Wind farm rezoning procedure: support and SEA submission documents
Wind farm rezoning: we support you from the initial idea to the legally valid rezoning decision and prepare the SEA submission documents.
Where a wind farm may be built is decided in Austria by the spatial planning of the federal provinces. Depending on the province, there is a supra-local zoning for wind power, in Lower Austria for example a sectoral spatial planning programme, and the municipality zones the land in the land-use plan, usually as a special zoning in grassland. For wind farms subject to an EIA, section 4a of the EIA Act (UVP-G 2000) regulates how supra-local zoning and local zoning interact. For wind power projects, rezoning is often the first milestone in the procedure. It does not replace the other permits: electricity law, nature conservation, forestry and water law or aviation remain separate procedures. For developers and investors, the zoning situation is therefore a basic prerequisite before expert reports and submission documents for a site are developed in depth.
Lower Austria shows which criteria count in zoning: among other things, distances to residential building land, nature conservation and ecological value, landscape and settlement character, tourism, grid infrastructure and the extension of existing wind farms were taken into account. Nature reserves, landscape protection areas and Natura 2000 sites were applied as strict conflict criteria. New wind power zonings are restricted to the zones shown in the spatial planning programme; existing zonings outside the zones are not affected by the programme. In Upper Austria, a special zoning is required in grassland. For future acceleration areas under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, separate ordinances are planned. Whether plants and ancillary facilities are permissible there without separate zoning depends on the implementation in the respective federal province.
The strategic environmental assessment (SEA) goes back to EU Directive 2001/42/EC and is implemented in the provinces' spatial planning acts. Its core is the environmental report: it describes the state of the environment, assesses the likely significant effects, for example on population, animals and plants, landscape and cultural assets, examines alternatives, names measures for avoidance, reduction and compensation, and sets out monitoring. The method and assessment criteria must be comprehensible. The SEA remains strategic; site-specific effects are only examined in detail in the later permit procedures.
From the outset, we support you with the technical and scheduling coordination with authorities and official experts and ensure open, clear communication. Building on the results and requirements, we prepare the submission documents for the SEA. The host municipality, residents and specialist bodies raise their own questions, and it pays to know these early. We deliver all relevant technical reports from a single source: noise and shadow flicker assessments, statements on the landscape including visibility analyses and realistic photomontages, and forestry and nature conservation contributions. The basis is formed by the SEA technical contributions from the preliminary design, and in detail, for example, the shadow impact assessment and the operational and construction noise assessment. Which areas are suitable for wind power is clarified in advance by the potential area analysis. After rezoning comes support for the permit procedure.
