At present, the environmental impact assessment project for wind power development in Japan requires four to five years and hundreds of millions of yen, which is an extremely heavy burden for developers. Therefore, in the cabinet meeting held in December 2020, the Minister of Administrative Reform Taro Kono stated that in order not to hinder the development of renewable energy in Japan, he hopes to implement policies more flexibly of review conditions. The required environmental assessment conditions will be increased from the operating scale of 10,000 kW to 50,000 kW and the revision will be completed this year (2021)
However, this policy has caused wind power developers to exploit the loopholes in the policy and cut the development case into a scale that is not required by the EIA law. In response to this, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has issued relevant countermeasures that do not allow companies to deliberately avoid Environmental Impact Assessment. In mid-July, a review meeting was set up to invite relevant experts and scholars to discuss together, and it was decided that plural development projects of the same industry were merged with the same industry for identification.
Reference: Link 1