Dr Carolyn Heeps, Secretary of COWRIE Ltd, chaired a plenary session on Project Development and Consenting at RenewableUK’s Offshore Wind 2010 Conference, held in Liverpool 29th – 30th June. The session explored whether the new consenting regime is equipped to cope with the scale and speed of the projected development of offshore wind and explored what will be required to consent the 40GW of capacity that has been licensed. The panel included 2 leading industry legal advisors, Marcus Trinick QC and Julian Boswell, who posed questions directly to Pauline Lane, Deputy Commissioner of the IPC, and Ashley Holt, Round 3 Wind Energy Programme Manager at the MMO. Additional questions from the floor ensured a very lively and informative debate.

(Photo courtesy of RenewableUK)