Ministry of Environment announce that the preliminary review of EIA regarding offshore wind will change into a two-stage scheme

According to the Ministry of Environment, it was originally planned that offshore wind developers in Phase 3 would need to obtain permits after passing the preliminary review of environmental impact assessment (EIA), but as a result, there were many duplicate sites and repeated review process by the EIA committee. In order to speed up the operation and improve the quality of the reviewing, the Ministry of Environment plans to change the preliminary review of EIA regarding the offshore wind into a two-stage scheme.

The Ministry of Environment issued a draft of the "Key Points for the Preliminary Review of the Environmental Impact Assessment regarding the Development of Offshore Wind Power Systems" on the 2nd, and the most important design is to divide the preliminary review of the offshore wind EIA into two stages.

According to the requirements of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), developers of zonal development phase must obtain a preliminary EIA approval before they can apply for subsequent development permits. Tsai Meng-Yu, director of the Ministry of Environment's Department of Environmental Protection, said that this part has reached a consensus with the MOEA, and MOEA will also revise the key points of the operation in the future, and obtain the "approval of the first stage of EIA preliminary review" instead.

Tsai mentioned that the Ministry of Environment has received 39 EIA reviewing cases regarding the phase 3 offshore wind development, many of which are duplicated, which is equivalent to duplicate reviews and causing consumes administrative resources.

Tsai said that the first stage of the preliminary review will be conducted by video conference with 2 to 5 EIA committee in the form of multiple cases based on the development commitment checklist. The main purpose is to determine the requirements of the commitment checklist.

Tsai further explained that the Ministry of Environment has developed the "the Commitment Checklist for EIA of Wind Power Offshore System Development" based on the previous EIA experience and relevant laws and regulations, including 16 major items, such as wind turbines, submarine cable installation, cetacean and dolphin conservation (piling, underwater noise and ecological monitoring), etc.

Tsai pointed out that after the second stage of the preliminary review, similar to the original EIA process, the developer is required to prepare the EIA document of the development plan, the letter of approval of the first stage of the preliminary review, and the certification documents regarding the allocated development capacity issued by the authorities before it can be carried out. After the second stage of the preliminary review is passed, it will be sent to the EIA conference for reviewing.

Ministry of Environment said that the notice period for this key point is 14 days, and it is expected that it will be discussed and announced as soon as possible after the New Year; It can be applied to new EIA proposals submitted in the future or cases that are still under reviewing discussion.

Reference: CNA