The Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change has updated the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulation.
With the update published in today’s Official Gazette, the project lists in which Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) (Appendix-1) and Selection-Elimination Criteria (Appendix-2) will be applied in the regulation were also changed.
With the changes made, power-based distinctions for hydroelectric, wind and geothermal power plants were removed.
For wind energy projects, the expressions “with 20 turbines and above or with an installed power of 50 MWm and above” in Appendix-1 list and “with 5 turbines and above or with an installed power of 10 MWm and above and below 50 MWm” in Appendix-2 list were removed.
For hydroelectric power plants, the expressions “with an installed power of 10 MWm and above” in Appendix-1 list and “with an installed power of 1-10 MWm” in Appendix-2 list were removed.
For geothermal energy projects, the expressions “extraction and use of geothermal source (thermal capacity 20 MWe and above)” in Appendix-1 list and “extraction and use of geothermal source (thermal capacity 5 MWe and above)” in Appendix-2 list were removed.
For geothermal projects, a clause “exploration and/or extraction of geothermal energy source” was added as the 39th article in Appendix-2, and geothermal projects were separated from other mining exploration projects.
For solar projects, electrical power units were replaced with mechanical power units
For solar energy projects, the expression “10 MWe” in Appendix-1 list was changed to “10 MWm” and the expression “1 MWe” in Appendix-2 list was changed to “1 MWm”.
The upper limit was removed in transmission lines
In the transmission line projects with a voltage of 154 kV (kilovolt) and above, the expression “with a length of 15 km and above” in the article in Appendix-1 list was changed to “with a continuously length of 15 km and above”.
For the same type of projects, the expression “5-15 km in length” in Appendix-2 list was changed to “with a length of 5 km and above”.
Carbon capture projects were added to the lists
With the update made in the regulation, criteria for carbon capture projects were also added to the Appendix-1 and Appendix-2 lists.
In the Appendix-1 list, the 45th and last item was added as “Carbon capture and geological storage projects with an annual capacity of 1.5 million tons and above”.
The 54th item was added to the Appendix-2 list as “Transportation of CO2 through pipelines for carbon capture and storage purposes”.
