Changes to the planning system could accelerate renewable energy deployment and help decarbonise UK real estate

“I have been genuinely shocked about how slow our planning system is,” said Chancellor Rachel Reeves in a recent speech setting out the Government’s plan for growth.  

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill introduced in March 2025 aims to reform planning, allowing more development and infrastructure projects in England to go ahead, including renewable energy. This contributes to the Government’s wider 2030 clean power mission which aims to decarbonise the UK’s energy grid by 2030.

England’s renewables planning system appears to have slowed down in recent years, with the time to grant an application increasing 30% in the three years to 2023. If the proposed bill achieves its goals and accelerates the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy grid, real estate occupiers and investors will be better positioned to realise their net zero targets.

History of renewables applications

Since 2018, applications for renewables in England have increased significantly, as seen in Figure 1. Although the number of applications in 2023 were lower than in 2015, the megawatt (MW) generation capacity they represent is the highest of any year on record.

The number of applications fell by 84% in 2016 following the removal of renewables subsidies and changes in planning law that made onshore wind projects much harder to approve. This demonstrates the Government’s ability to influence the renewables market. Laws passed in 2019 binding the UK to its 2050 net zero target, combined with falling costs for renewable energy technologies, have led to the increase in applications observed from 2020 onwards.

Figure 1: Applications for renewable energy generation and storage over 1MW in England

How is the planning system performing?

Figure 1 shows that the number of renewables applications granted has risen more or less in line with applications made over recent years. This is a positive sign. However, between 2020 and 2023, the average time to grant permission rose by 30% to 314 days. The proportion of applications that took over a year to grant permission grew from 19% to 30%.

This is not a picture of a completely broken planning system, but one that is slowing down. The UK’s urgency to both decarbonise and grow the economy is dependent on more investment in renewables and a more efficient planning system, highlighting the need for reforms.

In 2023, the average time for an application to be granted in England was 314 days. A 10-month waiting period to determine project viability disincentivises investment, particularly when that capital could be deployed immediately in other asset classes. Additionally, planning costs, which can easily reach tens of thousands of pounds, further complicate a developer’s decision to invest in renewables.

There also appears to be a growing backlog of undecided applications stuck in the system. Figure 2 shows the number of live applications in each year which do not reach a decision. By 2023, there were 299 applications that had been submitted prior to 2023 and continued without a decision into 2024. 40% of these applications (123) had been in the planning system for over five years without reaching a decision.

Figure 2: Number of live applications in England (and corresponding MW capacity) where a planning decision is unresolved

This indicates a growing number of complex or contested applications that take a long time to reach a decision, delaying renewables deployment. Not only can this divert resources from granting permission to more straightforward applications, it has also contributed to a large backlog for grid connection for energy projects.

So called ‘zombie projects’ with little hope of becoming a reality due lack of planning permission or funding have clogged up the grid connection queue which now stands at over 700GW, far more than needed to decarbonise the UK energy grid.

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Responding to an inefficient planning system, the Government introduced the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which had its first reading in March 2025. This has been accompanied by secondary legislation ammending the existing Planning Act. These changes aim to streamline the planning process in England. If successful, they could expedite planning consent for renewables and other developments.

Two of the most significant changes in the bill for renewables are adjustments to the threshold for a project to be considered a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project and revisions to the criteria local authorities should consider when granting planning permissions.

1. Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs)

The relevant Secretary of State must consider planning permission applications for NSIPs. This added layer of review can delay planning consent compared to decisions taken by local authorities. Currently, wind and solar projects that generate more than 50MW are automatically considered NSIPs.

Secondary legislation set to be implemented in 2025 will increase the threshold for NSIP status to 100MW for wind and solar projects. This shift aims to simplify the approval process and empower local authorities to make more decisions, potentially speeding up approvals.

There is also evidence that the current 50MW threshold is leading renewables developers to bring forward smaller projects to bypass the NSIP process. The proposed change could encourage more large renewables projects, which would accelerate decarbonisation.

2. Updating the criteria for granting permission

Local authorities must comply with the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) when granting planning permission. Hundreds of factors are considered when deciding whether to grant permission, one of which is the assessment of an application’s impact on climate change mitigation.

The bill proposes strengthening this provision, and weakening some others, to give the benefits of low-carbon energy generation significant weight in planning decisions. The aim is to increase the likelihood that local authorities will grant renewables permission.

Potential outcomes of the planning changes

With more and larger renewables projects going through local planning authorities instead of the NSIP process, there is the potential for faster approval times as well as increasing incentives to  develop larger sites.

Changes to the NPPF could streamline the process for granting permission for renewables projects. This has the potential to reduce the backlog of applications stuck in the system for multiple years (Figure 2).

If the changes to the planning system are effective, they should result in an increasing number of renewables applications submitted and granted, as well as faster approval times.

Meanwhile, the National Energy System Operator, which manages the electricity transmission grid in the UK, is set to update the process for renewable energy grid connection, allowing viable and progressing renewable energy projects to be fast tracked, bypassing ‘zombie projects’ held up by planning and other barriers.

Together, these reforms have the potential to expedite the decarbonisation of the energy grid, taking the UK closer to achieving the Government’s clean power by 2030 mission. As a result, infrastructure investors could benefit from faster planning and grid connection speeds. Real estate investors and occupiers would feel the benefit of a decarbonising energy grid in lower operational emissions.