The electoral program for the elections on July 23 that the Popular Party has presented this Tuesday has reserved a specific block dedicated to water and energy management, with 18 measures, among which it has included the implementation of a “milestone fee” to be paid by renewable developers to finance the administrative cost required to process permits for the flurry of green projects in progress.
The objective of this measure is to help unlock the bureaucratic plug that slows down the processing of administrative authorizations required by law to go ahead with wind and photovoltaic farms. “To do this, we will introduce a “milestone fee” which, charged to the project promoterfinance the increase in the means necessary for the Administration to expedite the management of the files, avoiding bureaucratic collapse”, reads the PP document.
This blockage is the consequence of the application of the milestone law to renewables, a regulation promoted by the Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, in order to sift serious projects from those that are merely speculative. The regulation solved that problem, but it generated another: a succession of bottlenecks that from time to time threatens to knock down hundreds of green projects.
The measure that they propose from the PP would suppose a new patch in the green law of Ribera, since it avoids repealing the norm and maintains the model of objectives. Of course, according to sources in the sector, it would help to resolve the overflow experienced by officials from many Autonomous Communities, who have seen the annual volume of green files to be processed multiply without, in most cases, having increased their resources significantly. proportional.
Less than a week ago, the Government was forced to amend its renewable calendar and approve a six-month extension so that the promoters can prove the fourth milestone, that of the administrative construction authorization. However, it kept the final deadline, that of the fifth objective, which sets the commissioning of hundreds of renewable plants for June 2025. In the eyes of the sector, the extension only partially resolved the issue since the forecast among the promoters green is that after this Grace periodthe stopper repeats itself.