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

2. Background

The Sectoral Marine Plan and Offshore Wind Energy

The Offshore Wind Directorate within the Scottish Government is responsible for Sectoral Marine Planning. The SMP brings together the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), Habitats Regulation Appraisal (HRA) and Social and Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA), as well as statutory consultation processes into one integrated process. The output of the process is a Sectoral Marine Plan (SMP) containing the Scottish Ministers' 'Plan Options' for the sustainable development of offshore renewable energy in Scottish waters.

Seabed leasing is the responsibility of the Crown Estate Scotland (CES) who lease Scotland’s seabed for the development of offshore renewable energy within the Plan Option Areas, including for offshore wind. These option agreements grant developers access to specific areas of the seabed. After securing the seabed lease,applicants must seek licence/consent for their projects by submitting applications to the Marine Directorate within the Scottish Government.

In October 2020, the Sectoral Marine Plan for offshore wind energy (SMP-OWE) was published by Scottish Ministers and identified 15 plan options for future commercial scale offshore wind developments (Scottish Government, 2020a). These Plan Options now form the spatial component of the seabed leasing process, ScotWind, managed by Crown Estate Scotland (CES) (Scottish Government, 2022a). The ScotWind seabed leasing round and the subsequent clearing process conducted by CES concluded in 2022 with the award of 20 projects across these 15 plan options with a potential future generation capacity of 27.6GW (Crown Estate Scotland, 2022). The capacity for OWE fed into the electricity grid is forecast to be 35-38GW by 2050 in Scotland (National Grid ESO, 2022).

The SMP-OWE included provisions for an Iterative Plan Review process to ensure the plan remains reflective of current scientific understanding and knowledge, integrate new evidence and facilitate the continuous improvement of marine planning. New potential generation capacity originating from the CES’s ScotWind leasing process has encouraged a re-assessment of the SMP and the simultaneous integration of Offshore Wind Energy and Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas (INTOG) Decarbonisation.

INTOG is a second CES leasing round for offshore wind projects, separate to ScotWind, which aims to facilitate decarbonising oil and gas installations using OWE. According to the Oil and Gas Authority (2020), power generation for oil and gas infrastructure in the UK, which comes primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, generates emissions equivalent to 10 million tonnes every year: about the same amount generated by electricity use in nine million homes (Crown Estate Scotland, 2023a). These emissions could be eliminated by powering the installations with electricity from new wind farms instead.

An Initial Plan Framework (IPF) was published outlining the process for the development of the Sectoral Marine Plan for INTOG (Scottish Government, 2022a). This framework facilitated the INTOG leasing round. Offshore wind developers were able to apply for seabed rights under INTOG for two types of offshore wind projects:

• IN - Small scale innovative projects of less than 100 megawatts (MW). Five IN projects have been offered seabed Exclusivity Agreements by the CES.
• TOG - Projects connected directly to oil and gas infrastructure to provide electricity and reduce the carbon emissions associated with production. Seven TOG projects have been offered seabed Exclusivity Agreements by the CES.

The areas identified by the INTOG leasing process, expected to generate a further 5.5GW of potential offshore wind capacity, will be assessed by the Offshore Wind Directorate through their Sectoral Marine Planning process. INTOG plan options included in the final plan may be offered seabed Option Agreements by CES.

To date, almost all offshore wind developments have been fixed bottom turbines in relatively shallow waters (10-60m) around the UK. However, in the future offshore wind developments in Scotland are anticipated to increasingly use floating turbines allowing for developments to sit in deeper waters and increasing access to the windiest areas. Floating offshore wind has potential significant export opportunities for Scotland and the UK. Globally, it is estimated that about 80% of the offshore wind resource is in sea areas with depths greater than 60m and thus more suitable to floating wind.

Social and Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA)

Supporting the development of the SMP-OWE and INTOG, the plan-level SEIA, once finalised, will aim to understand the social and economic impacts on individuals and their communities resulting from the planned offshore wind developments at a strategic plan-level. Within the current draft plan-level SEIA (September 2023), the assessment of social impacts was centred on a discussion of ‘social clusters’ linked to national indicators and sustainable development goals from the National Performance Framework. At the time this project was conducted, the clusters with identified impacts included, but were not limited to, family life, employment, cost of living, local industry, community sustainability, transport connections, local identity and cultural heritage.

However, as described in the literature by scholars such as Glasson et al. (2022b) and the Scottish Government Socioeconomic ScotMER Receptor Group (2023), SEIAs in the context of offshore wind developments tend to be quite high level and focus on economic impacts over social impacts. Impacts of offshore wind developments on the human environment, and the impacts on local and regional coastal communities adjacent to the projects remain under-researched and there is a potential evidence gap particularly in the assessment of social impacts. Identifying these impacts, especially mixed or negative ones, and highlighting potential evidence gaps in the existing draft plan-level SEIA is therefore crucial with regards to a social licence to operate. In other words, identifying impacts and engaging with stakeholders such as communities and businesses increases the level of acceptance or approval (Stephens and Robinson, 2021). Findings from social impact assessments can be utilised to alleviate fears and uncertainty, and mitigation and enhancement methods, such as offering community benefits, can both be part of the positive social impacts.