The Law n° 2023-175 of March 10, 2023 concerning the acceleration of renewable energy production was published in the Official Journal of March 11, 2023. The objective of this law is to facilitate the deployment of renewable energy projects.
Likewise, this law aims to establish a territorial planning system for renewable energies in order to arrange local approval of projects and to guarantee a satisfactory balance for them in the territories.
In addition, the law of March 10, 2023 tried to attach importance to the development of offshore wind power, thus, it gives for the first time a definition to agrivoltaism.
In addition, the processing times for renewable energy projects are reduced under this law. The Article L. 123-15 of the Environmental Code, provides that:
"The investigating commissioner or the commission of inquiry submits its report and its reasoned conclusions within thirty days of the end of the investigation. If this deadline cannot be respected, an additional deadline may be granted at the request of the investigating commissioner or the investigation commission by the competent authority to organize the investigation, after advice from the project manager".
In addition, this law contains important provisions concerning the litigation of environmental authorizations. Indeed, the administrative judge will be required to regularize the environmental authorization during the proceedings. The objective is therefore to prevent a complete cancellation of environmental authorizations, when the vice affecting their legality can be regularized.
In addition, authorizations to operate new onshore wind turbines have the obligation to take into account the "visual saturation effects" in the landscape. This expression is mentioned in Article L. 515-44 of the Environmental Code which could be likely to slow down the development of onshore wind projects.
The Article L515-44 of the Environment Code, provides that:
"The environmental authorization also takes into account, if necessary, the number of land-based electricity production installations already existing in the territory concerned, in order to prevent visual saturation effects in order to protect the interests mentioned in Article L. 511-1".