Abstract
The short life Energy Planning and Consenting Task Force was established to bring together offshore renewable developers, statutory advisers and environmental regulators to produce a report promoting greater streamlining and efficiency of Scotland’s planning and consenting regimes in order to meet the offshore renewable ambitions set out in the 2020 Routemap for Renewable Energy in Scotland. The Task Force considered the existing challenges within the planning and consenting frameworks, as well as access and sharing of environmental data, cumulative impacts and resourcing within regulators, and recommended a number of actions to further improve Scotland’s planning and consenting landscape. The recommendations involve requiring wide ranging early pre-application engagement, coordinating the collection of and access to relevant data, and ensuring regulators have sufficient resources to deal with the peak of project applications expected in the near future. In addition, the group agreed the recommendations should be adopted by both Scotland’s regulatory bodies and project developers.