Wind and solar site screening: protected areas, Natura 2000 and wetlands for every candidate site
The revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED III, Directive (EU) 2023/2413) asks Member States to designate renewables acceleration areas where permitting is faster, and to exclude from them Natura 2000 sites, areas designated under national nature and biodiversity protection schemes, and major bird and marine mammal migratory routes, giving priority to artificial and built surfaces. A developer's candidate site either falls inside an acceleration area or faces the full permit, and in both cases the protected-area question is the first one asked. ERWAY Legality Assessment answers it per candidate polygon from records.
Upload the candidates — a wind site's turbine footprint, a solar park's fenced area, the cable corridor — and read one outcome per polygon: overlap with a protected area in hectares with its category and protection class; relation to a heritage site or a protected wetland with the footprint's confidence stated; tenure status where the site lies on Indigenous or community land; the threatened species recorded inside and within a kilometre, kept separate from the outcome. A site inside a strict-protection area drops out on the first read; a site near a wetland boundary starts the permit conversation with the finding in hand. The EIA screening page follows the permit; the Natura 2000 pre-screening page says where the official register remains the authority.
What RED III changed
Article 15c requires plans designating renewables acceleration areas, with lower-sensitivity areas preferred and higher-sensitivity areas excluded — Natura 2000 sites, nationally protected areas and major migratory routes — using appropriate tools and datasets such as wildlife sensitivity maps. A candidate site inside an acceleration area may be exempt from a project-level environmental impact assessment; outside one it is not. Either way, the developer wants to know before the option what the site touches.
What the screening does not cover
Bird and marine mammal migratory routes, national wildlife sensitivity maps and the acceleration-area designations themselves are not in the product; they belong to the Member State's planning data. Natura 2000 sites appear where the international protected-area records carry them as an international designation, at tier 4 with 'Verification needed', and the official Natura 2000 register is the authority. Species records show where observers went, not where species are absent, and they never enter the outcome.
Comparing sites, then handing over
Because every candidate is checked the same way, the pipeline can be ranked on one record and the weakest sites dropped before the environmental study is priced. For the sites that go forward, the export — CSV or GeoJSON with every finding, its source, its tier and its date — is the brief for the consultant and the file for the lender's screening.