UK Offshore Wind at 'Tipping Point' as Funding Crisis Threatens Industry 125
Britain faces being left with no hope of meeting its crucial climate crisis goals and losing its status as a world leader in offshore wind energy without an urgent overhaul of government support, ministers are being warned. From a report: The sudden halting of one of the country's biggest offshore windfarm projects last month could signal a "tipping point" in the construction of new sites unless ministers intervene, a number of senior energy industry figures told the Observer.
They warn that a swathe of new projects, which Britain is relying on to meet key climate targets, could also become economically unviable under the existing regime. While the industry has been hit by huge price inflationary pressures, it warns that the government has failed to adjust the scheme that guarantees the price it is paid for energy. "If the government doesn't do something, there's a very real risk that, come September, just before party conferences, the story won't just be about getting rid of the 'green crap' -- it'll be about failing to deliver on the projects they've already said that they wanted," said one industry insider.
They warn that a swathe of new projects, which Britain is relying on to meet key climate targets, could also become economically unviable under the existing regime. While the industry has been hit by huge price inflationary pressures, it warns that the government has failed to adjust the scheme that guarantees the price it is paid for energy. "If the government doesn't do something, there's a very real risk that, come September, just before party conferences, the story won't just be about getting rid of the 'green crap' -- it'll be about failing to deliver on the projects they've already said that they wanted," said one industry insider.
Economics dont work (Score:2, Insightful)
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So the wind farms want another pile of money from people who may not benefit from it.
You mean people on the ISS? Meeting climate goals benefits everyone living on the planet, even if they don't get power from this wind farm.
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Re: Economics dont work (Score:3)
Why should they? If you do that, the only interest controlling what gets built is profit, which results in what weâ(TM)ve already had - a bunch of idiocy with pumping carbon into the atmosphere.
The point of governments is to manage the countryâ(TM)s economy and major utility projects in a way that benefits everyone, not just a corporationâ(TM)s share holders.
Starting from the assertion that the only motive involved should be profit is capitalism gone mad.
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If power generation isn't profitable, it can't be used as a long-term replacement for power generation that is.
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Let's be clear in our distinction of what exactly "climate goals" means.
There are two possible,contradictory definitions here:
* reduce production of energy/cause artificial shortage for political ends
* supersede traditional production capacity with "green" technologies
The latter is a "climate goal" which we can all, mostly, agree with. That's what's promised, and it's what people want.
What government actually implements is the former, in alignment with ESG depopulation goals of the WEF.
Wind farms are univer
Re: Economics dont work (Score:3)
Solar becomes less and less viable the further north you go. The UK has *extremely* reliable wind, especially offshore.
For reference, solarâ(TM)s power factor in the UK is a mere 10%, and thatâ(TM)s before accounting for how much less sun the UK gets than more southern locations due to the angle to the sun. Meanwhile, windâ(TM)s power factor is 38%.
Offshore wind is a *far* more reliable source of energy in the UK than solar is.
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Oh, I'm not disputing that at all.
Wind turbines, however, are not a reliable power generation technology - regardless of how reliable the wind might be. Therein lies the problem.
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Yes but fossil or nuclear plant maintenance and refueling can be scheduled so it's not a problem. Even if one has an unexpected downtime, the missing capacity can be spread across the fleet.
With wind, it's oops it's not windy this week, good luck!
Re: Economics dont work (Score:2)
Oops, the Russians have invaded Ukraine and now we have no cheep gas. See⦠gas is super reliable!
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Solar only works in the mid latitudes. In Canada for example, it is no good. During winter, much of the populated areas of Canada have 10 or less hours of sunlight, often cloudy. And the temperatures get quite cold, meaning power consumption peaks when solar generating capacity bottoms out. Nuclear is the best bet. It is green and doesn't care about sunlight or wind or temperature. It just provides steady energy.
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>Meeting climate goals benefits everyone living on the planet
Factually false. People living in cool temperate and arctic areas almost universally benefit from warming of the climate to cite one of many examples of people being harmed by reduction in warming speed.
