This week’s entry reports on government plans for spatial planning of energy infrastructure and the approval of an 85 MW onshore wind project.
Spatial strategy
The concept of a spatial strategy for energy generation, where preferred – and less preferred – locations for generating facilities of different types are declared in an official document, has been kicking about for many years but has never come to fruition, in England, at least; it does happen to some extent in Wales.
The Liberal Democrats have been in favour of it for a long time, but the Conservatives have historically been against it, leaving it to the market to decide where such things should be built. However, the Skidmore Review, published in January 2023, recommended more use of spatial planning for energy (see recommendation 98), and although the government response to that point didn’t say anything about spatial planning, the response to recommendation 21 did, and Rishi Sunak made a stronger commitment in a speech in September 2023 but didn’t get round to it.
The new government has now asked the National Energy System Operator (NESO), a new body created under the Energy Act 2023, to produce a ‘Strategic Spatial Energy Plan’ (SSEP) by 2026, with a methodology for producing it to be published by the end of this year.
The government’s instructions to the NESO can be found here. They are joint instructions from the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments and will cover the whole of Great Britain (ie, not Northern Ireland), including offshore. The instruction contemplates amending the relevant National Policy Statements once the SSEP is out.
The SSEP ‘will assess the optimal locations, quantities, and types of energy infrastructure required, across a range of plausible futures, to meet future energy demand with the clean, affordable, and secure supply that we need’. Between four and six ‘plausible futures’ are expected, including one ‘low regret’ one.
‘Optimal’ means ‘Locations, quantities, and types of energy infrastructure that balance all the SSEP’s objectives by being resilient, low-carbon, affordable, and taking into account cross-sectoral demands on land and sea’. The types of infrastructure are stated to include electricity generation and storage, including relevant hydrogen assets. The time horizon is left to NESO, but the underlying economic model is to have an approximately 25-year horizon.
The SSEP is not to make site-specific recommendations nor prescribe or authorise specific projects but is to offer a guide to spatial characteristics, and maps are expected to be produced. The SSEP will undergo Strategic Environmental Assessment.
This should definitely help with the long queues of projects waiting for grid connections, as it will allow better forward planning of enhancements to the electricity grid. It will also allow a more strategic approach to land use. Does it also have a downside? Saying where projects should go implies that you are also saying where they should not go, but what if somewhere not mentioned / actively discouraged can subsequently justify being a generation site? Perhaps the SSEP will have criteria for when exceptions can be made.
National Policy Statements can be area-specific already, although they aren’t at the moment. Section 5(5)(a) of the Planning Act 2008 says that an NPS can ‘set out, in relation to a specified description of development, the amount, type or size of development of that description that is appropriate nationally or for a specified area,’ and Section 5(5)(b) also looks relevant because NPSs can ‘set out criteria to be applied in deciding whether a location is suitable (or potentially suitable) for a specified description of development’ – see my exception point above. The SSEP isn’t going to go as far as Section 5(5)(d), it seems, though, ie that NPSs can ‘identify one or more locations as suitable (or potentially suitable) or unsuitable for a specified description of development’.
85 MW onshore wind farm consented
An 85MW onshore wind farm in Wales, Garn Fach south of Newtown, Powys, has been granted consent as a development of national significance, perhaps a sign of things to come for onshore wind. Remember that DNSs are the interim Welsh equivalent to DCOs before these are replaced by more similar Infrastructure Consents in due course. The decision letter can be found here. The application was made in February 2022, 32 months ago, so rather longer than your average DCO application.
The application is for 17 150-meter-tall 5MW turbines and 50MW of energy storage. The minister was more wary than the inspector on the effects on peatland but granted consent nevertheless. The decision letter has a lot less detail than a DCO decision letter, taking just eight pages, although there are then 19 pages of conditions.
The letter may be slim compared with a DCO, but the conditions are pretty technical compared to requirements, eg, this note is to be complied with:
'The LA90 sound pressure level for each data sub-set and wind speed bin is the arithmetic mean of all the 10 minute sound pressure levels within that data subset and wind speed bin except where data has been excluded for reasons which should be clearly identified by the independent consultant. The tonal penalty for each bin is the arithmetic mean of the separate 10-minute tonal audibility levels in the bin converted to a penalty in accordance with Fig 17 on page 104 of ETSUR-97. The assessment level in each bin is normally the arithmetic sum of the bin LA90 and the bin tonal penalty.'
Got that? The development gets 10 years before it must be started (condition 1), which is rather more than DCOs tend to get, although note that the default for town and country planning in Wales is five years compared to England’s three years. This would be the largest onshore windfarm in Wales by output and larger than any in England, although there are six larger ones in Scotland.
New advice page published
The Planning Inspectorate has published a new advice page on good design, which can be found here.
It is certainly intriguing, it starts by commending the principles of Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius, namely ‘firmitas, utilitas, venustas’ – firmness, commodity and delight, ie functionality, durability and aesthetic appeal.
It is accompanied by a pleasing flow diagram – thus following its own advice – and recommends that you have a DAD (design approach document).
Every little helps
Finally, Tesco has done a deal to get 65% of the output from the Cleve Hill solar farm in Kent, authorised by DCO in 2020 and currently under construction, which will power an equivalent of 144 of its stores. See details here.
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