Who controls the land controls renewables. Maybe.
This is part two in a series about renewable energy planning in the UK.
I was floored by the sea of blue when I saw the 2019 UK election map, when Conservatives won 1.8 times as many seats as Labour, but 14 times as much land mass[1]. This area includes the transmission routes from offshore wind projects in the North to industrial hubs and heavily populated areas further south. The constituency map anticipated for the next election upends this land divide, posing an opportunity for Labour to accelerate renewable energy investments through planning improvements.
Comparison of 2019 results and 2024 forecasts (Election Maps UK)
Blue represents Conservatives, red represents Labour.
The UK’s renewable energy planning database tracks almost 10,000 projects, more than half of which applied for planning permission in the past 5 years.
Since 2019, 122 GW of renewable energy projects have applied for planning permission, of which 51 GW (~42%) have been approved. Despite Labour’s 14 times smaller land mass, 11% of applications by capacity were in Labour national constituencies, versus 55% in Conservative seats. Yet Labour constituencies have approved proportionally less capacity than their Conservative counterparts, at 40% approvals versus 44% for Conservatives.
Renewable energy planning submissions, approvals and construction since 2019
Local councils, rather than national government, are responsible for approving projects, which places significant responsibility at a local level and potentially limits the impact of national elections. Council elections have evolved in favour of the Labour party since 2019, with Labour now holding the largest number of seats in 40% of councils versus 29% for the Conservatives. This could mean that Labour has more power over decision-making at a council level after this election.
Proportion of councils by party that holds the highest number of seats (Open Council Data UK)
Parties aside, construction conversion has also been poor in recent years. Conditional on a project receiving planning approval and being built[2], the average time from the date of approval to date of commissioning has historically been ~2.1 years[3]. Yet of the projects that submitted planning approval in 2019 or later[4], just 3% of them are operating.
% of project capacity that received planning permission that is now operational, by year of application
The conversion from planning approval to operating projects has declined significantly since 2013. This may partially be driven by the long development cycles of offshore wind, which makes up a quarter of approved capacity since 2014 (~18 GW of ~82 GW approved). Just ~8% of those projects have been commissioned to date. Yet onshore wind has a similar commissioning profile (also 8% since 2014) even though these projects are faster to develop, while the average across all technologies is 12.5%.
Over 1,000 projects are also still waiting to hear back on their planning applications. Almost half of these are in Conservative constituencies and 11% in Labour. This represents over 50 GW of potential capacity languishing in planning purgatory.
Constituency map by elected party (dark blue = Conservative, red = Labour) and projects awaiting planning decision (yellow points)
Getting more projects approved for planning, and faster, is a difficult promise for a national government to make given that these decisions are at local authority levels. However, with the swing of land area in Labour’s favour in the upcoming election, this could represent an opportunity for planning reforms to get renewable projects moving through their development process. This could do far more to unlock investment in renewable energy technology than throwing more money at projects that won’t be approved or connected to the grid any time soon.
[1] According to my own geospatial analysis using constituency maps in QGIS, Conservative seats occupy ~152k square kilometres while Labour seats occupy ~10.8k. QGIS overestimated land area on average by ~1%.
[2] i.e. this does not include attrition for projects that receive planning and are never built, nor does it include projects still under construction.
[3] There are several data anomalies, e.g. projects with approval dates after construction, projects deemed operational without a date of approval, etc. These have been stripped from the dataset.
[4] Data for the planning approval submission date is missing for several GW of approved and operating projects.