Pylons to be forced on public to hit net zero goal

By Paul Homewood

 

h/t Philip Bratby

 

Increasingly the public are simply being left out of the loop of decision making as far as Net Zero is concerned:

 

 

Hundreds of miles of overhead cables and pylons are expected to be fast-tracked through the planning system despite local opposition, so Britain can meet its net zero targets.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is devising sweeping planning reforms that industry leaders say are needed for the UK to hit milestones such as eliminating fossil fuel generation by 2035.

Ministers are increasingly concerned the growing demand for energy could outpace the capacity of the national grid, as households switch to electric cars and heat pumps while there is also a massive national expansion in wind power.

John Pettigrew, the chief executive of National Grid, told TheTelegraph it would be “incredibly challenging” to expand the existing network to meet the Government’s targets without major planning reforms.

Currently, the UK generates up to 14GW of energy from offshore wind farms. The Government’s net zero plan includes raising that capacity to 50GW by 2030.

Mr Pettigrew said: “Without planning reform, if you’re trying to get to 50GW by 2030, that’s going to be difficult … You have to see a shortening of the planning process.”

He added that by 2035, when the sale of petrol and diesel cars will be outlawed in favour of electric alternatives, the grid “is going to need to meet a demand that is 50 per cent higher than it is today”.

DESNZ, run by Grant Shapps, the Energy Security Secretary, is said to be supportive of detailed plans submitted by National Grid for radical planning reform. It would be designed to allow construction of additional overhead cables and pylons in as little as half of the current seven-year period that usually elapses before such projects receive formal consent.

However, the proposals advocated by DESNZ are facing resistance in the housing and environment departments, where officials fear a public backlash to a significant loosening of planning restrictions for energy projects.

Under the plans, ministers would issue formal guidelines – known as a National Policy Statement – later this year, effectively mandating planning inspectors to approve projects needed to help the UK to meet its targets.

This would be followed by a separate document setting out specific schemes, including electricity transmission cables, pylons and wind farms, that form part of the Government’s net zero plans – in order to put the “full weight of planning law” behind each of the specific proposals.

Ministers would also slash the seven-year planning process to build new transmission cables and pylons.

The final 18 months of that period is the Development Consent Order process, when the Planning Inspectorate decides whether to approve the project.

“Three to six months could be shaved off that,” said Mr Pettigrew.

John Armitt, the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, which advises the Government, suggested plans would always draw some local opposition.

But he added: “You can’t really accept that those local concerns are going to prevent the major transitions that this country has got to make over the next 20 years in dealing with net zero, dealing with climate change, and fundamentally in terms of the transmission lines, electrifying our country in a way that it’s not relied on electricity to such a large degree in the past.”

Mr Pettigrew added: “The more clarity you have in the policy and the easier it is for the inspector to then make a decision.”

He added that currently, “if there are local communities that feel that the balance hasn’t been structured correctly between where it’s landing and how it impacts their community, then they can take a secretary of state to judicial review”.

But he said: “That in itself can be a two-year process. More clarity around the need case, more clarity around the urgency and that it supports [government] policy, and you are minimising the likelihood of that legal challenge.”

National Grid has told the Government that an initial draft National Policy Statement failed to adequately set out the “pace and urgency” required. It submitted a formal response to a consultation on the document, which closed a week ago.

Mr Pettigrew said: “What that statement needs to do is be absolutely clear about the need and the pace and urgency of the energy-related infrastructure that is needed, to recognise the critical urgency of extending the networks to support net zero.

“By doing that, then, if the Planning Inspectorate follows that policy, then there’s less ambiguity and therefore less likelihood that it will be legally challenged, which quite often happens in these processes.”

National Grid has proposed that the Government wins support from local communities with incentives such as lower energy bills for those living near new energy infrastructure.

Barney Wharton, director of Future Electricity Systems at Renewable UK, the renewables industry body, said: “I think there needs to be a kind of a national debate about what infrastructure we need and where and how we build it. Because it is a fundamental change in the way we design our power system.

“And there are going to be areas of the country, as we’re seeing in East Anglia, where you haven’t had electrical infrastructure before and now you’re going have a lot more – and that’s a change.”

Maps drawn up by National Grid show hundreds of miles of new pylons and overhead cables which it says need to be completed by 2030, including a 112-mile power line between Norwich and Tilbury to connect two wind farms off the Suffolk coast.

The project, which runs through Therese Coffey’s Suffolk Coastal constituency, already has significant opposition in East Anglia.

Last week, National Grid published plans for 55 miles of new power lines between North Humber and High Marnham, in Nottinghamshire.

Bottlenecks in transmitting power from Scotland to England are expected to increase to as much as £2.5 billion by the mid-2020s, as National Grid is forced to pay wind farms to switch off and buy more gas-generated power.

The net zero department is expected to publish a “connections action plan” in the summer and a review is currently examining ways to halve “delivery times” for grid infrastructure, such as overhead cables and pylons.

A spokesman for the department said: “Since 2010, we have increased the amount of renewable energy capacity connected to the grid by 500 per cent – the second highest amount connected in Europe.   

“We want to go further as part of our plans to power up Britain with cleaner, cheaper and more secure homegrown energy.

“That is why we’re working to cut the time it takes to connect projects, building upon work already under way by network operators and Ofgem.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/01/pylons-forced-on-public-net-zero-goal-environment/

And then of course is the cost of all this!