A Welsh Government commissioned report evaluating the performance of planning consents for renewable energy in Wales has recommended that the Government should establish a central unit to be the determining authority for all low carbon renewable energy schemes in Wales up to 50MW.
The report which was produced by Hyder Consulting Ltd, states that Welsh Government’s renewable energy policy is being hampered by an ‘ineffective’ and ‘cumbersome’ planning system, which is generating ‘obstacles’ to delivering renewable energy schemes in the short term. The report also suggests that there are increasing concerns being raised by the business community, developers and renewable energy companies, suggesting that Wales may be falling behind other UK nations and indeed Europe, in delivering major renewable energy projects.
Hyder make a number of recommendations on how the Welsh Government could improve the amount of renewable energy schemes gain planning permission in Wales and its first proposal asserts that it should, through new legislation, establish a ‘Strategic Energy Consents Unit’ as the determining authority for all renewable and low carbon energy schemes between 5MW and 50MW, including any ancillary and ‘associated’ consents.
However, while these are still only proposed recommendations, Montgomeryshire Assembly Member, Russell George, is concerned that the Government is serious about removing local decision making from the planning process.
He raised these concerns with the First Minister during weekly Plenary questions and asked him how these proposals fitted with his Government’s perspectives on local determination of development proposals.
Commenting, Mr George said:
"This report is not about increasing renewable energy generation; this is principally about onshore wind and the need for Welsh Government to get its own way.
"There are some alarming recommendations in this report which is looking to remove the decision making functions from local planning authorities and centralise them to a Government appointed body.
"If the Welsh Government’s TAN 8 policy is about despoiling the landscape, then this report is about assassinating local democracy; it’s quite extraordinary the lengths they are will to go to in order to ignore community views.
"We are not going to achieve wider strategic aims of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonising the Welsh economy and securing energy of supply by imposing more top-down dictats and structures and the sooner Welsh Ministers understand that the better.
"The evidence in this report is not robust and the assumptions are very much contrived.
"Welsh Minsters cannot possible justify such a radical change in policy based on this evidence because it simply generates more questions than answers."
In expressing serious concerns about the research recommendations, Peter Ogden, Director of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales said:
"The recommendation to establish a Strategic Energy Consents Unit under the control of the Welsh Government, strikes at the very heart of those long established, local democratic processes, which exist to safeguard Welsh landscapes from the imposition of undesirable and unwanted renewable energy proposals.
"This unjustified proposal if adopted, represents a deliberate attempt to neuter local opinion and provide Welsh Government with a fast-track means of achieving its renewable energy aims.
"We trust that this proposal will be unceremoniously deposited on the pyre of nativity."