Political agreement was yesterday reached by the European Council on the proposed emergency regulation to fast track consenting processes for renewable energy.

The regulation is to be formally adopted at the next extraordinary energy Council meeting next month. Once adopted, it will have direct effect in each Member State.

The main question, of course, is how the regulation will be implemented in practice.

A number of amendments were made to the proposed regulation by the Council yesterday including:

• A three month deadline for the permitting of solar equipment on artificial structures, up from one month;
• A one month deadline for heat pumps <50MW and three months for ground source heat pumps;
• The possibility for Member States to apply the faster permitting rules to ongoing permitting requests;
• Member States are permitted to restrict the application of the ‘overriding public interest’ provision to certain parts of their territory, types of technologies or projects;
• Member States are allowed to further shorten the permitting process deadlines; and
• The regulation will apply for 18 months from the date it enters into force with the possibility for the Council to extend its application further.

Please see the agreed proposal here and our previous briefing here.