Commentary on Sections Part 2: Sustainability and Renewable Energy Sources.Summary and Background Chapter 2: Offshore production of energy and Chapter 3: Decommissioning of offshore installations
226.International law has long recognised that each coastal State has jurisdiction and sovereignty over its territorial waters. At the time the Act was passed the UK Government and Scottish Ministers had given consent to 12 offshore wind farms at various locations around the UK coast, in internal tidal and territorial waters. Whilst some statutes such as the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 (c.48) apply beyond territorial waters there is no comprehensive legal framework in place for offshore renewable energy developments beyond territorial waters. In this part of the Act, Chapter 2, relating to offshore production of energy, and Chapter 3, relating to decommissioning of offshore installations, create such a framework, based on the rights available to the UK as a contracting party to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”). The text of UNCLOS can be found at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/index.htm and was published as Command Paper 8941.
227.Part V of UNCLOS enables coastal States to establish an exclusive economic zone within which they have sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation of the zone such as the production of energy from the water, currents and winds. UNCLOS also gives coastal States the exclusive right to construct and authorize and regulate the construction, operation and use of artificial islands, installations and structures for the purposes outlined above and other economic purposes.
228.The Government published proposals to establish a Renewable Energy Zone under UNCLOS in its consultation paper “Future Offshore, A Strategic Framework for the Offshore Wind Industry” (DTI/Pub/2k/11/02/NP. URN 02/1327, November 2002). Chapter 2 implements those proposals.
229.UNCLOS places an obligation on contracting parties to ensure that renewable energy installations in a Renewable Energy Zone are decommissioned. Chapter 3 sets out a regime for the decommissioning of such installations.
230.Chapters 2 and 3 also augment the existing framework of law which applies to offshore renewable energy developments in territorial and internal waters. The effect is to create as far as possible a common legal regime for all offshore renewable energy developments whether they are located in internal waters, territorial waters or a Renewable Energy Zone.