The current government is strongly in favour of offshore wind power, with a target of quadrupling capacity in the next nine years, from 10GW to 40GW. This is in stark contrast to onshore wind, where a few years ago the government deliberately put hurdles in place to hinder development. With RenewableUK polling suggesting that the public is heavily in favour of onshore wind together with even more ambitious electricity decarbonisation targets, are there winds of change in the offing?

The Conservatives took against onshore wind in the early 2010s, which is likely to have stemmed from MPs with rural constituencies receiving delegations of opponents to wind farms in their areas. In its 2015 manifesto the party said: “We will end any new public subsidy for them and change the law so that local people have the final say on windfarm applications.” In case there was any doubt what that was meant to achieve, the heading of that section was “We will halt the spread of onshore windfarms”.

Accordingly, upon being elected, the government made three significant changes, all designed to make getting consent for onshore wind more difficult. First, it removed onshore wind farms from the scope of the Planning Act 2008’s development consent order regime, where wind farms larger than 50MW would have been decided on by the secretary of state rather than the local authority.

Read more…