European Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition (EWEC)

Wind Barriers

Assessment of administrative and grid access barriers for wind development in Europe

Thursday, 22 April 2010
14:00 – 18:00
Room D, Hall 4

Agenda (PDF 350kb)

The WINDBARRIERS project aims at gathering up to date and comprehensive information on the administrative and grid access barriers that obstruct the development of wind energy in Europe.

It quantifies lead times for projects installed in the last 12 months, both onshore and offshore, across EU 27. The data gathered includes the timeframe for getting the necessary permits, the costs linked to the process, the number of actions involved as well as grid obstacles, This data was obtained from national project developers active in the EU, major utilities and wind energy associations. Based on the responses, the WINDBARRIERS project will measure how long the administrative part of on- and offshore wind projects take in the different countries, as well as the costs and difficulty involved, and the overall success rate.

At a later stage, recommendations will be made and disseminated by the consortium in a report due to be published in June 2010. This will be done by organising workshops in 5 EU countries, including 2 in new Member States. Some results are already available through the WindBarriers website www.windbarriers.eu

The side event showed the first results obtained by computing the data obtained through sending a comprehensive questionnaire in 27 EU countries. 200 developers from 24 EU Member States have submitted their answers to EWEA’s questionnaire on grid and administrative barriers to wind energy projects.

Polish representatives and consortium partners introduced surprising and exciting first results obtained through the fist studies done by Fraunhofer ISI on the basis of the real data obtained from European developers.

For more information, please contact Sharon Wokke: sharon.wokke(at)ewea.org
 

Note: The Windbarriers project is a part of the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme and intends to gather detailed and accurate data on the current administrative and grid connection barriers unnecessarily delaying the development of wind power in the EU-27 (more information available at www.windbarriers.eu).