More than half of Great Britain’s current onshore wind fleet is expected to face end-of-life decisions by 2035, meaning developers will be facing difficult decisions whether to decommission, life extend or repower.
Repowering could add an additional 690 MW of onshore wind capacity by 2035, increasing to a possible 6 GW by 2050 as more projects make end-of-life decisions. It also offers opportunities to improve biodiversity and sustainability measures and expand community benefits and shared ownership. However, capturing this opportunity is not guaranteed.
Produced in association with Nadara and Osborne Clarke, A Second Wind: Unleashing the potential for repowering, draws on real-world examples and industry expertise to identify the key challenges that are hindering the effective rollout of repowering. It sets out urgent changes to address complex and interlinking factors across planning, grid, markets, community benefits and a circular economy that could unlock the potential of the existing onshore wind fleet.
To mark the launch of this paper, Regen, in association with Nadara and Osborne Clarke, is hosting an in-person dissemination event. This will provide an opportunity to engage in a panel discussion with the paper’s authors, exploring the key findings, challenges and opportunities identified in the report. Followed by an informal drinks reception, the event will also offer the chance to share perspectives and connect with peers from across the onshore wind sector. Register for the event here.
Key recommendations
Make repowering a national priority and ensure consistency in end-of-life terms. Explicitly recognise repowering in UK energy strategies; provide clear, consistent planning guidance; and designate all commercial-scale renewable projects as a Critical National Priority to remove uncertainty and accelerate investment. Define and implement consistent terminologies for end-of-life options to provide clarity across all stakeholders involved in decision making.
Treat repowering as a core component of the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) and connections reform. NESO should use the SSEP to review the 2035 allocation of grid connection to onshore wind in Scotland and recognise that repowering is an opportunity to increase clean power capacity at successful, proven sites.
Ensure repowered projects have stable, predictable revenue streams. DESNZ should support the commercial viability of large-scale repowering projects by revisiting the CfD forward-bidding rules to better reflect asset timelines and conditions, and introduce a programme to support small-scale generators through repowering.
Introduce a repowering-specific environmental assessment process. MHCLG should provide a clear presumption in favour of repowering, recognising its strategic importance, and allow long-term operational monitoring data to be used as the baseline.
Change public land bidding to prioritise socio-economic factors over financial considerations. DESNZ should introduce standardised, or capped, lease terms on public land and encourage developers to compete on delivering socio-economic benefits.
Ensure repowering is used to deliver tangible, enhanced benefits to local communities. Developers should embed early engagement and expand community benefit funds. GB Energy should facilitate community shared ownership during repowering though finance support or temporary ownership stakes.
The UK’s onshore wind fleet is entering a pivotal phase. Many of the earliest projects, typically consented for 25 years, are now reaching the end of their planning permission. At this decision point, developers and operators face a range of options, including extending the operational life of existing assets, upgrading or replacing turbines, expanding sites, or decommissioning them entirely – options that will has a material impact on the UK’s energy security and resilience, as well as the long-term value delivered to local communities.
Repowering – the replacement of older turbines with modern, more efficient technology – offers one of the most significant opportunities for the UK’s energy transition across the next decade.
Figure 1: End of life options for onshore wind
Repowering is a proven approach: 32 projects across GB have already added 156 MW by replacing older smaller turbines with modern, more efficient technology. Looking ahead, the existing pipeline of repowering projects could add up to 690 MW by 2035, with the potential to scale to 2.5 GW by 2040 and 6 GW by 2050.1 However, this opportunity is not guaranteed and is hinges on regulatory, commercial and social enabling factors.
Figure 2: By 2035, over half of GB’s current onshore wind capacity will be facing decisions around repowering
Planning and consenting
Planning policy is a critical factor in enabling onshore wind repowering, yet it has not fully kept pace with the evolving energy landscape. Many existing sites were consented decades ago, and expectations around environmental protection, community engagement and local development have changed, making the repowering process lengthy and uncertain. This is compounded by inconsistent policy frameworks, limited clarity on end-of-life options and resourcing pressures on planning authorities.
Our key recommendations include:
MHCLG should introduce a repowering-specific environmental assessment process, recognising that wind farms approaching repowering will have undertaken extensive environmental monitoring and surveys that should be used as a baseline.
Introduce a presumption in favour of repowering, recognising it’s strategic importance for maintaining and increasing renewable energy output, with policy emphasising benefits such as improved efficiency gains and opportunities for environmental enhancements.
Make repowering a national priority, explicitly recognising repowering in UK energy strategies and designating all commercial-scale renewable projects as a Critical National Priority in the National Planning Policy Framework to remove uncertainty and accelerate investment.
Grid and network access
Repowering projects must navigate existing connection agreements, potential upgrades and evolving, often volatile network charging structures, all of which influence the timings, cost and scale of reinvestment. Repowered sites cannot relocate to avoid high locational charges, so future pricing regimes could unintentionally limit additional capacity at these sites or deter reinvestment in existing assets.
The emerging Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) provides an encouraging framework for coordinating future connections, determining where and when generation and storage can be deployed. However, protracted timelines, opaqueness on assumptions and a current lack of treatment of end-of-life projects introduces uncertainty for repowering projects.
