CLIENT:
Cork City Council
PROJECT NAME: REPORT TITLE:
Cork City Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy
SEA Environmental Report
7.3 Potential Cumulative Effect of the Strategy in combination with other Plans and Projects The cumulative effects of a plan are an important consideration in SEA given that a plan may envisage the occurrence of many different developments taking place in parallel with each other in a particular location/geographic area over a particular time period. One benefit of SEA is being able to evaluate the in- combination environmental effects of multiple envisaged projects. The following types of cumulative effects can occur due to the implementation of the Strategy: • Intra-plan Cumulative Effects - Individual environmental effects associated with the Strategy interacting and combining to create a larger environmental effect. • Inter-plan Cumulative Effects - The environment effects of the Strategy and the environmental effects of another plan interacting and combining to create a larger environmental effect. 7.3.1 Intra-plan Cumulative Effects The evaluation of Strategy intra-plan cumulative effects was embedded into the detailed evaluation of environmental effects presented in Appendix 3. Potential intra-plan cumulative effects are presented below: • The widespread development of charging stations within Cork City has the potential to generate some degree of cumulative effect (in the absence of appropriate mitigation) on existing street/ road operations, cultural heritage, population and human health, and tourism and recreation, particularly where charging station construction projects supported by the Strategy overlap, or where charging station are constructed or operated in in close proximity between each other. • The proliferation of charging stations in the city may necessitate the development of ancillary electrical infrastructure, including cable routes and connections. The development of ancillary infrastructure will generally increase the level of potential environmental impact associated with charging infrastructure in the city. The widespread development and use of charging stations in the city is likely to lead to an increase in electrical grid capacity demand. The implementation of the Strategy therefore has the potential to result in slight to very significant cumulative effect on material assets (grid infrastructure) - in the absence of appropriate mitigation. • The widespread development of charging stations in Cork City has the potential to robustly support a shift to the use of a sustainable form of transport. This has the potential to generate a variety of cumulative positive environmental effects. The potential cumulative environmental effects listed in the second and third bullet points above have the potential to extend beyond the boundary of the local authority functional area. Strategy proposals that generate positive or negative environmental effects for one environmental component have the potential to indirectly generate positive or negative environmental effects for interrelated environmental components. An assessment of impact inter-relationships and interactions is embedded in the evaluation of environmental effects that was carried out in this report. This ensures that there is adequate coverage of all potential environmental effects associated with the implementation of the proposals. A matrix showing the existence of potential inter-relationships between environmental components was developed and is presented in Table 7-2 to aid in the understanding of these relationships.
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