Don’t Shoot the Messenger – Reflections on streamlining and simplification of Environmental Assessment in the Netherlands

Strategic Development of Environmental Impact Assessment Decision Support Tool for Offshore Energy Enables Decreased Costs, Increased Utilization and Quality

“…The remaining project lead times are, on average, 4.4 years before the projects become operational, i.e., the time for the EIA process corresponds to, on average more than 60 % of the total project lead time. Yet, EIA is essential to minimize the risk of deterioration of environmental status [23][24][25][26][27], and there is an urgent need to improve and speed up the EIA process, without compromising quality and reliability of the assessment [28]. This need has played a pivotal role in motivating development and use of Decision Support Tools (DSTs) for Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) including regional Cumulative Impact Assessment (CIA) [29,30], hereafter referred to as DST in this paper.…”

“…Considering the expected rapid growth of offshore energy to meet renewable energy demands and still ensure sustainable use of the marine environment, it will become increasingly vital to effectively balance challenges in reaching renewable energy goals and protecting and restoring the environment when allocating resources [10,27]. To assess the economic incentives of advanced DST development, it is therefore important to identify the break-even between the cost savings of EIA and the cost of further development of a DST.…”