Building agrophotovoltaics on arable land – which is when the same area of land is used to obtain both solar energy and agricultural products – could lead to the transformation of agricultural areas into energy production plants, President Rumen Radev said before the Constitutional Court on Monday.
The changes to the Farmland Conservation Act were part of a reform legislative package passed earlier this year to unblock funding for projects under the EU Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The parliament adopted changes in the law to ease the difficult procedure for changing the purpose of agricultural land before construction of the so-called “agrophotovoltaics” that do not hinder the use of the land on which they are built.
However, because the Constitution gives special protection status to agricultural land, Radev argues that its use violates it.
“According to the Bulgarian Constitution, the land is basically a national treasure, and the National Assembly must protect it, and not allow encroachments on it”, the president writes to the Constitutional Court.
Agrovoltaics (APV) is a technology that combines agriculture and solar energy production. They are usually installed in farmyards and on roofs of livestock farms, but there are technologies for installation over fields, pastures or meadows. Agrophotovoltaics allow the simultaneous generation of electricity and the raising of animals and crops in the same space.
“I support the legislator’s desire to expand the regulatory options that promote the production of energy from renewable sources, but this should not be at the expense of the protection of arable land,” the president’s complaint to the Constitutional Court says.
“Allowing uncontrolled construction of Renewable energy sources will affect the value of land, which is a limited, non-renewable resource,” says the position of the National Association of Grain Producers on the subject. The association is categorically against “the implementation of investment proposals for the construction of wind energy parks and solar parks on the fertile Bulgarian agricultural land”.
“We want to prevent the arable land from being turned into a construction site irreversibly, and the removal of the humus layer and the pouring of thousands of cubic metres of concrete from destroying these lands forever,” the position of the grain producers states.
Bulgaria has €5.6 billion in grants under the Recovery Plan from the EU Commission to transform its economy after the pandemic.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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