Giant wind farm (2.4 GW) Hornsea 3 was permitted by the BEIS SoS (Alok Sharma) at the end of 2020. Despite acknowledging that the wind farm was going to kill kittiwakes (among other things), he felt that other matters overrode such lightweight concerns.

One of these reasons was IROPI – Imperative Reasons of Overriding Public Interest.

In arriving at his conclusion, the Secretary of State has reviewed how the Development provides a public benefit which is essential and urgent despite the harm to the integrity of the kittiwake feature of the Flamborough and Filey Coast SPA…

Why?

The conclusion is predicated by the principal and essential benefit of the Development as a significant contribution to limiting the extent of climate change in accordance with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008. The consequences of not achieving those objectives would be severely deleterious to societies across the globe, including the UK, to human health, to social and economic interests and to the environment.

So much bullcrap. Eff the kittiwakes.

Some number of kittiwakes were going to be killed – not, in the SoS’s view, a serious number. But “in combination” – i.e. with the damage caused by other whirligig developments considered in toto – Hornsea 3 was going to contribute to population decline of the kittiwakes of the Flamborough and Filey Coast SPA. (An SPA is a “Special Protection Area” put in place to protect birds – these were designated as part of the EU’s Natura 2000 network. The UK retains its SPAs as among its highest conservation designations.) To permit Hornsea 3, the SoS had to be confident that there would be no adverse effect on its integrity.

The SoS also had to satisfy himself that “no alternative solutions” were available. Unfortunately, “alternative” here meant a different offshore wind farm. Well, he satisfied himself. I mean, there were no alternatives to Hornsea 3.

The final leg of the journey to a big fat affirmative to Hornsea 3 was compensation. Yes, the SPA’s integrity was going to be compromised. But could the developer show the SoS that it could compensate for the swatted kittiwakes by some cunning scheme?

Well, their first try was Rat Eradication. Give us the wind farm, Hornsea 3 said, and we will kill the rats that infest seabird colonies, and in so doing, improve kittiwake breeding success.

Which might have been a winning proposal for something like puffins, which live in burrows that rats can access; it was not persuasive for the kittiwake’s supporters, who noted that for a bird nesting on sheer cliff faces and whose chicks were therefore not accessible to rats, the Rat Eradication Scheme was irrelevant. It was like a burglar offering to make amends to you by fixing someone else’s window.

Rebuffed but undeterred, Hornsea 3 came back with another offer, this time to develop 4 artificial nesting structures for the kittiwakes. These would in due course be found by birds that could not find any room at the inn on the cliffs at Bempton etc, which would set up home there, and the productivity of the population overall would go up. Perhaps an appropriate analogy this time is that it was like offering to compensate for the building of a dangerous road by also constructing new homes nearby; off-setting mortality by raising fertility.

The SoS’s consent letter specified an

…implementation timetable for the delivery of the artificial nest structures that ensures all compensation measures are in place in time to allow four full kittiwake breeding seasons prior to the operation of any turbine…

He wanted annual reports on

…birds colonising the site; evidence of birds prospecting; nesting attempts; egg laying; hatching; and fledging.

By November 2022 Hornsea 3 wanted to compress the timetable. Four artificial nesting structures available for four breeding seasons was what had been consented. Hornsea 3 wanted

…to allow three full kittiwake breeding seasons in respect of two artificial nest structures prior to the operation of any turbine forming part of the authorised development, and to allow two full kittiwake breeding seasons for the other two artificial nest structures prior to the operation of any turbine…

So instead of 4 structures for 4 years, it’s now 2 structures for 3 years and 2 for 2. In “site-years” it goes from 16 to 10. The SoS said yes. (The RSPB, to their credit, pushed back. Too little too late? Having invited the tiger to tea, how do you object to him putting an extra spoonful of clotted cream on his scone?)

It was in February last year that Hornsea 3 came back with a KIMP – no, nothing to do with a guy in a rubber suit, a “Kittiwake Implementation and Monitoring Plan.” This was developed with Natural England, RSPB, and possibly others. Four locations for kittiwake hotels, or whatever you want to call them, were identified – one off Lowestoft, one off Minsmere (also in Suffolk), one off Hartlepool and a fourth whose location was redacted.

Three artificial nesting structures were built last year by Red7Marine, two off Lowestoft and one off Minsmere.

Then, in December last year, Orsted made the decision to proceed with the development. There will be some – ahem – variation in its previously-agreed strike price.

Orsted was last year offered a price for power production at Hornsea 3 of 37.35 pounds ($47) per megawatt hour (MWh) in inflation-indexed 2012 prices. In response to a September auction that failed to attract any offshore bids, the British government announced it will increase the price offered at its next renewables auction, with offshore wind projects to be offered 73 pounds per MWh. Orsted has permission to submit up to 700 MW of the project’s capacity in future bidding rounds, potentially allowing it to double the offtake price. Shares in Orsted, which have more than halved this year after massive writedowns on U.S. projects, rose as much as 5% on Wednesday.

Reuters

This year, Hornsea 3 came back with another variation: three structures for three years, and a fourth before a turbine is switched on (so we’re down to 9 “site-years”). Well, 3 of the structures are already in place. So we wait to see whether they will be used – and more importantly, whether they will arrest the decline of the UK’s kittiwake population. My guess is that the structures will be used, since there are already kittiwakes in Lowestoft using suboptimal nesting locations at the moment (window sills and the harbour wall). Kittiwakes are known to readily use offshore structures like oil rigs already (yes, this does imply that simply not decommissioning an end-of-life rig would have offered prime nesting habitat). I blame the overfishing of sand eels for the decline of this beautiful bird (more on this another day; it’s a complex story, and as well as fishing, there are reports of various climate issues – as a primer, see The Puffin’s Tale). The proliferation of three-horned devils in the seas around this island will make matters worse.

Hornsea 3 is the kite-shaped green polygon (“approved”). Itself a giant, it hardly stands out at all amongst all the planned projects (in red). I don’t know about you, but I become incoherent with rage just looking at this map.

And don’t get me started on the onshore wind farms.