Planning permission causes delays and adds on significant costs to energy projects – and this is especially true for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs), such as wind or solar farms, in response to the UK government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. Planning permission takes time; and even when permission is granted, projects can face legal challenges, causing extensive delay.  

The government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill is the much-needed response to this, proposing to cut through bureaucracy and remove red tape that makes the planning permission process all the more time consuming and arduous. Equally, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) is reforming the rules for granting new projects access to the national grid, with the aim of speeding up clean energy projects transmitting and distributing electricity.

UK energy professionals now face a new regulatory environment, one which could be beneficial but also raise challenges, whilst also staring down an uncertain economic environment. While this is challenging, the energy sector should take advantage of this moment.

Taking advantage of reforms 
The UK’s existing planning process is not fit for purpose. It’s arduous and creates roadblocks for NSIPs, which is most evident in the planning process itself, which requires lengthy consultations and expert reports, and in the potential legal challenges which opponents of projects could raise. This causes significant costs and delays in commissioning large-scale energy projects. These latest reforms present the first genuine opportunity to address barriers to growth – and, importantly, push the UK to modernise and become a world leader in clean energy.

Under current UK law, opponents can challenge planning permission decisions by applying to courts to judicially review the decision. They have three chances to obtain permission to bring the challenge: firstly, ‘on the paper’; that is, decided without a hearing; if permission is refused, the applicant can renew the application at an oral hearing; and if permission is again refused, the applicant can appeal.

This causes major costs and delays, with Lord Banner’s October 2024 review finding that 34 NSIP approval decisions had been challenged, causing an average of 1.4 years’ delay – with only four decisions actually being overturned.

The UK’s existing planning process is not fit for purpose. It’s arduous and creates roadblocks for NSIPs, which is most evident in the planning process itself, which requires lengthy consultations and expert reports, and in the potential legal challenges which opponents of projects could raise.

Gaining access to the national grid has added more delay. Access decisions were taken on a ‘first come, first served’ basis and many important new technology projects are at the back of a queue which would take years to work through (although the queue has recently been reorganised).

The reforms should streamline this to avoid blockers. Moving forward, applications for judicial review will be decided at an oral hearing, and if the judge deems the claim ‘totally without merit’, there is no right of appeal. Equally, there are proposals to introduce ‘tight timescales’ for judicial reviews. This shift will potentially reduce pauses for NSIPs and cut costs.

Further to this, NESO’s grid access reform proposals would rank projects against criteria of ‘readiness’ and ‘strategic alignment’, that is how advanced they are and whether they align with capacity targets, respectively, rather than ‘first come, first served’. These reforms will likely mean that nationally significant energy projects will come into operation more quickly. However, it does not necessarily mean that there will be more approvals of projects.

Preparing for potential challenges 
While reforms might work in theory, they may not be as effective in reality and could lead to a new set of issues – for example, the NSIP judicial review reforms could be attacked as overriding people’s rights to appeal, in breach of their right to access to justice. 

In practice, reform also raises concerns about whether judges will be ready to use the ‘totally without merit’ label; whether adequate resources will be on hand to deal with oral challenges which could otherwise be dealt with on paper; and if and how ‘tight timescales’ will be enforced. 

At the same time, the NESO reforms could trigger judicial review challenges from projects which are already in the queue but which fall short of the ‘readiness’ or ‘strategic alignment’ criteria, and they could fall to the back of the queue. This could inadvertently lead to further delays. Projects that do not align with the goals of the government’s Clean Power Action Plan are still likely to face delays, so it won’t be a universal fix for all in the energy industry.

Looking ahead 
In the long term, UK energy professionals should be positive about regulatory change taking place, despite initial teething problems. The proposed reforms are designed to enable the government to achieve its Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, and so projects which align with these goals will more likely find an easier route to commercial operation.

The reforms should help the energy sector transform to a more sustainable model. However, they don’t eliminate the challenge of decarbonising the sector in the allotted five-year timeframe. To overcome this, the sector will need substantial investment – investment that we would expect to come from the private sector. Everyone has a role to play in meeting the decarbonisation targets, and the government can incentivise the private sector to invest in the transition not only by reforming planning procedures but also adopting wider business-friendly and stable regulation.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author only and are not necessarily given or endorsed by or on behalf of the Energy Institute.

• Further reading: ‘Location data – an important driver in the UK’s net zero journey’. Accurate and reliable location data is an essential tool for successfully siting new energy generation and transmission infrastructure, argues Chris Wilton, Sector Lead, Utilities, with Ordnance Survey (OS).
• Think globally: act locally – the most effective way to decarbonise a town or community is to design a locally-appropriate strategy. This can be particularly the case for domestic heating. Andrew Clark, Business Leader – Place at UK Energy Systems Catapult, explains how ‘place-based’ local area energy planning is already happening.