Offshore wind energy – sectoral marine plan: further research for social impact assessment

About this Research

This research report was commissioned to explore the views of Scottish coastal communities to inform of an ‘early draft’ of the Socio-Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA) for the updated Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy. The insights from this research report, alongside stakeholder engagement have been factored into the Socio Economic Impact Assessment undertaken to support the draft updated Sectoral Marine Plan published in May 2025 for public consultation.

Given the iterative drafting of the SEIA, readers should bear in mind that this research report refers to an early ‘draft plan-level SEIA’ and not the version published for consultation.

This means that the research report and the SEIA on which its based should be treated with caution as it does not represent the Scottish Government’s current understanding of the topic, conclusions, facts and figures, or terminology.

There are several caveats that should be kept in mind when considering this research report:

1. The dataset used in the draft published SEIA has a different timeframe and weightings than the early draft plan-level SEIA that was used for this research. As such, the figures reported in this research report are now out of date and may no longer be representative.

2. Some of the analyses referenced within this research report from the early draft plan-level SEIA, do not have a direct counterpart in the draft SEIA published for consultation. As such caution is advised when cross-referencing between this report with the published draft SEIA.

3. There is a possibility that focus group participants may have responded differently to the group discussions and line of questioning if they had been provided with the latest information and figures. As opposed to the information packs provided based on the early draft plan-level SEIA.

Notwithstanding the above, Scottish Government analysts consider the key findings from this research report remain applicable. This is primarily due to the nature of the responses, as well as the overall lack of change in trends in the data between the early and published drafts.