National Grid: Pylons

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Pauline Latham

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I chair a group of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk MPs, some 15 of us, known as OffSET, the Offshore Electricity-grid Taskforce. We are campaigning for an offshore electricity transmission system in place of what National Grid now calls Norwich to Tilbury, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) referred. I also join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) on securing this debate.

We in OffSET share our objective with ESNP—Essex Suffolk Norfolk Pylons, which is the citizens’ campaign against pylons—and we are backed by a petition of 32,000 people and growing, across the three counties. We all want the same: to make the best use of wind power from the North Sea, maximising the use of green electricity in the UK at acceptable cost, by providing new capacity to get offshore wind electricity and onshore solar to consumers in London. The more we have studied the proposals, the clearer it has become that the present Norwich-to-Tilbury plan will not meet those objectives. In fact, they are against the UK national interest and should not be approved by Ofgem.

I say that with no sense of blame for anyone involved. I think that the Minister, his predecessors, DESNZ officials, National Grid Electricity Transmission, National Grid ESO—Electricity System Operator—and Ofgem are all doing their best. The very fact that we now have a concept called “holistic network design”, however, underlines the shortcomings of the piecemeal approach driven by the old regulatory regime, which has given rise to the proposal.

We are delighted that the Government initiated the offshore co-ordination support scheme to fund studies into alternatives to the original National Grid proposal. That resulted in the “ESO East Anglia Network Study”, containing an evaluation of 10 further options for amending or improving Norwich to Tilbury. The shortage of time may preclude going back to the drawing board and starting a new offshore design from scratch, but Norwich to Tilbury is already discredited, and undeliverable without substantial revision.

ESO’s modelling still finds that the majority of proposed network designs, including all plausible options, fail to transmit the power from where it is generated to the high-demand areas and in particular to the constrained area of north London. The Government—I have written to the Minister about this—must insist that National Grid ESO conducts further modelling to resolve the northern boundary constraints into London. Option 5b in ESO study’s mentions a possible link between Tilbury and Isle of Grain, which might resolve the problem, but it is the very option that ESO has not yet modelled. Without that, Norwich to Tilbury cannot possibly be justified, and we have the data to prove it.

Under all plausible scenarios, interconnectors would export that clean electricity to Europe for 80% of the time at a loss to the UK, in order to avoid making constraint payments to the wind farms. That cannot possibly justify the 60 million pylons across our landscapes. That is the main reason why I oppose the new inter- connector with Germany called Tarchon, which would join a new National Grid East Anglian connection node near Ardleigh in my constituency. Ironically, that connection causes so much of the environmental damage. It requires the Norwich-to-Tilbury project to divert to the east of Colchester by crossing the Dedham Vale special landscape area and then to double back to the west, parallel to the line of the A12. Even undergrounding high-voltage AC cables is hugely disruptive to the landscape and its archaeology.

Tarchon would not proceed without an Ofgem-approved cap and floor agreement. Ofgem’s press release stated:

“Interconnectors can make energy supply cleaner, cheaper and more secure”,

but none of those three claims applies to Tarchon. The ESO report found that Tarchon will not increase UK electricity security even in the most extreme case and will not help us to achieve net zero. In fact, our exports reduce Germany’s carbon emissions but put ours up, because we continue to rely on fossil fuels to keep the lights on in London.

It gets worse: ESO’s analysis of the system constraints concludes that power will be exported even when overall UK prices are high. The constrained northern boundary into London means that Tarchon is expected to export power 80% of the time, regardless of domestic prices.

What about the cost to UK electricity bill payers? Tarchon will cost £5 billion, underwritten by electricity bill payers, and at least £7 billion in returns to the largely foreign investors will be protected. We cannot allow it to proceed. The fact that high-voltage direct current undergrounding has emerged as a viable option means that the Government should pause the great national grid upgrade. In Germany, HVDC is the default option—

[Mrs Pauline Latham (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Ben Lake.