New rules will require wind farm developers to assess impact on birds and animals

Now no new wind power plant will be able to pass design without a detailed assessment of how it will affect local fauna — from rare species to bird migration routes.

The essence in brief

• The Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan, by order dated September 18, 2026, approved the Rules for Assessing the Impact of Wind Power Plants on the Biological Diversity of Wildlife; the document enters into force on October 4, 2026.
• The assessment is mandatory at the design stage — before final decisions are approved on the placement of wind power installations, access roads, and other infrastructure — and is carried out regardless of whether there is already information about rare species in a specific territory.
• Particular attention is paid to migratory, colonial, and predatory birds, as well as bats — species most sensitive to the impact of wind turbines.
• The minimum survey zone is at least 5 km from the outermost planned facilities of the station; if there is confirmed data on migration routes or concentration sites of animals, the survey zone is expanded.

What exactly developers will have to do

The rules describe in detail the methodology: collection and analysis of baseline data, field surveys, identification of wildlife objects and areas significant to them, forecasting the nature and degree of possible impact, as well as development of measures to prevent or reduce it. Risks are assessed at all stages of the station's life cycle — construction, operation, and decommissioning, including collisions and injury to animals, disruption of migration routes, loss or fragmentation of habitats, as well as noise, light, and vibration impact. If data are insufficient for a reliable assessment, the project materials must explicitly state these gaps and their possible influence on the results, rather than simply omitting problematic aspects.

A living document, not a one-time one

An indicative detail of the rules is the requirement to update the assessment when project decisions change. If, after the initial assessment, the placement of turbines or other infrastructure changes and this could affect the impact zone, the developer is obliged to re-clarify the results rather than rely on outdated data. This distinguishes the new rules from formal one-time approval — the impact assessment remains an active control tool throughout the entire project implementation cycle, rather than simply a document removed from the agenda after obtaining initial permission.

Part of an already familiar wind energy cluster

The emergence of such rules is natural against the backdrop of the active growth of Kazakhstan's wind energy, which we have been following throughout this year. We have already written that of the ten renewable energy facilities planned for 2026, seven have already been commissioned, and it was specifically wind generation that provided the bulk of new capacity — 150 MW out of the 212 MW commissioned, including three stations of Hyperborea LLP in the Karaganda region and the wind power plant of Aspan Energo LLP in the Kostanay region. It is precisely such projects — already operating and still under construction — that will be the first for which the new biodiversity impact assessment becomes a mandatory part of further operation and any future modernization. As the country increases installed wind capacity in parallel with solar generation, the issue of environmental support for such construction ceases to be secondary — especially given the bird migration routes running through the Kazakh steppe, one of the largest such corridors in Eurasia.

Author's conclusion

The approved rules are an attempt to build a system of checks for the industry in advance, at a time when it is only gaining momentum in Kazakhstan, rather than reacting to problems after the fact, when the turbines have already been installed. The five-kilometer survey zone and the requirement to take migration routes into account even in the absence of preliminary data on rare species set a fairly high bar for thoroughness. But, as with any regulatory document, the value of the rules will be determined not by the text of the order itself, but by the practice of its application — how conscientiously developers conduct field surveys and how strictly the relevant authorities verify the quality of the submitted materials, rather than merely the formal presence of an assessment report.