A planned green hydrogen facility in Barrow would be ‘unlikely’ to lead to any significant environmental effects, a report has concluded.
The facility would be built on around 20,000 sq metres of land at Meeting Industrial Estate in Park Road.
A screening matrix has been submitted as part of the application and says it would not be necessary to subject the project to an environmental impact assessment.
It says that the site in question is already ‘relatively flat’ and would ‘not require significant earthworks or levelling to make it suitable for development’.
It stresses that only ‘small quantities’ of construction waste would be produced and that these would be removed by a licensed contractor as part of the construction works.
“Some noise would be generated during normal operation,” says the screening matrix. “A noise assessment has been undertaken as part of the planning application and no likely significant effects from noise have been predicted on any of the nearest sensitive receptors.
“Lighting would be required during construction and operation.”
It outlines a number of steps that would be taken to ensure that the ‘potential adverse effects’ of lighting are minimised.
These include shields to ‘prevent undesirable light break-out’, keeping security lighting at the minimum level needed for protection, and reducing or switching off lighting when it is not required for safety purposes.
The screening matrix refers to a flood risk assessment that has ‘confirmed that the site is not at risk from surface water flooding’.
It references a preliminary ecological appraisal that has been undertaken and ‘confirmed that there would be no direct impacts’ on the nearby Morecambe Bay special area of conservation.
It says that there is a public right of way to the north of the site but that there would be ‘no direct impacts’ on this.
“Although the proposed development may be seen from a short section of this public right of way, significant impacts are not anticipated,” it says.
A planning, design and access statement in support of the application, which was submitted by Carlton Power Ltd, says that, at full output, the 30MW hydrogen electrolyser would be capable of producing 4,680 tonnes of hydrogen per year.
