At the Margins of Planning

Offshore Wind Farms in the United Kingdom

Stephen A. Jay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780815387657
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351162906
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Offshore wind farms are being developed on a major scale around the UK coastline as part of the drive to increase renewable energy production. This presents a new departure for the renewables sector. Having fewer physical constraints than on land, they avoid the planning system, which currently ends at low water mark. However, planning authorities and the communities they represent are deeply concerned about the consequences of offshore wind farms along their coastal zones. This book presents an empirical investigation into the attitudes of local planning authorities into the development of offshore wind farms, examining these findings in light of wider debates about the use and management of the seas and the potential contribution of the mechanisms of planning. The book also raises questions about the geographical limits of planning and how to go about establishing a form of spatial planning to cover the marine environment.

Chapter 1
Introduction

The Emergence of Offshore Wind Farms

An Industry Stepping Offshore

The exploitation of wind for the generation of electricity has become widespread in many countries over the last two decades as part of the drive to convert to renewable forms of energy production. To date, most wind farms have been located on land, but some have now been sited in shallow marine waters, especially in northern Europe; Denmark led the way by developing the world’s first offshore wind farm in 1991. A major expansion of offshore wind energy is now taking place, representing a new departure for the renewable energy sector. Although locating wind farms offshore presents greater technical challenges, it also promises fewer physical constraints than on land and access to more reliable and powerful winds. The United Kingdom has recently entered this new phase of wind energy development and is now seeing the large-scale development of wind farms in waters close to its shores (BWEA online). Moreover, the UK, with its long coastline and with strong prevailing winds across its surrounding seas, has an almost unequalled potential for exploiting this resource (Troen and Petersen 1989).

The UK government and the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are giving strong policy backing to the expansion of the offshore wind sector. This falls within the wider context of the importance being attached to renewable sources of energy, as announced in recent national reviews of energy policy (DTI 2003, 2007). Increasing the generation of electricity from renewable sources is now being given serious attention, not least because it reduces reliance on fossil fuels, diversifies the energy mix and improves the security of energy supply. Perhaps even more significantly, renewable energy is seen as an important mechanism for reducing the carbon emissions associated with conventional sources of energy and has therefore become a key component of meeting international obligations on combating climate change. In the UK, as elsewhere, these concerns have been translated into ambitious goals: an initial target of 10 per cent of the UK’s electricity coming from renewable sources by 2010 has been extended to an aspiration of 20 per cent by 2020 (DTI 2003). A market mechanism, known as the renewables obligation, has been put in place to encourage the widespread development of renewable energy schemes.

Extending the ‘capture’ of wind energy into the offshore environment is now becoming an important aspect of the UK’s wider renewables strategy. The technology and economics of offshore wind farms have now reached the point where they are commercially viable, especially taking into account government support for renewables. Offshore wind farms are therefore expected to make a major contribution to the targets that have been drawn up; the original hope was that they would provide 40–50 per cent of the UK’s renewable energy by 2010 (DTI 2002). A sustained and rapid growth of the sector will be needed for it to deliver on this scale. Other forms of marine renewables, such as wave and tidal energy, are also expected to become important contributors in the coming years, but these are at a much earlier stage of development (DTI 2005a, Pelc and Fujita 2002). Attention is squarely on marine wind energy at present.

The first major phase of developing offshore wind farms in UK waters began in 2000 when developers were invited to nominate possible wind farm sites. This eventually led to consents being granted for a series of 15 projects around the coastline known as Round 1; some of these are now operating and the others are in various stages of development. A strategy for a more ambitious, second round of projects was soon drawn up; this was announced in a government consultation document, Future Offshore (DTI 2002). Round 2 wind farms are now starting to be developed; these will generally be much larger in scale and further out to sea than the Round 1 schemes.

Coupled with the policy drive for offshore wind farms is an expectation that they will encounter less public resistance than on-land wind farms, which have met with increasing levels of hostility over the last decade or so in many countries where they have been built (e.g. Pasqualetti et al. 2002, Strachan and Lal 2004, Szarka 2004). Various explanations have been put forward for this (Ellis et al. 2007), but opposition is usually linked to the perceived harm that would be caused to the environment, especially to landscape and local living conditions (Wolsink 2007). Certainly, it is widely assumed that the main reason for resistance to individual wind farm schemes is the damage that people fear will be inflicted on their localities, the so-called ‘nimby’ (not in my back yard) effect (van der Horst 2007). So it is also being assumed that locating wind farms out to sea, and hence beyond people’s immediate surroundings, will provoke less opposition. This was expressed clearly in Future Offshore: ‘the particular advantage of offshore renewables is their potential for greater public acceptability, chiefly because of the likelihood of lower visual impact’ (DTI 2002, p. 14).

In the UK and elsewhere, planning authorities have frequently become embroiled in the conflicts that have arisen in relation to wind energy. Most on-land wind farms have needed to gain planning permission, so planning authorities have found themselves at the centre of sometimes fierce disputes about individual schemes. They have either approved or rejected proposals on planning grounds, but have often been strongly lobbied by their local communities and have reached decisions that reflect local opposition (Toke 2005a). Although developers have frequently gained planning permission on appeal, this has sometimes only been after lengthy and difficult public inquiries, in which planning authorities have again taken an antagonistic stance. The planning system has therefore become associated with public resistance to wind farms and is seen as an obstacle that must be overcome. Both industry and government have characterised the planning system as a major barrier to the expansion of renewable forms of energy (Beddoe and Chamberlin 2003, DTI 2007). Although this perception can be questioned (Toke 2005a), it easily provides an additional argument for locating wind farms offshore, which is beyond the reach of the planning system. ‘One solution, of avoiding land-use disputes and to reduce the noise and visual pollution, is to move the developments offshore’ (Henderson 2002, p. 14).

