Sectoral Marine Plan and offshore windfarm development: EIR release

Information requested

The Scottish Government’s Sectoral Marine Plan, published on 28th October 2020, said this:

Nationally and at the individual PO level, the effects of consented and licensed offshore windfarm development under this cycle of leasing should not exceed the assumed physical footprint for 10GW of generation as assessed in this Plan of approx. 2,000 km2 of seabed.

If the West of Orkney Windfarm is granted a section 36 consent by the Scottish Ministers, what will be the remaining maximum km2 of seabed available for consents in this cycle of leasing?

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We havefound that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption,because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under twodifferent regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect onthe outcome of your request.

The answer to your question with regard to the Sectoral Marine Plan published on 28 October 2020 and your reference to the physical footprint, the plan also stated:

CES (Crown Estate Scotland) will need to offer Option Agreements for an area of greater than 2,000 km2 to be likely to enable the operational development of up to 10 GW of generating capacity.

Making an area of up to 8,600 km2 of seabed available for Option Agreements via the first cycle of ScotWind leasing could, therefore, support the development of projects capable of delivering up to 10 GW of total generating capacity.

The Scottish Government is currently updating it’s Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy (SMPOWE), and it will deliver the planning framework for the ScotWind and INTOG leasing rounds. The plan and supporting assessments will take into account both the GW capacity and physical area footprints of both leasing rounds.

The EIA Report for West Orkney is available here West of Orkney Windfarm | marine.gov.scot. It identifies the maximum seabed footprint of the offshore wind farm (including scour protection) to be 1,031,900m2.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.