Elevating environmental impact assessment (EIA) criteria for solar panels to the status of the parent law might confuse the regulatory system, environmental groups said on Thursday, urging the government to invite more public opinion before amending laws.
The Taiwan People’s Party in August proposed a draft amendment to Article 5 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), aiming to elevate the legal status of solar panel EIA criteria “to prevent solar panel systems from repeatedly harming the environment.”
Eight of the 10 proposed provisions are almost the same as the eight subparagraphs of Paragraph 7, Article 29 of the Standards for Determining Specific Items and Scope of Environmental Impact Assessments for Development Activities (開發行為應實施環境影響評估細目及範圍認定標準) — regulations subordinate to the act, governed by the Ministry of Environment.
Photo: Taipei Times
The other two draft provisions include one that states that EIAs must be conducted for proposed floating solar panel projects with an installed capacity of 10,000 kilowatts or more, or with a cumulative area of 5 hectares or more.
The other requires an EIA for solar panel projects with at least 20,000 kilowatts of installed capacity or at least 10 hectares of cumulative area, excluding rooftop solar panels.
Environmental groups in a joint news release said EIA criteria for solar panel development projects should be stricter, but should be laid out in EIA-related subsidiary laws in line with other development behaviors, rather than in the act — the parent law — otherwise the regulatory system would be confusing.
EIA criteria for development behavior should evaluate potential environmental risks for proposed sites based on factors such as projects’ scale, location and facilities, they said.
For example, risks posed by a 2 hectare solar panel project would be different for environmentally sensitive areas and regular farmland, they said.
Therefore, other factors such as waterbody types should be considered, as well as project areas, to ensure that EIA resources would be efficiently used to review high-risk projects, the groups said, calling on the legislature and the ministry to communicate more with experts and the public.
“We agree that the review system for solar panels requires discussion and revision, but the current legislation might reduce the issue to political infighting and would not prompt constructive public discussion,” they said.
Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan deputy executive director Huang Fei-yueh (黃斐悅) said the EIA system does not properly assess the primary risks of solar facilities.
The ministry is responsible for pollutant emission control, but risks like habitat fragmentation, landscape destruction and soil erosion are governed by other agencies like the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Interior, she said.
EIAs are important to prevent environmental damage, but such issues could not be properly addressed solely through EIAs, Huang said, calling on the government to initiate interagency collaborations to integrate the system.
Department of Environmental Protection Director-General Hsu Su-chih (徐淑芷) said the environment ministry is reviewing the standards and would announce its revisions this month or next month.
The department on Sept. 24 notified central authorities and local governments to make suggestions on the matter by Friday, she said.
The parent law is more stable than its subsidiary laws and should not be arbitrarily revised, particularly because problems found after promulgation would be difficult to remediate, Hsu said.
EIA criteria for floating solar panel projects should be established in the standards by the ministry, she said, adding that more hearings would be held to communicate with the public.
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