Vattenfall has commenced its official autumn consultation on the anticipated environmental impact of the 1.8GW Norfolk Vanguard offshore wind project.
The company has published a Statement of Community Consultation (SoCC) and announced a period of formal statutory consultation to be held between 7 November and 11 December 2017.
In addition, Vattenfall has set out its latest thinking on onshore infrastructure in a newsletter to around 30,000 Norfolk households. The newsletter also invites communities along the 60km onshore cable corridor to eight drop-in sessions.
The developer confirmed that no part of the 60km export cable will run under any house, from landfall south of Happisburgh and along the cable corridor to the substation near Necton.
“What we are setting out in detail in our statement of community consultation is our engagement plan to discuss and get feedback on what is called preliminary environmental information [PEI]. The PEI report sets out our latest layout of the offshore and onshore parts of the project, what we think will be the impacts and how we will go about minimising them,” Ruari Lean , Vattenfall’s Norfolk Vanguard Project Manager said. “ We will consult according to the SoCC, which means we will do what we say we will do.”
Lean further said that Vattenfall has already received a high volume of detailed feedback, from residents’ concerns to their thoughts on the project’s positive economic impact on the region.
The preliminary environmental information report provides environmental information on a potential offshore wind farm with 90-257 turbines of up to 350 metres tall (tip height).
Also, onshore infrastructure which includes a proposed landfall site, two cable relay station location options (one will only be selected for the DCO, if required), a 60km cable corridor and a project substation, as well as modification to overhead transmission lines and an extension to the existing Necton 400kV National Grid substation so that power can be exported to the National Grid.
Norfolk Boreas, Norfolk Vanguard’s sister project, is in an earlier phase of the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Planning process with its environmental impact assessment still ongoing.