Keeping people like you misinformed was likely one of the reason why several studies that did harm/benefit analysis on regional global warming patterns were quickly hushed up and subject became a taboo in scientific circles with no new grants ap
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Very naive. In Canada the summer temperatures are hitting the 40s in many places and drought is becoming a regular thing. This includes places like the lower mainland in British Columbia which is nominally a temperate rain forest; except in the last few years it is a regular thing to have summer drought cycles. And inland from there, the extreme summer droughts, rather than the 'dry season' is what is driving ever more extreme fire seasons.
I don't think subsidizing bad solutions is good either, but fuck off
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Very ignorant. In Canada, deaths from cold weather are over ten times deaths from hot weather. And reduction in former is proportional to increase in latter, meaning for every additional "oh my god, we lost another one to heat, GLOBAL BOILING IS HERE", over ten deaths to cold weather are prevented.
Now if you're a complete and utter psychopath and place zero value on human life, as a method of arguing aforementioned fact away, there's still economic value. Northern regions across much of the cool temperate a
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You can't make a comment about how grossly misinformed people are about climate sciences without including yourself so trust the experts who are trained, have the data, experiments and results to back themselves up. If you ever find experts with the data, experiments and results to back their contrary claims up, let us know (batshit Fox news opinions and propaganda don't co
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People whose local climate might improve due to climate change still get shafted by it. Large numbers of people will want to migrate to those areas, and international markets for goods will force up prices for them as production is disrupted.
Not to mention that some of them will find themselves under water due to rising sea levels.
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>Meeting climate goals benefits everyone living on the planet
Factually false. People living in cool temperate and arctic areas almost universally benefit from warming of the climate to cite one of many examples of people being harmed by reduction in warming speed.
Keeping people like you misinformed was likely one of the reason why several studies that did harm/benefit analysis on regional global warming patterns were quickly hushed up and subject became a taboo in scientific circles with no new grants approved unless certain specific goals to show overwhelming harm was accepted in the filing for grants.
The only one trying to keep people "misinformed" is you.
Climate change is doing as much damage to cooler climates because they're experiencing more extreme winters as well as summers. So it's hotter in summer AND colder in winter. This is being reflected in the data.
You're not discussing a "taboo"... you're spouting pure bullshit.
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The price of everything is climbing and people are finding it ever more expensive, too expensive to live like we should. Many are only a paycheque or two away from living on the street. And you want them to subsidize electrical generating schemes by raising the prices for electricity even more. It might not occur to you that while you might be privileged enough to afford the added cost, there are huge numbers, probably up to half the population, who can't. If they can't securely have a roof over their head
Re:Economics dont work (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Economics dont work (Score:3, Insightful)
How much money do we need to pour down the gullets of private industry to make these projects economically feasible? Must the subsidies continue forever, or can't the consumers of this 'free electricity from the wind' afford to pay the actual cost of generating this power?
(Have they really been working in this for 10 years?)
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It's not pouring money into private industry. It's not a subsidy it was just a fixed price contract. But the fixed price contracts pre-covid and post-covid no longer make any sense due to unexpected once-in-a-century inflation.
It was a badly designed subsidy because it was trying to avoid being a subsidy. The US solution worked out far better. In the US every year the US Dept of Energy sets a benchmark price for fossil fuel produced electricity. Then the Wind providers get paid the difference. It's ac
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It's not pouring money into private industry. It's not a subsidy it was just a fixed price contract. But the fixed price contracts pre-covid and post-covid no longer make any sense due to unexpected once-in-a-century inflation.
The wind-farm operators put in bids for the cost per kWh/MWh they want to receive to make a profit; these are ranked in increasing order of bid, and accepted in turn until the required delivery amount is reached. The highest bid accepted becomes the 'strike price', and all the accepted operators will get paid at that rate. If the wholesale cost of energy goes below the strike price, they're subsidized for the difference; if it goes above the strike price, they refund the difference. This is the 'contract fo
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How much money do we need to pour down the gullets of private industry to make these projects economically feasible?
Which industry are you talking about? Wind and solar are both already perfectly capable of being profitable without any subsidies. The Netherlands has several offshore windfarms which were built without any government subsidies.
Must the subsidies continue forever, or can't the consumers of this 'free electricity from the wind' afford to pay the actual cost of generating this power?
Which industry are you talking about? Oil and gas? Coal? I do agree with you we should stop subsidising them. But we won't. $500bn the USA spends on subsidising the existing fossil fuels industry can pay for a lot of lobby power.
