AKEL on Thursday submitted a bill amending the Laws on the Promotion and Encouragement of Renewable Energy Sources (2022-2025) to stop uncontrolled, scattered siting of commercial RES parks on agricultural land and in environmentally sensitive zones. The move follows four years of strong pushback from local communities in Parliament’s Agriculture Committee and concerns that the Interior Minister’s 2024 directive contains loopholes and does not fully safeguard public interest. The ammendments were put forth by MPs Yiannakis Gavriel, Andreas Pasiourtides and Valentinos Fakontis.
Five categories where commercial RES would be banned
The draft provides for a legal ban on installing RES facilities for commercial purposes within agricultural land that, after assessment by the Agriculture Department, is identified as:
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high natural value land
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fertile and/or productive and/or permanently irrigated land
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land within irrigated or dryland land-consolidation schemes, or areas irrigated by government works
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land inside protection zones, as defined in local plans under the Town and Country Planning Law
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land within Natura 2000 special protection zones, under the Law on the Protection and Management of Nature and Wildlife.
According to the explanatory note, the bill does not affect the possibility of installing photovoltaic systems for the benefit of the agri-livestock sector for self-consumption.
Farmers across Cyprus, from the Kokkinokhoria to Paphos, report over-concentration of RES projects on farmland after unchecked licensing, including within irrigated consolidation areas. They warn of professional farmers being pushed off fields cultivated for decades, communities encircled by PV parks close to residential zones to the detriment of broader development and landscape, and grazing areas disappearing overnight.
Illustrating scale, Agriculture Committee chair Yiannakis Gavriel told Politis (September 14, 2025) that while about 58 MW of large RES projects have already been built in Famagusta district, CERA has issued additional licences totalling 408 MW there. He noted that Cyprus currently has roughly 900 MW of installed RES nationwide, warning of “crushing consequences” for agriculture and local development if all licensed projects proceed.
More than 100 applications for new PV parks remain pending, even though, as Parliament heard on 16 October, existing built capacity already meets the Republic’s RES targets for 2030 and 2050.
Focus on gaps in the 2024 Interior Minister’s order
Calls are growing to revise the licensing framework for PV parks on farmland, particularly the Interior Minister’s 2024 order. At the 16 October 2025 sitting, the Commissioner for Agricultural Payments, Andreas Kyprianou, flagged the exemption of “small” PV from exclusion zones and the absence of any limit on how many applications a single owner may file.
At that meeting, the Agriculture and Environment Departments (Ministry of Agriculture) and the Game and Fauna Service (Ministry of Interior) all backed changes. The Game and Fauna Service said it has informed the Interior Minister. An Environment Department representative added that an inter-departmental committee is compiling points of the order that require revision to submit to the President.
The bill will be taken up by the Agriculture Committee in the coming period. Debate will centre on balancing RES deployment with food security, land-use planning and biodiversity protection, while ensuring that on-farm self-consumption remains facilitated.