James Waterhouse examines how renewable energy projects have moved from the margins of the development industry to the mainstream, and what challenges the Government’s new planning legislation will bring.
Making the shift to a low carbon economy and achieving a secure, long-term energy supply are two of the biggest challenges facing the UK. In an ideal world, these challenges would be met through the creation of a green energy network that is secure, viable and by its very nature, self sustaining. However, the underlying question has always been whether Government – or the market – is capable of delivering such a solution.
Successive Governments have championed, and will no doubt continue to champion, the merits of a green economy. The current Government has pledged to be the greenest ever and later this year it launches the World's first Green Investment Bank, capitalised with £3 billion to address market failures affecting green infrastructure projects and to stimulate a step up in private investment. This is part of a suite of policies that have been adopted, which range from legal commitments to achieving carbon reduction levels over and above those set at a European or global level through to financial incentives/excessive taxation for low and high carbon industries respectively . These measures do work, and they are helping to secure the necessary investment in low carbon technologies.
Even before the creation of the Green Investment Bank, Iceni has witnessed a transformation in sectors such as waste recycling and recovery with low carbon businesses evolving and adapting through new techniques and technologies that achieve greater efficiencies and economies of scale. This evolution will only continue in the coming years.
Not surprisingly, the shift to a green economy has radiated through to the development industry. Anecdotally, Iceni has witnessed a major uplift in green energy-related instructions, to the extent that it is arguably the company’s greatest growth area. With traces of the boom in supermarket and retail warehouse developments of the 1980’s, Iceni expects green energy projects to fuel the property sector for some time to come.
Iceni have invested heavily in research and analysis, and the results are paying dividends as we are very much involved at the forefront of this process, bringing forward planning applications for new low carbon infrastructure projects in a variety of locations around the UK. Intellectually, the work is challenging but refreshing; an increasing number of authorities appreciate both the necessity for and the sustainable nature of the proposed infrastructure, but neither the technology, nor the planning process for dealing with such projects is well trodden. Equally, whilst there is a general acceptance from communities that new forms of energy are required to maintain and grow the Country’s infrastructure – and in high volumes – communities are understandably reticent over the locations of such projects. Vive la (low carbon) revolution.