if we’re to stand any chance of making that net-zero deadline, we need to be able to do all of this faster. Quite simply, green energy projects are taking far too long to clear the planning process. It takes two years to build an offshore wind farm, but ten years to get it from the drawing board and through planning; and half that for onshore.
The last big electricity transmission line built in Scotland, Beauly-Denny, took 15 years to get through permitting and construction. By those standards, we would reach 2045 before we know it, with nothing changed. The recent Onshore Wind Sector Deal signed between the Scottish Government and the industry sets out commitments to reduce planning determination timescales, which is very welcome.
What we now need from both the Scottish and UK governments is a commitment to speed up the planning process to one year for all new renewables as well as the grid infrastructure that connects them to the network. It’s no good building the low-carbon generation if you can’t move the power to where it’s needed.
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Dr Sam Gardner is ScottishPower’s head of climate change and sustainability
So add salt accordingly. However, it does look like the Tories are building themselves up to be the party of NIMBYs and climate change deniers.
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Someone phoned into Any Answers on Radio 4 today to say that he was building the country’s second largest solar farm in the NE of Scotland but the real road block was connecting it to the grid.
There was a recent More Or Less episode where they spoke about how shit we are at large scale construction projects (green energy included) and the expert they had on said it wasn’t the large cost that was a blocker - it’s expensive pretty much anywhere you do these things - but it was the protracted planning that delayed and increased costs.
In comparison they spoke about China and specifically railways where the cost to build was roughly the same but the planning and consultation phase was a lot shorter. They basically buy (or order the demolition) of property that gets in the way because it is in the country’s greater good.
The expert suggested that you should get to the building phase as fast as possible but then also not keep changing your mind about the plans. That’s essentially what has befallen HS2 - it’s not necessarily expensive to build but the government still can’t make it’s mind up.
