Hárskút Wind Farm

The Hárskút Wind Farm was a wind power project in Veszprém County, Hungary. It was to have 30 individual wind turbines with a nominal output of 1.5 MW which would have delivered up to 45 MW of power, allegedly enough to power over 18,100 homes, with a capital investment required of approximately US$ 60 million.

Controversy

The site is a landscape protection area, part of the National Ecological Network and is in the immediate vicinity of Nature 2000 areas (the natural reserves of the European Union). The site also falls way too close to two settlements.

Local environmental groups pointed out that the environmental impact assessment was fraud and brought the case in court, where the environmental permit of the project was canceled and the authorities were required to repeat the process. In this third process the investors did not submit any further documents and thus the permit was left canceled. Since then the investors declared their having abandoned the project.

The court's decision influenced the authorities elsewhere too: e.g., the view and the relation to the landscape of similar windfarms are investigated more carefully.