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Gotta love how the lifecycle on these things work. It's been going on like this since at least the 1970s -
* government org spends gobs of money on some green initiative
* penalties are levied against non-greenwashed energy production to encourage/provide a financial basis for claiming the greenwashed producer is effective
* promises of green technology are not realized
* use additional conventional production eg. diesel generators on-site to shore up lackluster results
* energy crisis, because of many reasons,
Re: Economics dont work (Score:4)
This is not a "green technology" problem or even one unique to the UK. The exact same thing is playing out with rural broadband subsidies in the US. Companies bailing on commitments they were already paid for and/or insisting on more money.
The actual problem is that it's somehow considered acceptable for companies to privatize profits but socialise risks.
It started with George Bush giving trillions to banks because they were "too big to fail". Then we gave businesses more money for Covid. Somehow with all the handouts the public never gets to ask for its money back when the same businesses make record profits or bail on the projects we funded.
This isnt capitalism, it's theft.
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I agree. The fundamental part of this which makes it a problem is governments and their infinitely deep pockets full of other peoples' money.
Faux-green tech masquerading as a solution wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't getting massive subsidies to pretend to work.
Re: Economics dont work (Score:3)
Can you connect those two facts to the argument?
In what way does money injected into the economy at the bottom change the fact that companies are socialising the risks and privatising the profits?
In what way does Obamaâ(TM)s involvement change that?
Are you just trying to turn this into a partisan pissing contest rather than a discussion of policy?
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features.
as decision makers become more aware.
feature creep occurs
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So the wind farms want another pile of money from people who may not benefit from it.
All the people who said it would pay for itself were LYING.
Once you know they are liars, do you listen to them a second time?
No. What happened is that the UK government has been handing out power-plant development projects licenses under a CfD regime for years. What that means in simple terms is that what amounts to a fixed price is guaranteed for the electricity produced by the project in question for 15 years. If the prices at some time during that period turn out to be low, the companies get a subsidy. If, at other times prices rise, any excess must be paid back. It's meant to protect companies and their projects from market v
Re:Economics dont work (Score:4, Interesting)
That was well known in advance. Wind requires priority sellers' rights AND massive subsidies because most of the costs are before anything is produced AND massive buildup of expensive spinning reserve. So expensive capital access needs, expensive legal framework and expensive backup.
They're currently fighting over just the construction costs. They haven't even touched the priority selling rights destroying actually viable plants because they're not allowed to produce electricity at the same time wind does and feed it into the grid or spinning reserve costs with current costs of natgas.
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The issue is the way the UK operates. Rather than offering loans to cover up-front costs, with payback in the first few years of operation, the government offers guaranteed prices for the energy produced. In the long term it's very lucrative, but it means that offshore wind runs into the same problem as nuclear - there is no ROI for some time after the project goes live, and investors are therefore less interested when there are better alternatives.
There's also a ban on new on-shore wind, and the government
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Re: Economics dont work (Score:2)
You have no control. What *non* green project in the UK are you referring to thatâ(TM)s on time and on budget?
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I know you are being sarcastic but I'm still going to explain how this works so everyone understands. What is reported by the press when they say for instance "solar is cheaper than coal" is something called 'capacity cost'. Capacity cost is what it costs to build a powerplant. It doesn't take into account how much power is actually made nor the cost of fuel or maintenance. Think of this as the cost of hardware in IT. The actual cost we all pay (including the utility) is called 'utilization cost'. Thi
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They are cheaper. if we could be charged for the power directly from the renewable sources instead of it being based on the price of gas, we'd be laughing.
How much are you going to pay for wind power when it's not windy?
And (Score:2, Insightful)
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Like the Tories give a single fuck? Problem is neither do labour any more.
Labour? What Labour?
Starmer takes whatever the Tories are doing and shimmies a half step to the left and calls it a "policy". He's never met an established (i.e. policy that's been passed as law and not found actually illegal) Tory policy that he would unequivocally scrap.
* Austerity? "I'm against austerity. But we're going to have to be fiscally disciplined". "tough decisions" Austerity it is then.
* Child benefit cap? Sounds great!
*
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Not sure what to do at the next election. The tactical vote around here is for Labour, but with their polices, especially on trans rights... It's very difficult to support them under any circumstances.
