Energy Consent Unit details and statistics: EIR release

Information requested

• How long the Scottish Government’s Energy Consent Unit has been operating for;
• The number of applications it has considered since it began, by year (date of submission);
• The number of each category of application e.g. wind farm, solar farm etc it has considered each year (based on year of submission);
• A breakdown of the number of decisions within each application type by year of submission;
• The percentage of consents given in each category;
• The volume of Mwatts of electricity consented by the ECU by year, based on the year of submission.
   

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.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested and will address your requests in turn:

• There is no specific date held in our records which clarifies the establishment of the current Energy Consents Unit, but we can note that records containing the phrase “Energy Consents” begin from 2004.
• Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.
• Some of the information you have requested is available from https://www.energyconsents.scot/Default.aspx . The Energy Consents Portal allows for full transparency of each application made by publishing all documents relating to an application, including the decision.
• From the main page of the website, click on the search tab, followed by 'Advanced Search.' There is then the option to search by case type and status, before selecting the 'go' button which returns the search results. These can then be exported to various file formats to allow for additional analysis.
• The MW capacity of each installation considered by the Energy Consents Unit is not finalised during the consenting process. This is established during construction and then connection of the development to the grid network. This information is however available from https://data.barbour-abi.com/smart-map/repd/desnz/?type=repd
• This interactive map provided by the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, shows the geographical spread of renewable energy projects, their associated status and if connected, their capacity.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception, as the information is already publicly available.

About FOI

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