Marine Energy Environmental Permitting and Compliance Costs

Costs to permit Marine Energy projects are poorly understood. In this paper we examine environmental compliance and permitting costs for 19 projects in the U.S., covering the last 2 decades. Guided discussions were conducted with developers over a 3-year period to obtain historical and ongoing project cost data relative to environmental studies (e.g., baseline or pre-project site characterization as well as post-installation effects monitoring), stakeholder outreach, and mitigation, as well as qualitative experience of the permitting process. Data are organized in categories of technology type, permitted capacity, pre- and post-installation, geographic location, and funding types. We also compare our findings with earlier logic models created for the Department of Energy (i.e., Reference Models). Environmental studies most commonly performed were for Fish and Fisheries, Noise, Marine Habitat/Benthic Studies and Marine Mammals. Studies for tidal projects were more expensive than those performed for wave projects and the range of reported project costs tended to be wider than ranges predicted by logic models. For eight projects reporting full project costs, from project start to FERC or USACE permit, the average amount for environmental permitting compliance was 14.6%.

Environmental Permitting and Compliance Cost Reduction Strategies for the MHK Industry: Lessons Learned from Other Industries

The marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) industry plays a vital role in the U.S. clean energy strategy by providing a renewable, domestic energy source that may offset the need for traditional energy sources. The first MHK deployments in the U.S. have incurred very high permitting costs and long timelines for deploying projects, which increases project risk and discourages investment. A key challenge to advancing an economically competitive U.S. MHK industry is reducing the time and cost required for environmental permitting and compliance with government regulations. Other industries such as offshore oil and gas, offshore wind energy, subsea power and data cables, onshore wind energy, and solar energy facilities have all developed more robust permitting and compliance pathways that provide lessons for the MHK industry in the U.S. and may help inform the global consenting process. Based on in-depth review and research into each of the other industries, we describe the environmental permitting pathways, the main environmental concerns and types of monitoring typically associated with them, and factors that appear to have eased environmental permitting and compliance issues.

AN OVERVIEW OF STRICT LIABILITY OFFENCES AND CIVIL PENALTIES IN THE UK’S ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

The UK has incorporated the strict liability principle in dealing with the environmental offence in its legislations. However, the principle application has some detrimental impacts. This article aims to discuss strict liability crimes in the UK’s environmental legislations and civil penalties in the UK, the detrimental effects of applying its principle and the reasons for supplementing criminal penalties for environmental offences with civil penalties. This will be done through the adoption of a doctrinal legal research method. The incorporation of strict liability principle in the UK’s legislations can be found in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Water Resources Act 1991, Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010 No. 675). The detrimental effects of the principle application are the ignorance of mens rea element, unfair trial, ineffective environmental damage prevention, and contradictory to release right. The reasons for applying civil penalties of criminal law violation in regard with violating environmental law are this punishment is possible to be imposed on companies, it strengthens another kind of non-criminal sentence sanction, it is a peaceful solution, a polluter may manage by himself to repair the damage, it has no stigma on the polluter and it has wider law enforcement form. There is a dearth of literature looking at the latest UK’s legislation incorporating strict liability principle application. This article will fill this literature gap.

13. Pollution Control Permitting

This chapter provides a basic overview of pollution control in England and Wales. It considers the nature of pollution, the evolving history of pollution control regulation, and the main mechanism for implementing pollution control—environmental permitting. Environmental permitting is a classic form of ‘command-and-control’ regulation, which is used in many areas of environmental regulation (water regulation, waste regulation, integrated pollution control etc). Moreover, England and Wales has adopted an innovative approach to permitting, bringing together many different types of environmental permits into a single, integrated scheme under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2016. This administrative integration of permitting was designed to improve regulatory efficiency and certainty for operators and also to better coordinate environmental controls. This chapter provides an overview of this permitting scheme, which operates in most of the pollution control regimes covered in the chapters of Part IV.