Abstract
Despite its ostensible future orientation, research on land use planning has given relatively little consideration to temporality, either empirically or conceptually. The need for analytical advances becomes clear when considering the treatment of ‘end-of-life’ issues for renewable energy facilities like onshore wind. Expanding renewables is central to sustainable energy futures yet land use regulation often treats consents as ‘temporary’, raising questions about how the trajectories of energy transition are maintained into the future. In the first significant analysis of these issues, this paper presents evidence from the UK case where the majority of wind farms are commercially owned. It first examines ‘the problem’ – the extent to which UK wind energy capacity is nearing ‘end-of-life’. Second, using insights from Foucauldian perspectives on problematisation, it examines how and how far national governments are seeking to influence decisions about three critical issues: (i) repowering, (ii) temporary consents and consent renewal, and (iii) decommissioning and removal. The research shows government actions playing catch up and intervening selectively, only partially shaping the multiplicity of potential outcomes. One explanatory factor is attitudes towards wind energy expansion, with governments varying in the extent to which they seek to maintain wind energy projects into the future or wind energy spaces, and/or renegotiate the terms of development (e.g. to add new social concerns). Limited attention to decommissioning is a surprising omission across the board.
Highlights
Consideration of time has long been seen as central to the way in which planning systems control and shape future development (Davies, 1972)
In order to address such issues this paper examines how far onshore wind farms are moving towards end-of-life decisions and the policy framework and experiences of end-of-life procedures for England, Wales and Scotland
Research on social acceptance of renewable energy has concentrated attention mostly on initial consenting decisions, tacitly assuming that this is the key decision-point shaping the evolution of wind energy capacity into the future
Summary
Consideration of time has long been seen as central to the way in which planning systems control and shape future development (Davies, 1972). Time intersects with planning in many ways, one of which is the scope for using time-limited permissions to control the temporal impacts of certain infrastructure. Very little research has assessed the temporal framing of planning regulation, considering what is controlled, over what time period, and what might happen when time runs out. This is a potentially important omission given some of the contradictory temporal dynamics of the expansion of renewable energy technologies like wind and solar
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