Wind Energy and renewable energy blog

Wind energy companies don’t like spatial planning.  They have been warning UK government decision makers against the strategic allocation of renewable energy sites for years.  The key reasons for this stance are a) the risk of completely unsuitable areas being allocated for a particular renewable energy technology and b) a whole host of potentially suitable areas being  sterilised uneccessarily because they have not been allocated as appropriate for a particular renewable energy technology.  Renewable energy technology requirements change fast according to technological and commercial parameters.

Sterilising effects have been experienced in practice where local planning authorities have commissioned studies of their own areas and then gone on to identify green ‘go’ and red ‘no go’ areas.  The sterilisation of these areas will in turn have a further impact on already failing moves towards meeting renewable energy targets.

Some national organisations are however pushing for strategic identification of renewable energy sites such as those for wind farms.  The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) produced a joint statement with the National Trust last year promoting the spatial planning approach.  They are still peddling this approach with RSPB representatives telling the Energy and Climate Change Committee earlier this month that the government’s new national policy statements (NPS) should include spatial guidelines for renewable energy development.

Groups such as the RSPB often see spatial planning being used for the allocation of housing sites and transport infrastructure and believe that it can be transferable to renewable energy, helping to divert development away from areas that they perceive as sensitive or unsuitable.  This is however only one part of the jigsaw puzzle and there is generally a lack of understanding about the technical requirements for particular renewable energy technologies and other relevant environmental constraints which need to be considered.  Unless detailed site surveys have been carried out for an area, there is usually very little information about the impacts of future projects within them and this is why Environmental Impact Assessment is required for many renewable energy proposals.

In reality many stakeholders such as the RSPB judge what the effects of mooted projects are likely to be before they have seen the full survey information and Environmental Impact Assessment.  Precautionary constraint mapping of an area can rule out whole swathes of land without the full information and without factoring in that technological and commercial renewable energy requirements can change in a relatively short space of time.  Spatial mapping is likely to be either very crude or be so precautionary it leads to very few (if any) realistic areas of potential being identified.  Usually a balanced decision has to be made about a renewable energy project taking into account the environmental impacts and the benefits.  No form of development has zero impact – if this were the case  renewable energy site finding and decision making would be easy.