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If you want my 2p: Starmer is the second worst option for PM, but he's still much much better than the first worst choice. He would absolutely be better than another 4 years of the Tories which would be an unmitigated disaster. That is admittedly a bar so low, you could have a good old dig and still clear it, but it's still the bar.
I would vote tactically, but I'm in a seat with a > 25000 labour majority with the greens just in a distant second place, so I get to cote with my conscience. Even a split vot
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The Tories' special friends... (Score:2)
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It seems a bit disingenuous to blame the shortcomings of wind/solar on "fossil fuels" (which, let's be clear - using that term is also disingenuous, because you're trying to lump the use of waste/excess byproduct from the extraction of petroleum - natural gas - and nuclear in with the perceived "dirty coal").
Greenwashing advocates take this approach: "Susan couldn't run a mile as fast as Bob, so we're going to make Bob carry some of Susan's weight on the next run."
We're 50 years into the 'green energy revol
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Sorry, how much in subsidies did you say that renewable energy got last year?
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Nothing in that article references subsidies related to the intrinsic costs of fossil fuels. It's mostly about the costs associated with Russia stupidly disrupting world markets.
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You'll find trillions in subsidies each year.
Again, how much in subsidies did you say that renewable energy got last year?
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Wind, technology you fetishize doesn't deliver on its promises in spite of getting priority access to cheap capital, legislation that bans competitors from feeding their production into the grid if it competes with wind and a massive PR campaign to push it over last decade at least. Even the people you find politically unpalatable voted for those changes because they were fooled by the propaganda push of fetishists like you.
So now is the time to figure out who's to blame for wind being shit. You'd think the
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Your opinions are also wildly distorted. I think you might have a problem.
Conservatives will never fix this (Score:4, Informative)
Economically viable (Score:5, Insightful)
become economically unviable
I don't think that means what the author thinks it means. Being subsidized and propped up with external funds isn't economically viable in the first place.
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Don't confuse facts with religious fervor.
When dealing with any green agenda, you're dealing with people who are fundamentally dishonest in their communication of facts. It's been that way for many years, at least 20 at this point.
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If former Greenpeace head guy is to be believed, much longer than that. Collaborated by a lot of intelligence, including from the short period of opening of KGB archives after the fall of Soviet Union, where it became confirmed that Green movements across the West were one of the tools used by KGB to destabilize the Western nations from inside.
It's why Green ideology adherents commonly espouse anti-capitalism as a virtue rather than a vice.
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I don't think that means what the author thinks it means. Being subsidized and propped up with external funds isn't economically viable in the first place.
The alternative is to price the externalities into fossil fuels with taxes, and that's much less popular.
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This has already been done many times over. The problem is that wind is such a low quality electric grid power source, that even after massive penalties on competition and massive subsidies and legislative anti-competitive supports structures for it, it's still awful.
Because physics don't care about your political beliefs. At all.
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Wind power is supposed to be self supporting by now. The subsidies to help cover the startup and learning costs were not intended to be permanent, but it's always hard to get a company or an ineffective government bureaucracy give up the free money.
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British energy projects are usually privately financed with the promise of guaranteed income at fixed rates. i.e.: The prices that the energy is sold at are determined before construction begins. For a project like this, which started before the pandemic and the war and which has now been hit with the resulting cost overruns, those fixed rates are no longer enough. So this person is asking for those rates to be ad
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The prices that the energy is sold at are determined before construction begins.
Anyone who builds anything risks rising costs and/or reduced returns. They started the project with guarantees few people get. If that still does not work perhaps the whole idea is stupid.
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As for, "perhaps they shouldn't do it." That's also not how this works. "Maybe we should scrap our whole energy program and start over. People can do without electricity for a decade or two."
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They also started it with restrictions that non-utilities aren't subject too, any non-utility could just raise prices to ameliorate the increased costs.
Except they were basically contracted at a fixed cost. For the government those contracts adds some measure of predictability to energy markets and even deflationary pressure. Otherwise what exactly does the government (read taxpayer) get from this arrangement again? As it is right now, this would in the free market be called "a good deal" for the customer. Contracting at a lower price is any normal persons goal. Funny how the private sector is the first to whine about that.
