Fourteen of the aforementioned 94 acceleration zones will be designated for the construction of solar parks. According to the published plan, they are most likely to be established in the Olomouc and Zlín regions. Two each will go to the Liberecký and Karlovy Vary regions, one will be in the Central Bohemia region near Milovice.
The rest of the zones are to be used for faster construction of wind power plants. They are spread across the country, with the exception of Prague. A larger number of zones are concentrated, for example, in the South Bohemian Region or the Highlands. Some of them affect municipalities in several regions.
According to the Minister for Regional Development Zuzana Mrázová (ANO), the department can still modify the proposal based on the comments that the state receives during the public hearing. This will take approximately two months.
“This is not the final form. On the contrary, this step is just the beginning of the process in which regions, municipalities, the public and other state administration bodies will express themselves,” said Mrázová.
Acceleration zones are supposed to enable faster approval of greener energy sources. A common European directive obliges the government to define them. In exchange for this, the Czech Republic is to receive up to nine billion crowns from the European Union to support the construction of large renewable resources.
However, the Czech Republic is behind in implementation. The Union has already called for a remedy. If the government did not do so, the EU money would not have to come.
Windmills do not have to grow
The previous government of Petr Fiala (ODS) started preparing the proposal for acceleration zones. However, the politicians of the current cabinet of Andrej Babiš (ANO) criticized the zones. They reduced their number and area.
According to the government commissioner for climate policy and Green Deal Filip Turk (Motorists), who was one of the loudest opponents of acceleration zones, their area will be 474 square kilometers. Turk mentioned that it is roughly six times less than the original plan.
Former director of the climate protection section at the Ministry of the Environment, Petr Holub, who was involved in the preparation of acceleration zones in the last election period, said that the previous cabinet had already calculated a reduction to 800 to 900 square kilometers.
It is not yet clear how far wind power plants will be able to grow from built-up areas. Turek declared that this will be determined only by the final form of the construction law. In addition, he added that the demarcation of zones does not mean that a wind power plant will actually grow on the given territory. According to him, there should be only a few hundred power plants in the Czech Republic. Now there are over two hundred of them.
For example, the program director of the Rainbow Movement, Jiří Koželouh, has already criticized the government’s decision. According to him, the move may worsen disputes regarding construction in individual localities.
The Czech Republic must place resources with a total output of at least three gigawatts in the acceleration zones in order to meet EU rules. “The same amount of installed power will have to fit into a smaller area,” pointed out Koželouh.
