While Scotland deliberates over one offshore windfarm, 29 go ahead south of Border
The votes are counted and normal life, whatever that may be, can resume. Realities which have been furiously denied will reappear to be either addressed or ignored.
One of these is that the Scottish economy is not in a good place. Inward investment is, unsurprisingly, down. A report by Ernst and Young this week highlighted particular problems faced by the heavy end of Scottish manufacturing.
There are almost no “big projects” around. The North Sea is in the doldrums due to the low oil price (furious denial didn’t do much good with that one) while the renewables-driven “second industrial revolution” (A. Salmond) remains a chimera.
One might think that, in these circumstances, a project offering 500 well-paid jobs, £2 billion investment, lots of work for fragile Scottish businesses and a boost for renewables rhetoric might be welcomed with open arms. But one could not be more wrong.
So let me take you through a case study in political cynicism, legal insouciance, irrational oppositionism and all the other ingredients which flourish in today’s Scotland. It is the story of Neart na Gaoithe windfarm, proposed for 13 miles off the Fife coast.
This is not a “wind v anti-wind” story. Every political party endorses offshore windfarms. The Tories who (rightly, in my view) ended onshore subsidy put “support for our world-class offshore wind industry” in their manifesto. The problem in Scotland is not lack of support but a hopelessly inefficient delivery mechanism.
So this is primarily a story about the absurd capacity for delay that remains unreformed in the Scottish planning system and also the influence exercised by lobbying groups blessed with political clout in Edinburgh.
By the mid-2000s, the Labour government recognised such challenges and set up a Planning Commission for England and Wales (since refined into the National Infrastructure Commission). It was to deliver “rapid, fair and accountable” decisions on major projects including offshore windfarms. Scotland carried on as before. The fast-track system does not lower the threshold of acceptability. It simply delivers answers according to a reasonable fixed timescale which the Scottish system refuses to do. Any developer will confirm that a “no” within 18 months is better than “maybe” after eight years.
To put things in perspective, in the time Neart na Gaoithe has been in gestation, Whitehall has consented 29 offshore windfarms in English and Welsh waters. Meanwhile, apart from a small demonstration project, Neart na Gaoithe is the only offshore windfarm in Scottish waters initiated within the past decade and capable of proceeding within, at minimum, the next five years.
Mainstream Renewables were awarded the right to develop the project in 2009. Mainstream is an Irish company founded by Eddie O’connor who previously built up Airtricity from scratch. I chaired the UK board of Airtricity and one lesson I learned at that time was that there are actually very few suitable locations for offshore wind around Scotland.
There were extensive studies and consultations before the planning application was formally lodged in 2012. Many accommodations were reached, particularly around bird life, and by mid-2014 the Scottish Government was satisfied that planning consent could be granted. But, crucially, it delayed for political reasons.
The sensitive subject was kicked into touch until after the independence referendum. In October 2014, consent was announced but – critically – Neart na Gaoithe was by then grouped with three other projects in the same area. The RSPB saw its opportunity and went to the Court of Session to block all four on grounds of cumulative impact.
However, there was a crucial distinction between Neart na Gaoithe and the other three – it alone had qualified for subsidy under the Contract for Difference system run by the UK government. If Neart na Gaoithe had been consented alone, the RSPB would not have gone to court. But objecting to the “cluster” blocked the only one that could actually proceed.
Then the Scottish legal system kicked in. In April 2015, the RSPB challenged the Scottish Government’s consents procedure in the Court of Session. Over two weeks the legal points were argued. Then everyone waited, and waited and waited… Lord Stewart required 13 further months to produce his verdict which went in favour of the RSPB.
In the meantime, Mainstream’s offer under CFD had expired. By this point, anybody less tenacious than Eddie O’connor would have given up and gone elsewhere. Instead, Mainstream went to the London Court of International Arbitration to argue successfully that since the causes of the delay were outwith their control, the offer of CFD should be extended. They also persuaded the Scottish Government to appeal against Lord Stewart’s ruling.
A couple of weeks ago, Lords Carloway, Menzies and Brodie overturned Lord Stewart’s ruling. Lord Stewart might have taken 13 months but, in the view of his legal peers, he had got the whole thing wrong.
“It is not,” they opined, “the role of the Court to test the ecological or planning judgments made in the course of the decision-making process”.
By then, these legal proceedings had created another 30 months of delay and the ball is back in the RSPB’S court. Will they appeal to the Supreme Court? If so, Scotland will continue to have only a single offshore windfarm (the Beatrice project) consented and in construction since the Scottish Territorial Waters Offshore Licensing Round in 2008. Quite a record!
The RSPB have a job to do but they also claim to support renewable energy as a means of limiting cli- mate change which surely poses a far greater threat to bird life than a wind farm 13 miles from Fife. Once the democratic “decision-making process” has reached its conclusion, is there not some point at which they, too, should accept it?
A more general truth is that the Scottish planning system is unfit for purpose, particularly where large projects of economic significance are at stake. For each cause célèbre we know about, there are surely a few other cases where developers have taken a look and quietly decided to go elsewhere.
The other lesson is that empty sloganising does not create a single job. Just remember – Whitehall has approved 29 offshore windfarms within the same timeframe. And it has never boasted once about having stewardship over the “Saudi Arabia of renewables”.