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That's the idea, yes. Only if unforeseen costs get too high then, "it'll be about failing to deliver on the projects they've already said that they wanted." And then you don't have electricity.
If they can't build it competently then they can't be trusted to run it going forward either so probably best they fail right at the start lest even more people be harmed. People will still have electricity. It won't be cheaper though and the lesson is the government can't actually fix that so maybe they best not try.
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Blatant dishonesty. They start the project with the following in addition to guaranteed minimal electricity buy offers:
Legal anti-compete priority production guarantees: until wind has sold every last watt of its production into the grid, competitors aren't allowed to sell any output.
Preferential cheap capital access: Most of wind costs are upfront, which means extreme capital demand. Between ESG and various adjacent legal frameworks, wind enjoys extremely cheap access to massive amount of capital, unlike a
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At best you could claim that it makes it easier for a project like this to raise capital, but to any extent that these are true then it were true when the project was conceived. They don't give any additional benefit when a pandemic starts, or when a war starts. None of this is
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>Even if all of the stuff that you're talking about was "honest" (and that's a big if), it's not about financing.
More blatant lying to the point of clear cut pathology. Preferential cheap capital access is paid by consumer, and treasury. Legal relief from damage caused by intermittency means massive capital needing to be sunk into additional spinning reserve. Legal relief from needing to fund massive grid extensions means massive capital investments from other to fund them as well.
The only thing above th
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And then you said: "Nuh uh, you lying liar pants on fire. You can use these things to make it easier to raise capital."
You are clearly someone who doesn't know what lying is. I am not going to teach you.
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It's not a subsidy it's a fixed price contract that was intended to provide stability to investors to finance projects.
The problem is the auctions were so long ago that the fixed price contract with the national utility is way below the market price and the price of construction.
It's actually a negative subsidy. If the market price for wind energy goes over the fixed price contract, then the wind farm has to pay the govt the difference. If the price for wind dropped below the market rate then the govt wo
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If this had worked as intended, then taxpayers would have been protected and wind project investors would have the assurances to proceed.
If it worked the way the investors want all the risk would be assumed by the taxpayers via the government and none by themselves. Seems this problem has now come to the forefront.
Think of it like a crop. The government says "We'll buy your entire crop for $1/kg of grain". The farmer says "great" and starts planting. But then the price of labor skyrockets and the cost to actually harvest the grain goes up to $2/kg of grain.
Welcome to the concept of a futures market. Enjoy your edification.
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They are looking for some free money, but also the way such things are funded in the UK is a little broken. In Europe the set-up is usually that the government loans them money to cover the up-front cost of building and deploying turbines, and then in the first few years of operation they pay it back. After that it's subsidy free.
In the UK the rights to develop wind resources are auctioned off, with companies bidding against each other to offer the lower guaranteed price for the electricity produced, for th
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Being subsidized and propped up with external funds isn't economically viable in the first place.
If we stopped spending $500bn a year subsidising the fossil fuels industry, maybe green energy would have a fighting chance.
I hope the world realizes how crazy it has become (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to the the new world. You'll own nothing, you will not be happy, and you will have blackouts to meet some arbitrary climate target.
Re:I hope the world realizes how crazy it has beco (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome to the the new world. You'll own nothing, you will not be happy, and you will have blackouts to meet some arbitrary climate target.
And to imagine that we basically solved the energy issue decades ago with nuclear, but that the ones opposing it and fighting against it for so long are the so-called "greens". Just imagine a world where every developped country had followed the example of France and its low-CO2 emitting electricity grid (built in the 70s). It would basically mean the level of emissions we would have today would be like it was in the 90s. Meaning we would have much more time to figure out alternatives (more renewables, to extend the time we have, and fusion for longer term for instance).
Maybe people should get a hint and start implementing both nuclear and renewables now. Delaying both, or one of them, will just make the problem worse.
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If you refuse to subsidize any energy source that doesn't work 100% of the time, you will have no electricity.
Nuclear, coal, and gas all have less than 100% uptime.
In the real world your choice is mostly down to how much you want to pay for your electricity, and if you are a Tory it also depends if one of your mates is building it.
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Subsidizing energy sources which net the main companies literally double digit billions of dollars in quarterly profits doesn't make sense. Yet the government pours $500bn into the fossil fuel industry yearly though various means including taxation and direct subsidies.
