The President of Romania has passed a new law to shorten the permitting process for installing solar projects on buildable land of less than 50 hectares.

The new law passed by the Romanian President simplifies the permitting process for the development of renewable energy projects on buildable land. This follows an amendment to Law 50/1991 passed by the Romanian Parliament in January. These amendments allow photovoltaic, wind energy, biomass, biomass liquid, biomass gas, energy storage projects and substations to be built on agricultural land with an area of less than 50 hectares. The government's move comes as it removes the requirement to obtain a regional urban plan (PUZ), one of the most time-consuming stages of the permitting process.

With the adoption of Law No. 166/2023 of June 10, 2023, Romania will also remove the PUZ requirement for buildable land, and project developers will only need to obtain approval for all building permits once. For example, in the past if a developer wanted to build a 130 MW project on a 130-hectare piece of land, they had to divide the project into three parts and apply for approval for each part separately.