What’s the plan?

Planning delays are crippling the rollout of green energy projects in the UK, and the situation has not improved despite constant promises to overhaul the system and fast-track investment.

Inaction and delay are no longer options when it comes to tackling climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned in its latest landmark report.

That may be news for those struggling to get renewables projects through the UK’s planning system.

A Development Consent Order (DCO) is the fast-track process set up by the last Labour government for handling nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) like offshore wind farms. However, the time it takes for an application to be approved increased by 65% between 2012 and 2021.

Some offshore wind projects are taking up to four years to secure a DCO, according to the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC). This includes Orsted’s Hornsea Four wind farm, which has been in the planning process since 2018 when Theresa May was still prime minister.

In February a five-month delay was announced for determining the 2.6GW project, which has been sitting on ministers’ desks since November when the Planning Inspectorate submitted its recommendation on whether it should be given the go-ahead.

At least offshore wind farms are eventually getting consents, albeit they are delayed. Onshore wind projects are subject to a de facto planning ban in England, where only two small turbines were consented during the whole of 2022.

The government, following the publication of the British Energy Security Strategy last year, has outlined a series of moves that it professes will ease the planning process for renewables projects, on and offshore.

The first of these was outlined in revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), snuck out for consultation three days before Christmas.

The changes to the NPPF follow an intense debate among Tory backbenchers late last year about the direction of planning policy for onshore wind projects. However, hopes that the government would relax its stance against onshore wind, which had been raised by levelling-up secretary Michael Gove in December, have been dashed.

The changes to the NPPF essentially tweak the document’s existing wording, maintaining a series of tests for onshore wind that don’t apply to other types of development. While these tests have been modified, their retention means that onshore wind developers will still be “extremely reluctant” to consider investing in England, says Energy UK in its response to the NPPF consultation.

Tom Glover, UK country chair at RWE, told a recent Energy UK breakfast briefing that despite the changes, the de facto ban of onshore wind in England still largely exists. “The changes that are proposed will not practically change consenting on the ground so onshore wind in England is pretty much impossible,” he said.

Matthew Sharpe, a senior director at infrastructure planning consultancy Quod, agrees that the NPPF revisions don’t “really change much” for those promoting onshore wind projects.

“It seems to be the worst example of fudge because it doesn’t really give promoters of onshore wind any confidence that they can now press ahead. It’s a half-way house that doesn’t really give anybody confidence.”

Analysis of the NPPF changes, carried out by Aurora Energy Research, suggests that they will shift less than 1GW of capacity to England from Scotland, where a more permissive planning for onshore wind exists.

Ashutosh Padelkar, Aurora associate for GB Power, says: “What was promised originally was a much larger order of magnitude than what was delivered by the government. The table is still tilted against onshore wind.”

Onshore wind in England is also held back by the better economics of generating in Scotland, where wind speeds tend to be stronger and more reliable than south of the border. But a more level planning playing field could lead to the deployment of much more merchant capacity, Padelkar, says.

Few onshore wind projects will be delivered unless the government is prepared to be “braver” and identify the types of location where there should be a presumption in favour of onshore wind development, says Quod’s Sharpe.

An action plans for NSIPs

Following this damp squib in December, February saw the unveiling of an action plan to speed up the processing of NSIPs.

This includes the piloting from September of a new fast-track application mechanism to streamline the planning process for large-scale infrastructure schemes, heralding potentially shorter timescales for certain projects.

Proposed reforms include the introduction of a more robust pre-application process, which is designed to incentivise statutory consultees and infrastructure developers to address “often complex issues” before applications are submitted and hopefully leading to shorter examinations.

And the government has also vowed to implement a new Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package to accelerate the delivery of new offshore wind infrastructure that often faces delays due to environmental concerns.

The planning process is a key factor in the delays for offshore wind projects, says Aurora’s Padelkar, who argues that the government’s 50GW offshore wind ambition by 2030 will be “impossible” to meet based on current delivery timescales.

At the Energy UK breakfast briefing, RWE’s Glover said offshore wind projects currently appear able to secure permission only if ministers overrule the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendations.

“Clearly, the planning process of policy is not aligning with what the government wants to deliver so there needs to be a fundamental review,” he said. “Although we get very positive signals and initiatives from the government about wanting to move it from four years to one, on the ground we see zero in terms of real progress and in fact consenting seems to be taking even longer.”

The publication of the action plan is, though, a “positive” move, says Sharpe: “It gives us confidence that what the government has previously said is still their intention and has given us some slightly clearer deadlines in terms of when those reforms are likely to come through.”

Padelkar welcomes the introduction of enhanced pre-application advice, which should help developers to get their projects in a good shape when submitted, and the potential fast-track consenting service for certain projects.

However, Sharpe expresses concerns that while front-loading discussions into the pre-application phase may cut the time for determining applications, it won’t necessarily have a “massive” impact on the four years it takes for projects to get through the planning process.

He says: “On paper, it will appear that the planning and consenting times are shorter but it means that developers will spend more time in the pre-application phase having these discussions with the communities and other stakeholders.”

Another necessary changes not addressed in the action plan, Sharpe says, is the “greater certainty” required for non-material changes to DCOs.

“There’s still no statutory timescale for the government to decide on non-material changes. That’s a huge issue because if you’re building a nuclear power station and you’ve got a change that requires a non-material amendment, not knowing how long that change may take is going to cause a huge cost and delay.

“That lack of certainty discourages developers from making the change in the first place and potentially delivering a scheme that could have been done better.”

The lack of set timescales for non-­statutory changes means they tend to be given less priority by already “overstretched” planning inspectors, he says. “They’ll be tempted to prioritise fresh applications that do have statutory timescales over ones that don’t. That’s inevitable.”

And while glad to see the action plan’s aspiration for the energy NPS to be adopted by the midpoint of this year, Sharpe feels this is “quite ambitious”.

But publishing an up-to-date set of NPSs is essential, says one senior infrastructure figure: “It’s causing a lot of issues because it creates gaps in terms of the up-to-date policy framework.

“That is at the heart of the delays we are seeing across energy, across water and across transport. I suspect that is then concertinaing down throughout the process, leading to much greater risk aversion and mitigation.

“The key thing government must urgently do is get these NPSs up to date. They [inspectors] can’t be second guessing policy and planning, especially in the examination phase.”

One of the issues overlooked in the action plan is the role of ministers in the decision-making process, which has been the source of delays for a number of major recent offshore wind projects. However, these logjams may be the result of issues not being resolved until they have landed on the secretary of state’s desk, he says.

And while the steps outlined in the action plan are worthwhile, they are probably too incremental for the scale of changes required to enable the UK to hit net zero by 2050.

“I’m not sure in and of itself it is a big enough shift to get us back to the consenting times when the original regime was introduced in 2010, which should be our aim and feels realistic, although tough.

“We’ve got to have staying power to push this stuff through because if we don’t, we won’t be meeting the sixth carbon budgets.”