130: NEWS - second pre-application consultation launched

This is entry number 130, first published on 11 May 2010, of a blog on the implementation of the Planning Act 2008. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.

Today's entry reports on the launch of the second pre-application consultation for a Planning Act project.

On Thursday 6 May the second notice of a proposed application under the Planning Act was published.  The first notice was published back in February by Covanta Energy for its proposed energy from waste facility in Bedfordshire, for which the application is now due to be made in mid July.

This second notice (page 1, page 2) was published by DONG Energy for a proposed biomass plant in Hull of just under 300MW.  The project website is here.  According to the IPC website the application will be made this autumn - DONG's Statement of Community Consultation (SoCC) says that it will be made in October/November.  The consultation is open until 30 June, so the promoter has given eight weeks - more than the minimum of four. 

DONG stands for (the Danish for) Danish Oil and Natural Gas, although despite its name, its main interests in the UK are in renwewable energy.  The biomass plant will burn woodchip and wood pellets to generate electricity.  By being just under 300MW, it avoids the requirement to be 'carbon capture ready' (CCR).  That would have meant showing that the plant could be retrofitted to capture CO2, and that there would be able to be a network to transport it and a place to store it.  Not too hard to see why that burden was avoided.

A 28-page SoCC was published by DONG on its website last month. The SoCC should be published in full in a local newspaper as well.

There are three possible first steps that a Planning Act project can take, in any order.  These are (i) publishing a public notice of pre-application consultation under section 48 of the Act, (ii) requesting a screening opinion or sending a scoping report to the IPC to ask it whether there should be an Environmental Statement or what it should cover, and (iii) publishing a SoCC.  The various projects that have been notified to the IPC have taken different approaches to which is done first.  When either of the first two of these is done it is possible to know because it will be announced on the IPC website or published in the London Gazette.  It is not so easy to know when the third of these is done, as local newspapers do not always have on-line versions.

Of the 31 anticipated projects on the IPC's list, the following have submitted screening or scoping requests (and the IPC has issued its opinions on the ones with asterisks): 

• Covanta's energy from waste plant in Bedfordshire*
• Covanta's waste combustion plant in Merthyr Tydfil*
• DONG Energy's biomass plant in Hull
• EDF's nuclear power station in Somerset*
• Horizon's nuclear power station in Anglesey*
• Horizon's nuclear power station in South Gloucestershire*
• RWE Renwables' windfarm in the Bristol Channel
• SSE Renewables' windfarm in Ceredigion
• Western Power Distribution's 132kV line in Neath*

The following have launched pre-application consultation:

• Covanta's energy from waste plant in Bedfordshire
• DONG Energy's biomass plant in Hull

The following have published SoCCs (but there may be others):

• Covanta's energy from waste plant in Bedfordshire
• DONG Energy's biomass plant in Hull
• EDF's nuclear power station in Somerset
• National Grid's power line in Norfolk
• National Grid's power line in Somerset
• National Grid's power line in Suffolk

Thus although no application has yet to be made, there is quite a lot of pre-application activity going on.  Only two projects have ticked all three boxes, though.