DONG Energy Publishes Draft Environmental Assessment for Hornsea Project Three

DONG Energy has today published a Preliminary Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) containing new information about its Hornsea Project Three offshore wind project. The report is part of a wider formal public consultation that will run from today (27 July) to 20 September 2017.

Hornsea Project Three offshore wind farm will be located over 120km off the north Norfolk coast and, if fully developed at 2.4GW, could provide enough power to meet the average daily needs of more than 2 million UK homes.

Over the past year, the company has held two rounds of public consultation events at various locations across Norfolk, and will now return in early September to present the latest plans including new 3D visualisations, and once again seek feedback from the local community.

The PEIR, which is now available online, contains a refined cable route and proposed locations for both the onshore substation, which will be just south of Norwich near to Dunston and the onshore High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) booster station2 near Little Barningham, should this be required.

Stuart Livesey, Project Development Manager, said: “As we develop the project, it is crucial for us to keep returning to the community at various stages to ensure they are kept up to date as plans develop. We want to ensure the local communities continue to feel involved and have the opportunity to comment on, and influence, the final project that is submitted in 2018.

“We have already received lots of useful information from our public consultation events and ongoing informal consultation with landowners and environmental bodies, which has helped us to make refinements for example the onshore HVAC booster station location. These decisions have been based on many factors which are detailed in the PEIR published today, and we hope it is evident how much of an influence the feedback has had.

“This report shows a single refined 200m cable route, which will eventually be narrowed to 80m once we have received responses from these events, further consultation with landowners and have more information from detailed technical surveys.

“All the information is downloadable online and we’ve also left free USB sticks with the full documents at various council offices and libraries along the proposed cable route should anyone wish to take these away to review in more detail. As part of this suite of materials we have prepared a non-technical summary which highlights some of the key findings from our assessments.

“We realise there is a lot of technical information, so if people do have questions we really encourage them to come to our events if they can or get in touch with us directly. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to understand and comment on our proposal. It’s really important that people understand what we’re proposing and take this opportunity to have their say now.”

In addition to the Community Consultation Events across Norfolk, the company is also sponsoring and participating in the Greenbuild – Celebrating Norfolk event on 9 and 10 September where more information about the company and interactive elements will be available for people to try out to visualise how a wind farm works.

After the events, the formal consultation will remain open for feedback until 20th September, and comments can be submitted online or in writing. Informal consultation will continue until 2018 when the design will be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate.

If successful, construction is anticipated to take place between 2022 and 2025.