Mackie, C orcid.org/0000-0002-8560-2427 (2023) Planning, discretion and the legacy of onshore wind. Legal Studies, 43 (3). pp. 499-522. ISSN 0261-3875
Abstract
This paper evaluates the wide discretion afforded to planning decision-makers in England. It does so in respect of a key but often overlooked question in the transition to renewables: whether developers/owners of onshore wind projects should be required to provide a ‘bond’ to ensure decommissioning and site restoration (DSR) occurs. Bonds are financial instruments that evidence ability to fund DSR. They help avoid legacy issues (eg project abandonment) but carry a long-term cost burden for developers/owners. A study of 275 projects elicits three issues. First, a lack of government guidance on bonding, vague ‘threshold’ terms in law and policy and failure of planning decision-makers to consider how others had decided the question result in a lack of markers to inform discretion, with bonds being rare (present in only 15.6% of projects) and their stringency inconsistent. Secondly, this lack of markers legitimises risky, cost-saving practices prohibited in offshore wind, where government guidance informs bonding decisions. Thirdly, reasons for decisions are weak or absent, inhibiting achievement of the justifications for their provision in an administrative context (eg disciplining decision-making). Whilst discretion enhanced capacity to generate electricity from wind through enabling a reduction of market entry costs, assisting movement towards renewable energy targets, it resulted in abandonment risk being ignored. This mirrors strategies adopted elsewhere in England's energy sector, such as coal and oil and gas, where a ‘light touch’ approach to bonding has, traditionally, been deployed to avoid hindering project development.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society of Legal Scholars. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. |
Keywords: | decommissioning; site restoration; bonding; decommissioning bond; onshore wind; energy transition |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2022 13:01 |
Last Modified: | 26 Oct 2023 15:28 |
Published Version: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/legal-stud... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/lst.2022.50 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:193859 |
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