 thousand turbines. These are already good results, but still the most attractive regions (in terms of wind speed) are not available for investments. The economic potential using new turbines is estimated at 8.8 GW – this is still not enough to achieve a carbon neutral energy mix.
A more viable solution
Therefore, I proposed an alternative scenario, where the 10H rule is decreased to 500m not only for residential areas and settlements, but also for natural areas – reserves, national parks etc.
This finally opens up some room for RES investments, increasing the available land by 8 times comparing to the 10H scenario (up to 82000km2).
Most importantly, this finally enables RES investments in north-western Poland where best wind conditions are available and where wind energy projects can be economically attractive even without state support (subsidies / auctions), making them immune to political changes. This increases the theoretical potential to a staggering 66 thousand V150 turbines. More importantly, the economic potential increases to 17.7 GW, which is almost twice what was proposed in the NECP for 2040
Conclusions
The summary of the results for the different scenarios is shown in the table below:
| Scenario | Exclusion (%) | Available area (km2) | Technical potential (#) | Economicly viable area (km2) | Economical potential (#) | Economical potential (GW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10H old fleet | 93.96% | 18844 | 39794 | 1279 | 2821 | 5.6 |
| 10H new fleet | 96.66% | 10421 | 12363 | 686 | 878 | 3.7 |
| Gov scenario – old fleet | 86.23% | 42961 | 82916 | 2371 | 4747 | 9.5 |
| Gov scenario – new fleet | 87.85% | 37907 | 38349 | 1934 | 2103 | 8.8 |
| Progressive scenario – old fleet | 73.60% | 82366 | 120517 | 4524 | 8006 | 16.0 |
| Progressive scenario – new fleet | 73.60% | 82366 | 66025 | 4524 | 4205 | 17.7 |
This is of course a preliminary study. It does however show, that while the industry is awaiting changes in the legal framework, the proposed update of the 10H rule might not be enough and more progressive options should be discussed.
I tried to describe all the assumptions, but please feel free to contact me about the details.
I wanted to thank the GLAES team for building and opening such a valuable tool and, in particular Severin Ryberg, for his support in using GLAES.
Coverage
- 300 Gospodarka – 300 Sekund newsletter
- OKO.press
Featured image made by photo3idea_studio from flaticon.com