Summary
At the end of March, the UK Government published, amongst a wider suite of new Energy policy documents, a new draft National Policy Statement for Renewable Energy Infrastructure (EN-3) (the Renewables NPS). It was published in draft for consultation and builds on an earlier draft and consultation from Autumn 2021.
EN-3, which was first formally designated in July 2011, sets out the Government's policy for biomass, energy from waste, pumped hydro storage, solar, offshore wind and tidal stream. The Renewables NPS has 2 main jobs – first, to set out the needs case for renewable energy and secondly to establish the specific criteria by which applications for development consent for such schemes are to be assessed.
Since the 2021 consultation, the Government has published its British Energy Security Strategy (BESS) which increased the target for the amount of offshore wind generation capacity in the UK and set out an ambition to accelerate the pace of its deployment, including by speeding up the consenting process. April Accordingly, many of the most significant changes in the new draft EN-3 focus on offshore wind.
Separately, the Government has also announced that it is carrying out a review of the current National Policy Statement for Ports, however, it is not expected that there will be any output from that exercise until 2024.
This note looks at whether the new draft EN-3 sets out the an optimal approach to port infrastructure in order to achieve the goal of rapid deployment of offshore wind. It might be argued that the review of the Ports National Policy Statement is the appropriate place to deal with provisions for development at Ports, but that review is not likely to occur in time to meet the timeframes for the offshore wind programme.