6. Describe the procedures of Environmental Impact Assessment

1. Assessing the impact on the environment by individuals and legal entities who obtained a license to perform work and services in the field of environmental protection.

2. Organization and financing of the evaluation of environmental impact provides the client (initiator) of the proposed activity.

3. Individuals and legal entities engaged in the development of impact assessment on the environment, shall be liable to the customer for the accuracy, completeness or quality of the results of the evaluation of environmental impacts in accordance with the contract.

4. Monitoring compliance with the requirements of environmental legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the implementation of impact assessment procedures.

Currently EIA is mandatory and integral part of project documentation. The EIA procedure is used in the preparation and decision-making during the implementation of economic activity. The current instruction sets the EIA requirement to apply this procedure to all, without exception, types of planned economic activity. In practice, for reasons of an economic nature, EIA procedure is performed only for large enterprises where the customer is able to pay for the related work.

Public participation, interests of the population, as part of the procedure, sufficiently are not supported by legislation. There are not set any specific requirements regarding the time limit for the initial information, nor for any of the terms of the EIA procedure as a whole or its individual stages. In particular, it concerns the timing of public participation in this procedure. There is an open question as to whom there should be provided the access to information – to government agency or to proponent of economic activity.

6. Describe the possibilities of use of solar energy in Kazakhstan, technologies of application, construction of wind farms

Kazakhstan has good capacities for use of wind energy, especially in the region of Djungar gates and Chilik corridor, where average annual wind speeds are 7-9 m per s and 5-9 m per s, respectively. Proximity of existing power transmission lines, good correlation of season of winds with increasing demand for electricity ensure conditions for efficient use of these resources.

Kazakhstan is characterised by significant solar energy resources. Duration of sunshine is 2200-3000 hours per year, and energy of solar radiation is 1300-1800 kW per square m a year. This allows to use solar heaters of water and solar batteries, portable photo-electrical systems, in particular in rural areas, at distant pastures.

A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm may also be located offshore.

A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm may be located offshore to take advantage of strong winds blowing over the surface of an ocean or lake.

As a general rule, economic wind generators require windspeed of 10 mph (16 km/h) or greater. An ideal location would have a near constant flow of non-turbulent wind throughout the year, with a minimum likelihood of sudden powerful bursts of wind. An important factor of turbine siting is also access to local demand or transmission capacity.

Usually sites are screened on the basis of a wind atlas, and validated with wind measurements. Meteorological wind data alone is usually not sufficient for accurate siting of a large wind power project. Collection of site specific data for wind speed and direction is crucial to determining site potential^[2][3] in order to finance the project.^[4] Local winds are often monitored for a year or more, and detailed wind maps constructed before wind generators are installed.

The wind blows faster at higher altitudes because of the reduced influence of drag. The increase in velocity with altitude is most dramatic near the surface and is affected by topography, surface roughness, and upwind obstacles such as trees or buildings. Typically, the increase of wind speeds with increasing height follows a wind profile power law, which predicts that wind speed rises proportionally to the seventh root of altitude. Doubling the altitude of a turbine, then, increases the expected wind speeds by 10% and the expected power by 34%