Function
Development and consenting covers the work needed to secure consent and manage the development process through to financial investment decision (FID).
What it costs*
About £73 million for a 1 GW wind farm. This includes environmental impact assessments plus staff costs and other subcontractor work.
Who supplies them
Development services are typically led by the developer’s special purpose vehicle (SPV), which manages the development process and subcontracts work to a range of specialist consultancies. The SPV is a legal entity, which invests in and owns the offshore wind farm project.
Suppliers include ABL Group, APEM, Arup, BVG Associates, DORIS, ERM, Entrust Professional, Kinewell Energy, Lloyd’s Register, Mott MacDonald, OEG Renewables, RPS, Turner & Townsend, Wood Thilsted and Xodus.
Key facts
Developers typically set up an SPV for a wind farm. Should the project advance to construction, the SPV will continue to operate for the duration of the wind farm’s life.
If the SPV is a joint venture between two or more developers, it is likely that the development team will be based in stand-alone offices to manage confidentiality.
The SPV provides a structure to enable external investment, although this investment is most likely to take place at FID or post construction.
In the UK, the SPV manages the design of the wind farm and secures consent for the wind farm and transmission assets.
An early formal step in the consenting process is the production of a scoping report, the purpose of which is to scope the level of impact on various receptors in order to properly define the required assessment process and methodologies, and to ensure the Environmental impact assessments (EIA) focuses on those impacts that may lead to substantial effects, It also provides an early opinion from the planning authorities to help shape and focus the development activity.
Developers aim to secure planning consent while retaining as much design flexibility as they can. A particular risk for developers is specifying a specific foundation solution or a maximum turbine size, which may prove to be restrictive at the point of procurement and require the developer to request variations to the consent order.
With too much design flexibility, the environmental impacts become less certain and more complex to analyse, which may be deemed undesirable by the consenting authorities. The range of options included in the proposed design is known as the design envelope, which includes a clear upper and lower bound on the scale of the project for example in terms of tip height.
Developers need to undertake an EIA, which describes the potential impacts with regards to a wide range of environmental factors.
The environmental statement is based on a number of detailed analyses. Most offshore wind developers have a predominantly in-house development management capability, with specialist work being outsourced. Specialist suppliers will often second employees into the developer’s team for the duration of the development phase.
Throughout the development process, developers are obliged to seek the views of a number of statutory consultees. These include a wide range of government appointed consultees and authorities, affected local authorities and those that have an interest in the land affected. Non-statutory consultees with specific interests in the development are also likely to be consulted (such as RSPB).
Developers will also seek the views of local communities as part of this process and hold a series of public information and consultation events.
Supporting the work will be a range of specialist consultants, covering engineering design, legal issues, land use, environmental and stakeholder relations.