Our key recommendations include:
NESO and DESNZ should ensure the SSEP reviews limits on the capacity of onshore wind in Scotland that will be granted grid connection agreements by 2035, recognising that onshore wind in Scotland is constrained by CP30 allocations and is preventing projects from progressing.
Repowering should be integrated into SSEP economic modelling, considering the whole-system benefit of maintaining existing connected capacity and the further whole-system efficiencies in using the opportunity to deliver additional capacity.
Network operators, in tandem with NESO, should publish clear guidance and approaches regarding repowering, simplifying the decision making process for sites and ensuring all available options are understood.
Business and commercials
Repowering reintroduces the development risk and upfront capital requirements of a greenfield site, all while being constrained by legacy layouts, land agreements and existing infrastructure that limit design flexibility and shape costs. The process to repower is not inherently cheaper than greenfield development; while existing access routes, cabling or gird connections can, in principle, offer commercial advantages, these benefits are highly site-specific and often limited for older wind farms.
As Renewables Obligation and Feed-in-Tariff contracts come to an end as early as 2027, competition for alternative revenue mechanisms is likely to intensify. Positive changes to the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme allow repowering onshore wind projects to enter from Allocation Round 7 onwards. However, the 5 MW minimum capacity threshold and forward bidding eligibility criteria introduce implications for smaller and older sites.
Adding to the commercial viability of repowered projects is the cost of land, which is increasingly being pitched at unsustainable rental value that are challenging the commercial viability of wind farms in development. Limited transparency about what constitutes a reasonable or sustainable level of land payments, particularly for repowering projects where benchmarks from comparable projects, are not readily available and without incentives or requirements for disclosure, private landowners have little reason to cooperate in improving market transparency.
Our key recommendations include:
DESNZ should lower CfD forward bidding rules to better aligns with the commercial realities of repowering, allowing projects that are technically and commercially ready to repower earlier to access CfD support to avoid lost generation and enable more efficient use of existing sites.
Programmes should be introduced to support small scale (<5 MW) sites through repowering, recognising that these projects are not applicable for a CfD. Support programmes could include financial support from GB Energy.
The bidding process for public land should incentivise socio-economic benefits, possibly though standardised or capped lease terms for repowering projects, while encouraging developers to compete in delivering wider socio-economic and environmental outcomes.
Communities
Many of the UK’s existing wind farms were originally consented for a time-limited period, typically around 25 years, with a shared understanding that turbines would be removed at the end of their operational life. Repowering, therefore, provides an important opportunity to reset relationships with local communities, revisit community benefit arrangements and reflect lessons learned from earlier phases of development.
Figure 3: Maximising long-term value from repowering
Repowering also offers the opportunity to consider shared ownership, allowing developers and local communities to benefit through increased support for projects, community participation in decision-making and higher financial returns than traditional benefit funds.
Our key recommendations include:
Strengthen support for community-led decision making by providing greater practical and financial support to help communities identify priorities, build capacity and engage confidently in negotiations. Expanding Scotland’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme could be a first step.
Encourage developers to offer shared ownership for all repowering projects, recognising the enhanced benefits of shared ownership compared with traditional community benefit funds.
GB Energy should enable shared ownership through targeted intervention, including providing loans, guarantees or temporary ownership, or funding professional and technical support so communities can engage with developers.
Decommissioning and circularity
Whether a site repowers or not, there is an opportunity to make the most of the decommissioning process. While decommissioning presents certain challenges due to a lack of standardised approach for managing waste materials, it also offers opportunities to minimise waste, reduce demand for virgin resources and deliver a circular economy approach.
Maximising the circular economy potential of onshore wind repowering faces challenges including limited visibility of decommissioning volumes, potential bottlenecks in recycling and logistics, and misalignment between developers, OEMs and waste operators. Addressing these will require early and strategic coordination across stakeholders, particularly as many developers remain cautious of new recycling technologies due to perceived technical or financial risks, while others may simply be unaware of the opportunities for material recovery.
Our key recommendations include:
GB Energy could coordinate a more strategic decommissioning and recycling strategy by assuming ownership of smaller, ageing sites that are approaching their end of life. This could provide certainty of demand for the supply chain through strategic and long-term visibility of the decommissioning pipeline.
Developers should engage with the community from the outset on decommissioning opportunities, recognising that this provides a good basis for community engagement and can start conversations around the local re-use of materials.
Industry should share lessons, test solutions and benchmark best practices to take a proactive role in addressing emerging challenges that are likely to be consistent across other renewable technologies.
Nadara is proud to support this important work with Regen and co-sponsors Osborne Clarke. Repowering is a national energy priority and this report sets out the opportunities, barriers, and clear recommendations for unlocking the UK’s onshore wind potential. Its practical and positive steps for policy support and planning consent encourage collaboration, highlighting how, together, we can deliver a more secure and decarbonised energy future. – Nadara
This paper forms the bedrock for repowering the UK's onshore windfarm fleet. The consenting and grid requirements needed to deliver the infrastructure is a crucial part of meeting the government's Clean Power 2030 objectives. Osborne Clarke is delighted to be working with Regen and its co-sponsor Nadara on its production. – Osborne Clarke
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