To the political leadership of the Ministry of Environment and Energy, the new Special Spatial Plan for RES (SPE RES), which is expected to be immediately submitted to public consultation, was delivered by the researchers who had undertaken the project.
According to what has been leaked to the Athenian press, the wind priority areas are increasing throughout the country from 58 which are currently to 67.
In particular, 22 municipal units from Crete and another 18 from the regions of Serres, Kilkis and Ioannina.
So far it is unknown which areas in the Prefecture of Ioannina will receive wind turbines as a priority, but what should be taken for granted is that the area of Zagori is excluded due to its high protection status.
Regarding the exclusion areas, except for the nine “Undiscovered Mountains” (White Mountains, Saos, Smolikas, Tymfi, Taygetos, Hatzi, Agrafa, Mainalo, Dikti) in which it has already been announced by the Ministry of the Interior that the siting of RES is prohibited, it is proposed to also include areas that have been characterized as “landscapes of special natural beauty”, the UNESCO “geoparks” and the small islanders wetlands (PD 12-06-2012). Even in the proposed new EPP for RES, the development of RES projects in areas characterized as developed and saturated with tourism is significantly limited.
It is also proposed to restrict the development of wind farms in non-planned areas with tourism and recreational uses, while putting the brakes on photovoltaics in forest areas, natural lakes, etc.
Especially for photovoltaics, to the proposed maximum coverage per municipal unit, the power of systems that are not subject to environmental licensing will be added, since in many cases these are large projects, which were divided into smaller ones in order to pass under the “radar » of environmental controls and take priority over large single projects. Also, the HEPP APE plan proposes distances for the siting of wind and photovoltaic projects from monuments, city or settlement boundaries, cores of archaeological sites and protected areas.
Priority areas are proposed for small hydroelectric projects, which include the identification of broad zones with suitable physical characteristics for their development, as well as points in space due to the existence of special infrastructure. In particular, the areas of water potential utilization identified by the current EPA-RES (semi-mountainous and mountainous areas) are preserved, with a distinction between a wide zone of the semi-mountainous and mountainous continental core of the country and a wide zone of the insular part of the country (mainly in the context of hybrid systems) and in addition, for all regions of the country, the priority of installation of CHP in existing infrastructures and water management and utilization networks is added.
For the facilities exploiting the energy from biomass, biogas or bioliquids, the areas designated as privileged by the current HEPP-APE are preserved and taking into account critical changes in the use of specific areas. additional areas are added that are appropriate for the location of the relevant facilities, such as: organized receptacles for productive activities of the secondary sector or areas in direct proximity to organized receptacles or areas intended for industrial uses from the underlying planning (TPS, GIS/SCHOOAP, etc.), adjacent to the production sites of the raw material, as well as areas adjacent to the production sites of the raw material that have changed character, i.e. areas that were previously used for other purposes and in the perspective of rehabilitating these areas (e.g. areas of paid-off quarries and mining operations, paid-off lignite fields, soils with a high pollutant load, etc.).
