SEA Flashcards
What is an EIA?
Environmental Impact Assessment- a procedure for considering the potential environmental effects of a project.
- Enables decisions to be taken based on knowledge of the likely environmental consequences.
- legal requirements for EIA for many assessments eg. thinking about how nuclear plants are placed etc
What factors do EIA address?
factors such as ecology, sustainability, air quality, public access and recreation, traffic and transport, archaeology& cultural, noise and vibration, socio-economic etc.
Impacts EIA can have
‘sebastopol meadowfoam’ one of the most famous flowers in EIA, protected in US as it turned up at a new development out of San Francisco as they found the flowers on industrial sites and consequently this stopped development from occuring. Another common factor halting development is bats.
What can EIA assessments miss out?
human health would be dealt with in 2 ways, workers deal with health and safety regulations outside of the EIA and big disasters will be dealt with outside of EIA as it is not something you can capture in this in this kind of analysis, looking at nuclear industry standards and risk assessment to check safety and failure rates.
- also because theres no efficient evidence nuclear power stations for example cause cancer, it wouldn’t come through as EIA, not a major impact.
Limitations of EIA assessments?
- ignores cumulative impacts (impacts from individual projects may be acceptable but sum total of impacts would be significant).
- ignores (some) indirect effects
- does not consider strategic alternatives
- often brought in quite late in the process
- limitation is how EIA’s define sustainability, for EIA its how much stuff is used and where it is sourced from eg. concrete in power stations makes it unsustainable but typical definition is holistic including environ, social, economic etc
Example of a limitation of EIA assessments
A proposal in the early 1980s which, together would have formed a second ring road around London 20-30km outside of M25 as a way of diverting traffic from that congested area so underwent an EIA assessment to protect the environment.
- location specific and development specific so EIA will get data from each road but one thing EIA doesn’t think about is cumulative impacts , what results would be like if we gathered all data to see it on a larger picture.
- if you build the road, you would get indirect impacts, the road itself creates possibility for development. eg. Industry coming in.
- A further limitation is if you are already thinking about building roads factors such as developing rail are neglected.
What is a SEA? (Strategic environmental assessment)
- Incorporate environmental/sustainability issues in strategic decision-making of policies, plans and programmes
- Improve strategic actions by making them clearer and more internally consistent involve the public or its representatives in decision-making; and
- Educate decision-makers about the environmental impacts of their decisions.
- thinking about govs, policy makers, planners & getting them to think in a sustainable way EG. Yorkshire and Humber have an SEA that discusses how it wants the region to develop
SEA assessment
- secondary tool that comes into place later on in the process called SEA
- about decision making much earlier on in the process
- what are its priorities where they can occur etc.
- involves strong public engagement
SEA is a systematic process for evaluating the environmental, economic and social linkages of a proposed policy, plan or programme - now a legal system
- proper definition of sustainability now
What is the link between EIA and SEA?
SEA sits above with local politicians, gov to aid their decision making and ensure environ, social and economic impacts have been considered.
- practical we carried out on nuclear power we undertook an EIA, individual project, didn’t think about it as a whole energy system
- SEA would sit above that so devising energy policy for UK so power plants may impact but by the time you have decided to build it, its too late- haven’t considered whether it is better to build nuclear or should we be going for onshore wind or even fracking?
SEA applied to off-shore wind
gov has gone through SEA to think rather than one individual project for offshore wind to think about the whole of the coastline:
-where can we site
-where do we get most energy density, where do we have protected species (eg. dolphins)
-where are we doing our fishing?
-where have we got oil and gas pipelines etc?
All of these factors are put into analysis and identified appropriate areas
- for example map of UK and wind energy is coloured if the depth of the seabed is less than 5cm so is suitable for offshore wind (plots wind density).
What are the broad principles of SEA?
- Start early
- Focus on sustainability issues rather than on narrower environmental concerns
- Use qualitative approaches where appropriate to cope with uncertainty and lack of quantitative information
- Consider alternatives
- Involve a wide range of disciplines and all appropriate stakeholders in the SEA
What does SEA focus on?
SEA focuses on building environment into systems by getting policy makers to think in terms of sustainability, not focusing on narrow environmental concerns as we did with EIA. eg. individual footpaths and species at sites but rather get a holistic qualitative approach to include environ, social and economic etc
What should the contents of a SEA report incliude?
(a) a description of the ‘zero-option’ and reasonable alternatives (e.g alternative approaches, alternative locations)
(b) the environmental characteristics of any area likely to be significantly affected by the plan or programme
(c) any existing environmental problems which are relevant to the plan or programme and its reasonable alternatives;
(d) environmental protection objectives relevant to the plan
(e) the likely significant effects of the plan on the environment
(f) measures to prevent / reduce / offset effects
(g) reasons for selecting alternative
(h) proposed monitoring measures
how does SEA change the questions policy makers ask?
- Meets targets on greenhouse gas emissions
- Ensure security / reliability of energy supply
- Support economic growth
- Reduce fuel poverty
Which allows for bigger questions to be asked about energy such as energy security also if we have mutually competing demands, can we meet them all?
- the SEA helps to make decisions, although it is just a methodology, it is a game changer as for environmental sustainability agenda it is a legal requirement to undertake before enacting policy.
What does the total primary energy supply look like in the UK?
- coal is going out of fashion
- oil is decreasing
- there is an increase in gas, now starting show signs of decreasing
- shows increase of some renewables
- nuclear power starting to decrease
- look at graph