Failing to meet wind goals (Score:2)
We can expect the UK government... (Score:2)
Not the right thing, but the popular thing.
The recent success of populism, from woke on the left to racism on the right, is what makes me worried for the future of the world.
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I guarantee the only place you're hearing about it is from the left.
Of course. I would find it strange for a racist to admit they were racist. The world doesn't work like that.
Cost inflation (Score:2)
I don't fully understand the cause but part if is global inflation, and the problem can be found in many places in the energy sector, not just the UK and Vattenfall but also for the US and Biden's plans, Denmark’s Orsted, Belgium's ZF Wind Power, and more.
What? Unpossible! (Score:2)
I have been told repeatedly on Twitter and here in /. that green energy sources like wind are MORE efficient and fully competitive with archaic fossil fuel systems and nuclear.
And, of course, demand for electrical power - even before the (I'm told) colossal impending switch to EVs fully materializes - is constantly growing.
So how is it that these sure-fire, obviously great sources of energy in a world that needs it, are having TROUBLE finding funding?
Something doesn't seem to jibe here. ...oh wait, they exp
The country is fucked (Score:2)
"Britain faces being left with no hope of meeting its crucial climate crisis goals "
Nor any other goal.
Re:Bidenomics & "Inflation Reduction Act" (Score:4, Informative)
This story is about the UK, dumbass. "Bidenomics" (which, BTW judging by its US results, looks like it works amazingly) has nothing to do with it. The "Green New Deal" isn't law. At all.
"Politics" hasn't screwed everything up. Idiots who think their stupidity and petulance trumps facts have.
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Re: Bidenomics & "Inflation Reduction Act" (Score:2)
Yes, this particular article is talking about UK, but the same thing is happening with the US projects. The US economy is the largest in the world, so when stupid policies affect inflation in the US, it has global impact.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/0... [cnn.com]
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"Inflation Reduction Act" (aka Green-New-Deal).
That is nonsense. IRA and GND are different proposals but perhaps related. IRA was signed in 2022. You can read about GND here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The economic problems in energy productions are at least partially due to global inflation. What has been the cause of global inflation 2021-2022? Lots of things including Russia's invasion of Ukraine which caused an increase in global price of global oil,
Re: Bidenomics & "Inflation Reduction Act" (Score:2)
You are blinded by your devotion to political party. I personally have no devotion to any particular party. We âoeas a nationâ should be focused on policies not parties.
Yes, this article talks about the UK but the same problems are occurring here in the states. Being that the US is the largest global economy when inflation runs wild in the US there will be global impact as well.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/0... [cnn.com]
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Inflation doesn't "run wild" in the US. It's lower than OECD average or Euro countries: https://data.oecd.org/price/in... [oecd.org]
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"Bidenomics" (which, BTW judging by its US results, looks like it works amazingly) has nothing to do with it.
I am glad it is working for someone. Most of the people I know are finding it even more difficult to live than they did last year. But that is ok I suppose. As long as the US as a whole is healthy, we can easily neglect some parts of it. It is not like dying pieces of flesh cause problems on living beings, so it should similarly not cause any problems for a society.
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Welcome to Bidenomics & the "Inflation Reduction Act" (aka Green-New-Deal).
Say what? "Bidenomics" has little or nothing to do with the "Green New Deal" proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a plan so unimportant to the Democrats that it didn't even make it out of committee when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress). Biden's economic approach is really very conventional.
The policies of this administration has created a war on fossil fuels on purpose with the intention to make fossil fuels more expensive,
Huh? Biden has been o
Re: Bidenomics & "Inflation Reduction Act" (Score:2)
You should step out of your bubble more often. You repeating the democrat party lines does not make them true.
Here are a few articles to read but there are many many more. The war on fossil fuel is real, if you donâ(TM)t know about it then you are misinformed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/auto... [msn.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
Re: Is 16M trees not enough? (Score:2)
Pretty sure there arenâ(TM)t 16M trees in the pentland firth.
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“Where woodland is removed in association with development, developers will generally be expected to provide compensatory planting in order to avoid a net loss of woodland. She said many of the felled trees will have been “replanted on site” or replaced elsewhere, and the vast majority were part of a commercial crop that would have been chopped down anyway “at the end of their rotation”.”