In line with environmental targets to decarbonise the UK’s energy supply, the report pointed out that “transformational infrastructure" including wind farms and electricity lines must be built in the next ten years but that this requires new policies to promote such projects, including lifting the onshore wind ban.
“To achieve net zero, the system also needs to include all viable forms of renewable generation, including onshore wind,” it said.
NSIPs
Published Tuesday (18 April), the report examined the role of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) — a government scheme designed to fast-track critical projects by allowing them to bypass local planning restrictions.
It found that while the system worked well initially, when it was launched in 2008, it has since “slowed down and become more uncertain while the need for it has increased dramatically”.
Since 2012, consenting times for NSIPs increased from 2.6 years to 4.2 years, while the rate of judicial review spiked from a long term average of 10% to 58% currently, the report found.
The government’s effective ban on new onshore wind projects in the UK was identified as part of the problem by the report’s authors.
Include onshore wind in NSIPs
“Government should amend legislation to bring onshore wind into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project system as soon as possible.”
Additional recommendations called on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to create a data sharing platform for environmental data to be made available to professionals ahead of planning approval for urgent projects including wind farms:
“Statutory consultees should also receive and use [the] new resource to gather baseline data and agree strategic mitigations for urgent infrastructure, firstly for wind generation and electricity transmission, and then water resources, by the end of 2025,” the report said.
Green energy lobby group RenewableUK backed the report's call to lift the onshore wind ban.
“We welcome the NIC’s strong support for bringing the planning rules for onshore wind in England back in line with any other type of energy infrastructure, so that it can compete on a level playing field in a reformed regime in which each application is determined on its own merits,” said James Robottom, head of onshore wind for RenewableUK.
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