Abstract
White Consultants (dissolved in September 2024) was commissioned in July 2019 by Hartley Anderson to undertake an updated seascape and visual buffers study to inform future offshore wind farm leasing, for which the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is undertaking a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) programme. Two previous studies have been undertaken- one completed in January 2009 and informing the OESEA2 (Offshore Energy SEA) and one in February 2016 informing OESEA3.
The published OESEA3 Environmental Report (March 2016) stated as part of Recommendation 1 that developments (individually or cumulatively) should aim to avoid causing significant detriment to amenity and well-being as a consequence of deterioration in valued attributes such as landscape, tranquillity and other factors. In the discussion on visual buffers (derived from White Consultants (2016)) the report states:
‘Further conclusions of the work were that for high value and high sensitivity coastlines, a distance of 30km from the coast (the limit of visual acuity) could be attributable to developments for a range of sizes (e.g. 3.6MW to 15MW), whereas distances for areas of medium value and sensitivity may be in the order of 13km (3.6MW turbines), 20km (48MW turbines) or 20+km (10-15MW turbines).’ (p291).
This report seeks to update consideration of these distances.
This document was produced as part of the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy's offshore energy Strategic Environmental Assessment programme