Three organisations from across the energy and planning sectors have come together to examine how the UK’s renewable energy planning system could be improved to hit renewable energy capacity targets.
Trade body RenewableUK, countryside charity CPRE and sustainable business organisation Aldersgate Group have released the interim findings of their investigation into the UK’s onshore renewable energy planning system, in a report titled Insights for the decarbonised electricity system: journeys through planning.
The report, which focuses on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), examines the successes and failures of the planning system from the point of view of three kinds of user: energy developers, local communities, and the environment, which was labelled as a “user” of the planning system given the requirements for environmental consideration within these processes.
This stage of the investigation identified five major issues with the current NSIP regime. These are the lack of strategic plans, joined-up policy and public engagement, resourcing challenges across the system, difficulties in efficiently sourcing adequate data, inherent uncertainties in the process that exacerbate other issues, and the need for complex trade-offs to balance conflicting interests.
As such, the report’s authors have made several early recommendations for improving the system. They urge the government to involve planning experts, communities, environmental groups, and infrastructure developers in developing upcoming policy changes and note that the government should invest in capacity building.
Overall NSIP process ‘viewed positively’ by renewable energy developers
The report notes that renewable energy developers have a broadly positive experience within the current NSIP process, and praises the sector for treating early engagement with all stakeholders as commonplace good practice.
Interestingly, the report notes that it is not necessarily viewed as cost-effective for developers to go through the NSIP process for projects that only just cross the 50MW threshold for designation as an NSIP, leading to a significant number of projects being sized just under the threshold at 49MW, or significantly above 50MW.
Lack of policy clarity, lack of resources and skills, and uncertainty in process timelines were also highlighted as concerns.
Environmental NGOs also generally viewed the NSIP process positively, and the potential benefits of some forms of energy infrastructure as an opportunity for nature recover was highlighted. However, these same NGOs noted a number of missed opportunities for monitoring and evaluation of the environment post-development, as well as the challenge of gathering the necessary environmental data for an NSIP application.
Meanwhile, some local community groups who have been through the NSIP process “report significant antipathy and anger at the process”, and criticise community engagement and public consultation as merely a “tick-box exercise”. The difficulty in balancing conflicting opinions within a community was also noted, as well as the immense pressure posed by negative media coverage generated by community organisations.
This report is the first stage of a detailed investigation, with more detailed findings and policy recommendations due to be published this autumn. The next stage of this project will examine in more detail the idea of strategic planning and how it can help address existing challenges in the system as well as develop best practice ideas for early engagement in the planning process.