The Supreme Court invalidates the annulment of the Corme G-3 wind farm in Pontevedra

The Supreme Court has revoked the annulment of the authorization of the Corme G-3 Wind Farm in Ponteceso (Pontevedra) agreed by the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia in January 2022, when estimating the resources of EDP Renovables and the Xunta de Galicia.

In a ruling dated this Thursday to which EFE has had access, the contentious chamber confirms the administrative resolution of prior authorization, considering that it did not fall within the grounds for nullity accepted by the Galician Superior Court, whose ruling it annuls.

This is a repowering project for an existing wind farm, authorized in April 1998, which envisaged replacing the sixty-one wind turbines already installed with seven larger and more advanced ones, as well as modifying some infrastructure and adapting and building the affected roads.

The Galician Ministry of Economy granted authorization for the project in September 2019.

No attendance

For the Supreme Court, “the two causes on which the annulment was based do not exist”, both related to the processing of public information in the ordinary environmental impact assessment procedure followed before the authorization of the project was issued.

This is the allegation of improper reduction by half of the period for allegations (from 30 to 15 days) and that the sectoral reports should have been collected before submitting the project and the environmental study to the public information process.

Neither the European Directive on the assessment of the impact of public and private projects on the environment nor the environmental assessment law imposes as a mandatory requirement that the authorities must be consulted before issuing public information.

For this reason, the invalidity of the public information process cannot be declared due to non-compliance with a formal requirement of prior completion of the consultation process with the administrations affected by the project, “which is not established as such either in the directive or in the Law.” .

Regarding the reduction from 30 to 15 days of the period for the public information process, the Supreme Court does not believe that it allows the authorization to be annulled, because the two precepts on which the inadmissibility of such a reduction is based, one from the Law and the other from The Directive is not applicable to the case analyzed.

The Supreme Court also recalls that the project “was declared of special interest in accordance with regional legislation”, and was the subject of an ordinary environmental impact assessment in which, at the same time that the corresponding sectoral reports were requested, the process of Public information for a period of fifteen days.

During this process, allegations were presented that were reported by the regional technician, and after that, documents of the corrected project were presented, without the instructor considering it necessary to offer a public information procedure again. As a result of all this, the environmental impact statement was issued and the project was authorized.