These expectations of the industry and policy makers may be overly optimistic. Empirical evidence from different countries is now showing that opposition to offshore wind farms can be just as strong and determined as for land-based projects (Ellis et al. 2007, Firestone and Kempton 2007, Gray et al. 2005). The much larger scale on which wind farms are being built at sea is perhaps one factor in this, leading to significant implications for other users of the sea and for coastal communities more generally. More work needs to be done to investigate public responses to the offshore harnessing of wind energy and the implications of development of this kind for wider understandings of coastal and marine environments.

The Role of Planning

Offshore wind farms are, by definition, outside the remit of land-use planning. The UK planning system generally ends at the low tide mark and planning authorities along the coast have no jurisdiction beyond this line. Controls on marine activities and development are mostly exercised by central government departments (of the UK government or the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and planning authorities do not generally have a significant role to play in authorisation processes. As far as offshore wind farms are concerned, planning authorities that are near to proposed sites are consulted for their views along with a wide range of other bodies, but they do not have a key role. This is in contrast to the situation onshore, where planning authorities have full powers to grant planning permission for small scale wind farms (with a capacity of up to 50 megawatts) and act as statutory consultees for larger wind farms, allowing them to exert significant influence.

Nonetheless, it is recognised at government level that planning authorities close to proposed offshore wind farms do have a legitimate interest in their development (DTI 2005b). Firstly, these authorities are likely to be concerned about the possible effects upon their areas, such as the visual impact of a wind farm on the coastline and the disturbance caused by construction noise; these may be reasonable planning concerns for nearby authorities. (These issues may not be limited to direct implications for their land areas; for example, authorities may be interested in the use of the sea for leisure activities.) Secondly, planning authorities ‘can act as a focal point for the views of residents to the planned development’ (ibid., p. 20). Authorities are, in fact, likely to be far better placed than central government bodies to gather and represent local opinion, whether supportive or hostile, about proposed schemes.

This recognition of the possible interest of planning authorities in offshore wind farms, despite the fact that they lie outside their areas, raises a number of important issues about both the institutional role of planning in the development of offshore wind farms, and also about the more substantive concerns that planning authorities may have about these developments. To begin with, there are questions about the place of planning authorities in the current consenting procedures for offshore wind farms. Do the arrangements give planning authorities an adequate say in the planning of these large-scale structures on their doorstep? Does their consultee role give them a fair influence in the decisions that are being made about authorisation and their location, design, etc.? Can planning authorities adequately represent their local communities in the process? Secondly, there are questions about the more substantive attitudes that planning authorities have towards offshore wind farms. What is their planning response to this incursion into the seas of this infrastructure? Are they concerned only with land-use matters or do they take a more active interest in the marine environment in its own right? What understandings of the marine environment underlie their planning response, and are these understandings being shaped by offshore development itself? Thirdly, the introduction of offshore wind farms raises broader questions for the management of the seas. Crucially, should developments of this kind, by virtue of being below the low water mark, effectively escape the hand of planning? Do offshore wind farms represent a more general extension into the marine environment of new forms of development and if so, should the planning system incorporate the seas in some way?

Some of these issues were touched upon during a consultation exercise conducted by the UK government department overseeing the development of offshore wind farms prior to the publication of Future Offshore (DTI 2001). This involved seeking the views of stakeholders on the proposed consents regime for Round 2 offshore wind farms. A number of planning authorities specifically commented on their role; they were concerned that the process was too rushed and gave insufficient opportunity to address local issues. Planning authorities were also worried that their views would not be given proper weight in decision-making about individual schemes. The department’s response to these comments was that a balance had to be struck between the due process of considering applications and not allowing unacceptable delays to be caused. So questions persist as to what extent the concerns raised by planning authorities and other bodies are being taken account of, especially given the policy drive and commitment in favour of offshore wind energy. Moreover, no empirical research has been published into the actual involvement of planning authorities in the development of offshore wind farms and into their broader attitudes towards both the schemes themselves and the process of authorisation. This book offers a first step in considering the development of offshore wind farms specifically from a planning perspective.

Management of the Seas

Questions about the role of the land-based planning system in marine development such as offshore wind farms inevitably touch upon wider issues about the management of marine activities and development. There are long-standing difficulties in this regard, which can be traced back to the lack of sovereignty over the seas and history of common exploitation of marine resources. Marine activities, such as fishing and navigation, have only gradually been brought within the terms of international agreements and legislation, leading to an ad hoc and complex set of controls which nation states exercise over the seas around their land masses. The regulatory oversight of marine activities has usually been carried out at central government level, typically through various departments, reflecting the sectoral approach that has been taken to international agreements etc. This has tended to result in poor coordination between different regulatory systems and bodies, sometimes with different departments exercising overlapping controls. This is exemplified by the complex consents system that applies to the development of offshore wind farms.

In the UK, there has been criticism over the years of its overall approach to managing the marine environment. This has been described as suffering from duplication, fragmentation, sectoral interest and poor integration (Tyldesley 2004). Moreover, the lack of representative bodies with marine responsibilities, along with the remoteness of most of the sea, means that there has been inadequate public representation and consultation over marine activities. All this is against the backcloth of sensitive and poorly understood marine ecosystems, which may be extremely vulnerable to the human demands that are being made upon them. Finally, these demands are currently increasing; there are growing pressures to exploit the sea for navigation, dredging, fishing, leisure, energy production etc. These sectors are all experiencing significant growth at present; the development of offshore wind farms is just one, though very pertinent, example o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Development of Offshore Wind Farms
• 3 Five Offshore Wind Farms
• 4 Patterns of Planning Authority Involvement
• 5 Planning at the Margins
• 6 Conclusions
• References
• Index