Guidance

Energy Security Bill factsheet: Offshore wind environmental improvement package

Updated 1 September 2023

The government is seeking legislation to deliver an Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package (OWEIP) to support the accelerated deployment of offshore wind. The OWEIP will help to reduce offshore wind consenting time from up to four years to one year, whilst ensuring we continue to meet our environmental commitments.

Why are we legislating?

On 7 April 2022, the government published its British Energy Security Strategy (BESS) setting out how the UK will accelerate its transition away from oil and gas towards renewable sources of energy. The UK is already a global leader in offshore wind and the BESS included an increased ambition to deliver up to 50 gigawatts by 2030, including up to 5 gigawatts of innovative floating wind.

Offshore wind is essential to meet both climate change and energy security objectives, and the Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package (OWEIP), announced as part of the BESS, will help to accelerate deployment of offshore wind whilst continuing to protect the marine environment. The BESS noted that with smarter planning it is possible to maintain high environmental standards while increasing the pace of deployment by 25%.

Currently, environmental impacts identified within Habitat Regulation Assessments (HRAs) can often cause significant delays to the consent of offshore wind developments. This is primarily caused by the complexity of environmental impacts of developments and requirement for novel compensatory measures to be developed.

Government is seeking amendments to the Energy Bill to:

• Give the Secretary of State powers to tailor HRAs that are required before an offshore wind farm is consented;
• Enable measures to compensate for impacts on the marine environment to be taken at a strategic level across multiple projects; and
• Set up a marine recovery fund to help deliver these strategic measures.

How the Bill will achieve this

The measures in the BEIS Energy Bill will help to enable the increase in offshore wind necessary to deliver the 50 gigawatts ambition whilst maintaining environmental protections.

Habitats Regulations Assessments (HRA)

Offshore wind farm developers are required to provide information to BEIS to inform a HRA. This assesses whether an offshore wind development could significantly harm protected habitats and species. If there are likely to be significant effects, developers must provide information to BEIS, on how impacts can be avoided, reduced, or mitigated. If the impacts cannot be avoided, reduced or mitigated, then compensation is required.

The Measures in the Bill include powers to amend and improve the Habitats Regulations Assessment process specifically for the marine aspects of offshore wind developments. These amendments will help reduce the time it takes to process new projects and assess environmental impacts, whilst maintaining protection for wildlife and marine habitats.

By providing a power to tailor HRA processes government can ensure environmental protection is addressed early in the consenting process. This will allow adequate time to resolve discrepancies in evidence and data, inform and create ecologically robust compensatory measures and subsequently speed up the consenting process.

Strategic Compensation

If an offshore wind farm still has significant negative impacts on protected habitats and species, that cannot be avoided, reduced, or mitigated, developers are required to take measures to compensate for these impacts. Compensatory measures are relatively new in the marine environment and designing packages of compensatory measures has proved to be challenging, resulting in significant delays to the consenting process whilst packages are developed and agreed.

New legislation will enable the delivery of strategic compensatory measures, facilitating collaborative work between developers and government to work collectively across offshore wind projects to compensate for negative environmental effects that cannot be avoided, reduced, or mitigated. Considering compensatory measures upfront and strategically through new HRA legislation will reduce the time spent resolving issues project by project.

Compensation can also be proposed by multiple developers to compensate for their impacts on the same protected features. Whilst measures will still need to compensate for the specific impacts of each development, they could be more effective and deliver greater ecological benefit at a strategic level.

Defra is working in partnership with industry and environmental stakeholders on pilot projects to identify effective compensatory measures. These will be added to a library and be made available for developers to consider and choose from if they need to implement compensation.

Marine Recovery Fund

A new industry-funded Marine Recovery Fund will support delivery of strategic compensatory measures. The intention is for the Fund to be operational and able to receive payments from late 2023.

Commercial, competition and other project management information sensitivities can limit opportunities for developers to easily deliver strategic compensatory measures in collaboration with other developers. The Marine Recovery Fund is intended to be an optional route for wind farm developers to pay into, to discharge their compensation obligations, should appropriate measures be available to fulfil their mandatory requirement to compensate for negative effects that cannot be avoided.

Frequently asked questions

When will stakeholders be consulted on all of this?

The government ran a short ‘Opportunity to Comment’ on the Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package and has utilised the knowledge and views shared by key stakeholders to inform the development of our policies. Further engagement will take place as the government continues to develop the environmental improvement package. Stakeholders are already engaged in the development of pilot compensatory measures via industry groups such as the Offshore Wind Industry Council.

Who will bear the cost of these measures? How will government protect consumers?

The BESS accelerates government’s plan for a more independent, more secure energy system, ending our dependency on expensive fossil fuels and moving towards a future in which all our energy comes from cheaper, low-carbon sources. Furthermore, consumer bills will be lower this decade because of the steps this government has taken to implement more renewable energy.

The OWEIP measures will not be putting new levies onto UK taxpayers. The Marine Recovery Fund will be fully funded by industry payments for the delivery of strategic compensatory measures. This will include administration costs and monitoring requirements.

Aren’t you just watering down the environmental assessment process? Won’t this lead to more damage to habitats and the marine environment?

Developers will continue to be required to undertake project-specific Environmental Impact Assessments and Habitats Regulations Assessments ahead of receiving their Development Consent Order. This will continue to ensure developments are located where there are lower environmental sensitivities, and/or where impacts can be avoided, reduced, mitigated, or if required, compensated. The measures in the OWEIP are aimed at making these assessments simpler and faster to comply with.

Background

Our island’s resources, with its shallow seabed and high winds offers us unique advantages that have made us global leaders in offshore wind and pioneers of floating wind.

There are 12.7 gigawatts already generating electricity in Great Britain, enough to power around 10 million homes. In 2021 offshore wind generated 11.4% of the UK’s electricity. We have another 6.8 gigawatts already in construction due to come online by the mid-2020s and a further 7.3 gigawatts preparing for construction. The BESS will enable us to build more faster and meet our 50 gigawatts ambition.

Alongside the OWEIP, BESS also sets out several other measures that will help reduce the offshore wind consenting route from up to four years to one. This includes strengthening the Renewable National Policy Statements to reflect the importance of energy security and net zero. The government has also created the Offshore Wind Acceleration Task Force. Furthermore, through BESS, government is also establishing a fast-track consenting route for priority cases where quality standards are met, by amending Planning Act 2008 so that the relevant Secretary of State can set shorter examination timescales.

The government is committed to delivering on our legally binding targets to achieve clean, safe, healthy, biologically diverse, productive seas, alongside supporting the sustainable development of the offshore wind sector.