Following a Supreme Court ruling on operational emissions, applications for development consent orders (DCOs) by developers proposing Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) could face further delays.
On ruling 20 June 2024, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling on the case of R v Surrey County Council and others in which campaigner Sarah Finch won a five-year legal battle against proposals for oil production at Horse Hill in Surrey.
This ruling has set a precedent requiring regulators to consider the impact of burning oil and gas, scope 3 emissions, in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for new projects, which will inevitably add delays to NSIPs.
In an article for New Civil Engineer, partner Angus Walker comments on the implications of the Finch ruling.
'The Finch case requires the environmental assessment of emissions resulting from the inevitable eventual combustion of hydrocarbons as part of assessing whether their extraction should be permitted. It does not mean that extraction projects cannot go forward, only that the impact of the eventual emissions is taken into account when deciding whether they do go forward. This only applies to projects where combustion of the product they are concerned with is inevitable, which is unlikely to apply to anything in the DCO regime as it stands, and what’s more projects such as highway improvements already assess the effects of emissions from the expected increased number of vehicles.'
Read the full article on the New Civil Engineer website.
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