Critical perspectives: North Sea offshore wind farms. : Oral histories, aesthetics and selected legal frameworks relating to the North Sea.

Sammanfattning: The study is developed from five in-depth interviews with individuals from different walks of life who have interacted significantly with the North Sea. The study discusses change in the North Sea specifically in the development of fixed turbine wind farms and their physical and aesthetic effects. Observations speakers make as to changes in the North Sea and as to its beauty are contextualised and discussed using NASA satellite images, photographs and review of available academic literature, UK policy documents and law. This context includes a study of the industrialised North Sea with reference to the sediment sea plumes behind monopile turbines. The United Kingdom was selected for particular study of its wind farm development permissions process, including evaluations of seascape and the requirement of independence for expert evidence. Decline of trawler access to the North Sea is referenced to wind farm growth, and to adverse changes in public opinion leading to closure of the UK Dogger Bank to trawlers. Finality of wind farm development decisions is considered against the prospect of overturn by the courts. This aspect covers the application and development of principles relating to appeal by way of judicial review in the UK jurisdictions of Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland. The study identifies, and explains the English aesthetic evaluation of wind farms. It concludes that sea plumes are the result of a legal choice to allow permit applications to succeed without testing by reference to detailed in-sea turbine dimensions. In the permissions process (a) sea plumes are not evaluated by the seascape criteria applicable to coastal or off-coastal wind farms (b) deep offshore wind farms are instead evaluated by possible changes to character of the sea. The study further concludes that (i) the open horizon of the North Sea has been lost in significant part (ii) the combined aesthetic of transience, decay, and nostalgia underlies the aesthetic of the North Sea Maunsell forts (contrasted to Sealand), and also underlies attitudes to decommissioning wind farms, and (iii) concepts of sea beauty may be based on appearance or health, being regulated by different legal regimes in each eventuality (respectively the European Landscape Convention, or the OSPAR/ biodiversity/ habitat initiatives)