Winds of change in offshore. The President signed an amendment to the Wind Farms Act.

On Tuesday, President Karol Nawrocki signed an amendment to the Act on the Promotion of Energy from Offshore Wind Farms. Its main goal is to streamline the implementation of offshore energy projects and broadly develop the renewable energy sector.

The amendment to the Act on the Promotion of Electricity Generation in Offshore Wind Farms and certain other acts provides, among other things, for the possibility of conducting an intervention auction in 2026 if the first auction for offshore wind farms planned for December 2025 is unsuccessful due to a lack of a sufficient number of certificates of admission to the auction or if it is not resolved due to the submission of fewer than three valid bids.

According to the adopted provisions, offshore projects that have already received support under Phase I, the non-auction phase of offshore wind energy development, will have the opportunity to submit additional capacity to the auction. For some of these projects, the capacity indicated in the location decision and issued connection conditions may be higher than the capacity for which support was granted under Phase I. A solution has been proposed that will enable the construction of additional capacity in a given area and submit it to the auction. The limit for this additional capacity for all areas is 200 MW.

The amendment introduced the possibility of settling the negative balance using the maximum price expressed in whole or in part in euro - both for projects from the first phase of support and from the second, auction phase.

The current provisions of the Offshore Act stipulate that the support granted to an auction participant is subject to annual indexation based on the previous year's inflation rate. The draft proposes that the indexation level be capped at the Monetary Policy Council's medium-term inflation target. If inflation in a given year exceeds this target, indexation will only occur up to the target level.

Under the amendment, farms will be able to use common power evacuation, provided that measurement systems can determine which farm is producing how much energy. It is envisaged that more than one OWF will share the same offshore power station, power evacuation equipment, or their components. This approach will optimize the costs associated with power evacuation, which in some projects may be crucial to their feasibility.

The possibility of correcting the position of the foundation for an offshore wind turbine or offshore transformer station by no more than 50 m has also been introduced.

The amendment also provides for the Minister of Climate to prepare a map of the potential for individual types of renewable energy sources, as well as to allow the designation of areas for accelerated development of individual renewable energy sources within areas with identified potential, provided that they have a local development plan permitting the construction of renewable energy sources.

The Act will generally come into force 14 days after its publication. (PAP)

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