Strategic Environmental Assessment for Scottish offshore wind compensation policy

High-level assessment of potential environmental effects from the Strategic Compensation Policy for Offshore Wind

To help address the global climate emergency and nature crisis, the Strategic Compensation Policy for Offshore Wind is being developed by Scottish Government. Enabled by the UK Energy Act 2023, the policy proposes to amend the Habitats Regulations for offshore wind to enable a more flexible approach to environmental compensation.

The proposals aim to provide new opportunities for investment to conserve Scotland’s marine environment by enabling a more flexible approach to the requirements for compensation and unlock barriers to offshore wind deployment in Scotland and the climate and economic benefits offshore wind brings. 

Scottish Government commissioned ABPmer to undertake a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), providing a high-level assessment of the potential environmental effects likely to result from the policy, and considerations of a series of key questions reflecting the scope of the assessment, as well as the environmental protection objectives from relevant legislation.

The SEA was undertaken early in the policy development process to ensure environmental considerations were integrated into policy development decision-making.

Our assessment identified the individual and overall potential beneficial, neutral and adverse effects of the policy on:

• Biodiversity, Flora and fauna

• Soil (marine geology and coastal processes)

• Water

• Climatic factors

• Cultural heritages

• Landscape/seascape

The assessment of individual effects were carried out on the basis of four core principles derived from the policy:

1. How ‘the network’ of protected sites is defined

2. How ‘overall coherence’ of the network is defined

3. Whether compensatory measures should directly link to the feature impacted

4. Whether the requirement for compensatory measures to be additional to normal/standard practice is maintained

A total of 12 options were considered across the four core principles.

The SEA forms part of the public consultation, seeking views on the proposed Habitats Regulations reform.

Read the full report at the Scottish Government website

See also: Supporting the Scottish offshore wind marine plan​

A recognised thought leader and specialist in marine planning, with extensive experience of strategic and sectoral planning, we are regularly called to support national planning processes across the UK, Ireland and internationally, and undertake applied research studies to support implementation.

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