Electricity Grid Upgrades

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Marie Goldman

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

What is interesting about Germany is that its presumption was in favour of undergrounding, so the idea that that is a great big experiment and we do not know what it means is incorrect. There is plenty of expertise in Europe. When we look at cost comparisons between undergrounding and pylons, it also depends on the territory we are dealing with.

Our problem is lack of community consent, as Fintan Slye, the executive director of the National Energy System Operator, rightly says. It is a question of swings and roundabouts, but in the case of Norwich to Tilbury, the consequence of delays from trying to run roughshod over the very widespread and well-funded public opposition will be to put up the cost, which makes the cost of undergrounding advantageous over pylons. That is my point.

I am not necessarily disagreeing with the principle of what the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) says, but undergrounding DC cables has great advantages. The latest estimated cost of just one year’s delay for Norwich to Tilbury is four times more than the additional £1 billion cost of undergrounding HVDC— I hope the hon. Gentleman was listening to that: £4 billion a year for delay against £1 billion extra for DC undergrounding. I think that puts this into the field of a no-brainer. Why would we spend all that money fighting through the courts for a very unpopular scheme when we could save time and legal expense by going for a different method?

In the National Energy System Operator’s East Anglia network study, which was published earlier this year, undergrounding HVDC was set out as alternative option 8. The great advantage of undergrounding HVDC is that there will be far less public resistance. Moreover, as I have said, the planning procedures could be streamlined— as recommended to the Government recently by Charles Banner—to conform to the regime for installing new major water pipes. If we had the same planning regime for underground cables as we did for water pipes, we could speed up the process for undergrounding cables.

Underground HVDC offers a scalable, future-proof solution that can be delivered with far less environmental impact, with public support and much more quickly. Schemes without pylons that are already planned by National Grid—for example, in north-east England—are being delivered without public opposition or long delays, which seems to be an enormous advantage for the Government’s objective of decarbonising the grid. There is no comparable resistance from campaign groups, which is clear evidence that underground HVDC gets public support, making it a far more practical and feasible solution.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I pay tribute to the hard work that the hon. Member has done cross-party on this issue for many years, and I am grateful to be joining that as another east of England MP. The issue of public consent is important, because the proposals could have such a huge impact on local communities. Developers suggest that they could provide community benefits, but with all due respect, the idea of having a community hall 5 miles down the road does not mitigate having massive pylons going past someone’s back garden. Does the hon. Member agree that the problem with regard to public consent is that people who are very well organised will understandably continue to kick up a fuss, which will delay the creation of the renewable energy that we absolutely need and certainly support?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention. As the new Liberal Democrat MP for Chelmsford, she demonstrates that this is a cross-party campaign, supported by people who are as committed to decarbonisation as anything else.

As has been said, there is no comparable resistance from campaign groups in the north-east of England. That is clear evidence that underground HVDC receives public support, making it a far more practical and feasible solution.

In East Anglia, the opposition to overhead pylons is not subsiding; it is growing and becoming more intense. Campaign groups are united in their resistance to this outdated approach to infrastructure. The Government, including the Minister, have made it clear that local campaigners will not be able to block their nationally important mission to build clean energy infrastructure across the UK. We are not blocking; we are trying to help. In my constituency, one local group wrote to National Grid, in response to a consultation, saying:

“By all means, build closer to our houses and shorten the route, just put it underground.”

That demonstrates that communities are not opposed to infrastructure or the objectives behind it. They are just against bad decisions to achieve it.

I mentioned streamlining the planning system to bring it into line with what is required of water companies laying major water pipes. There is a massive underground Anglian water pipe being installed from Bury St Edmunds, across my constituency to Abberton reservoir in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). That includes digging a trench through the sensitive landscape of Dedham vale across the Stour valley, almost exactly where the pylons or alternating current undergrounding will go. Nobody is objecting to that underground scheme. I have not had a whimper of complaint about that pipe going in.

Why stick to pylons when that method is slower and delays will make it far more expensive? The Government may argue, as the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) mentioned, that community benefits will compensate for the disruption to affected areas caused by pylons, but those ideas will not buy off the hostility to pylons and other unwanted infrastructure. Solutions that respect communities and their interests, as well as deliver for our energy network, are the future.

For Norwich to Tilbury, the onshore undergrounding HVDC proposal will cause significantly less environmental damage than overhead cables and AC undergrounding. Let me expand on that. For a start, the entire route would be underground, not just through the sensitive landscapes. The cable trenches required for undergrounding HVDC cables are far narrower than for AC cables.

AC undergrounding is proposed for the area of outstanding natural beauty, the special landscape area that I share with my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). That requires a 120-metre-wide trench, because AC cables need to be spaced out. That means a very wide swathe of destruction, as that vast trench is dug and refilled, and everything in its path is destroyed.

It is extremely expensive to avoid going through archaeological sites. The Stour valley is an archaeological site of the same importance as Stonehenge. If there had been stones in the Stour valley, we would have a Stonehenge, because there is evidence of a wooden henge. Ancient tribes lived there in prehistoric times and it was a significant area throughout Roman times and the middle ages.

All of that is at risk, in addition to the massive destruction of trees, ancient woodland and hedges, in order to install AC underground cables. I am all for mitigating the effect of pylons by undergrounding, but let us not kid ourselves that it is a solution for the most sensitive areas of landscape. It is also much more expensive to underground AC cables than DC cables. I would very much like the proposal to underground cables to be extended to other areas, such as the Roman River valley, which is technically not in the special landscape area but is just as special. The Government have an obligation to respect sensitive countryside, so that could be another cause for a judicial review. A much better solution would be to underground DC, not AC, cables through that sensitive landscape.

Another reason why this proposal is so advantageous is that offshore DC to onshore AC requires huge DC-to-AC converters at the cable end points. When DC current generated by a wind farm lands somewhere such as Friston in the constituency of Suffolk Coastal, there has to be a massive DC-to-AC converter for it to go into the AC grid network. If we started building a DC grid network—for example, if energy ran all the way from Norwich to Tilbury on a DC line—all those connections could go straight into the DC network, avoiding the need for extra infrastructure. Incidentally, that would apply to the interconnectors for energy coming from the continent. Electricity arriving from the proposed Tarchon Energy interconnector would be DC, so we would not need a massive DC-to-AC converter at Ardley in my constituency; we could have just one DC-to-AC converter at the point at which the electricity needs to be converted to AC much nearer London—at Tilbury or even the Isle of Grain.

It is clear that HVDC is right for many parts of the United Kingdom, not just East Anglia. Wind power stations are increasingly located along the coast or just off our coastline, and a DC transmission network would reflect that. Converting power to AC at landfall is inefficient and duplicative. A properly designed onshore and offshore HVDC network would reduce the infrastructure needed, cut down on converter stations and enable us to focus on building for real demand, rather than just peak production.

Globally, HVDC is becoming the standard for modern energy networks. By investing in HVDC now, the UK can maintain its leadership in renewable energy, create jobs and develop skills that will keep us competitive. The alternative is clinging to outdated, mid-20th century technology that will leave us falling behind other countries. Germany will not give up HVDC undergrounding altogether, but that is the presumption in our planning system, which I suggest the Government need to revise.

The Government must show decisive leadership and embrace an HVDC future. This is about more than just reducing costs and avoiding delays; it is about ensuring we meet our renewable energy goals in a way that works for communities, the environment, the economy and the planet.