The Conservative party tell us they are all about local empowerment and ‘decentralised devolution’. Their decentralisation green paper ‘Control Shift’ released earlier this year set out proposals for change if they are elected next year.

Conservative proposals include abolishing all planning and housing powers exercised by regional government, creating bottom up incentives for housebuilding by allowing councils to benefit from the increase in council tax revenues. They would also encourage councils to establish their own local enterprise partnerships to take over economic development functions.

In this decentralised scenario planners and industry groups have started to question where higher level housing and renewable energy targets would sit, given the need for the consideration of demand and supply opportunities somewhere between the national and local levels. This has previously been dealt with by either mid - tier county councils or regional governments.

Planning magazine reported recently that if the Conservative party are elected next year they would put in place local targets for housing delivery. The question is, would they also do this for renewable energy?

Although local targets would make local planning authorities very much more accountable for the provision of ‘their share’ of renewable energy, it is the process of establishing these targets that is likely to be problematic if the local target route is chosen.

Opportunites for renewable energy such as wind power are usually very localised, for example it is windier in coastal and upland areas with further opportunities in fenland and other geographically ‘uninhibited’ areas. Other factors such as grid capacity, radar conflict and national landscape designations however sometimes render whole (otherwise suitable) areas, undevelopable. It is for this reason that in the UK we have seen over the last 5 years, high numbers of planning applications for wind farms in relatively few districts and in some districts no planning applications for wind farms have been submitted.

Also of note is how ‘wrong’ some of the geographical sieve mapping work carried out to inform the illustrative local targets has proven to be. This has predominantly been down to an under- estimation of the potential in some areas and an understimation of the constraints in other areas. Targets set at a regional level allow more flexibility for those areas within the region with potential to be concentrated on if other areas are restricted for unforseen reasons.

This same sieve mapping could be proposed by the Conservatives to inform local renewable energy targets if they follow the same route as for housing. Geographical spatial planning is very useful when it is done thoroughly and takes all factors into account. This is relatively straightforward for housing or transport development. However wind energy can only be developed where the wind resource exists and where a grid connection and sufficient space exists. The technical constraints and opportunities to wind energy are much more complex than they are for housing and many other forms of development. It is therefore very easy to get target figures wrong - particularly very rigid localised targets. Unrealistic targets could mean the UK risks missing its 2020 renewable energy targets substantially.

If the Conservative party do get into power and take this route, they will need to put in place safeguards that ensure the local targets will all come together to meet the UK carbon reduction requirements.