The Polish government has approved a draft law on onshore wind energy, which eases rules on the development of projects and thus removes restrictions introduced in 2016. The text sets the minimum distance between an onshore wind project and a residential building at 500 metres, and imposes onshore wind investments to be included in municipal zoning plans. In addition, the draft law would allow the development of onshore wind projects on more than 7% of Polish land, freeing up more than 25 times the area currently available. The bill is expected to be approved by the Polish parliament in the coming months.
The draft law will remove the so-called “10H” rule, introduced in 2016, which forbids the construction of wind farms where there are buildings within a distance of ten times the height of the turbine. This resulted in only 50 MW/year new annual onshore wind capacity addition between 2017 and 2019 in Poland. Wind accounts for 13% of Poland's installed capacity with 6.9 GW (end of 2021).