Consented onshore wind farms and overhead electric lines objection statistics: EIR release

Information requested

1. On how many occasions have Scottish communities objecting to applications for new wind farms been over ruled by the Energy Consents Unit – which determines major energy applications with a generating capacity in excess of 50 megawatts – in determining applications in the last five years – could you provide a year-by-year breakdown please?

2. On how many occasions have Scottish communities objecting to applications for the installation of overhead electric lines and associated infrastructure been over ruled by the Energy Consents Unit in the last five years?

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

As per your email, you have defined ‘Scottish Communities’ as a term which ‘can be taken to refer both to community councils and to community groups/individuals’. Therefore within our answers we have included any new applications that have been consented which received an objection from either a community council or an individual within the council area in the form of a representation. Please note this means at least one objection was received from Scottish Communities but it does not indicate if the majority of community responses to a proposed development were objections.

We receive representations for proposed developments from any location, including out with the country that the proposed development would be built if approved. In cases where we received an objection from an individual and it is unclear if that individual lived within the council area, we have still included this as an objection from a ‘Scottish Community’. This is to avoid the risk of it being incorrectly disregarded from our calculations.

Finally, please be aware that our answer to question one does not include offshore wind farms as these applications are consented by a different department. If you are interested in knowing more about offshore wind farms please contact ms.marinerenewables@gov.scot.

Please see below, the answers to your questions. The information provided relates to determinations made between 01/01/2018 to 31/10/2023:

1. “On how many occasions have Scottish communities objecting to applications for new wind farms been over ruled by the Energy Consents Unit – which determines major energy applications with a generating capacity in excess of 50 megawatts – in determining applications in the last five years – could you provide a year-by-year breakdown please?”

Year (1 Jan - 31 Dec unless otherwise specified)	Number of consented onshore wind farms for which a community objection was received
2018	5
2019	3
2020	5
2021	9
2022	7
01/01/2023 - 31/10/2023	9
Total	38

2. “On how many occasions have Scottish communities objecting to applications for the installation of overhead electric lines and associated infrastructure been over ruled by the Energy Consents Unit in the last five years?”

Year (1 Jan - 31 Dec unless otherwise specified)	Number of consented overhead electric lines for which a community objection was received
2018	0
2019	2
2020	1
2021	1
2022	0
01/01/2023 - 31/10/2023	2
Total	6

Much of the information that we have sourced to provide these answers can be accessed on the ECU Portal by carrying out an ‘advanced search’ Scottish Government - Energy Consents Unit - Application Search

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.