Offshore Wind Substations: East of England

Debate between George Freeman and Peter Aldous

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Had I been in charge of energy policy at the relevant time, I would have doubled nuclear capacity when we could have got it cheap and invested more in long-term research on a whole range of renewables, including tidal. But we are where we are, and tonight my constituency faces the enormous challenge of hosting this national infrastructure.

I want to make it clear that I am a strong supporter of renewable energy. Indeed, if the wind is to be used, I would rather it were used offshore than onshore. Investment in offshore wind in East Anglia is phenomenal, and it will generate a large number of jobs. Much more importantly, it will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and dramatically accelerate our work on climate change; it will lessen our dependence on energy from Russia and the middle east; and it is generally a very good thing. I do not want anything I say to be taken as in any way against the offshore wind generation revolution.

East Anglia is now the global hub of offshore renewable energy, and many of the points I am raising tonight impact on Norfolk as well as Suffolk. I am delighted to be joined tonight by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), and to have the support of the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is here on the Front Bench, muted by virtue of her high office but present and supportive as ever—with a thumbs up for the camera.

I want to raise three questions tonight. First, what strategic options have not really been debated properly in Norfolk, Suffolk or East Anglia, and have the Government looked, or required the relevant agencies—in this case, National Grid—to look properly at those options and do a proper cost-benefit assessment and environmental impact assessment? Secondly, what guidance and provisions cover small communities such as Necton when they have to host national infrastructure on the scale that we are talking about? When I talk about a substation, I am not talking about something the size of a container that hums in the rain behind a hedge; these are the size of Wembley stadium, and I shall have two of them outside one village. Thirdly, what can a community that is being asked to carry that kind of infrastructure expect in the way of proper consultation and community benefit?

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

The offshore wind sector deal, which was launched by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth in Lowestoft and Yarmouth last Thursday, provides for the Government and the industry to work together to maximise the benefits of offshore wind to the UK and to regions such as East Anglia. The sector deal makes specific reference to the need to ensure that the impact of onshore transmission is acceptable to local communities such as Necton. Does my hon. Friend agree that this provides the framework for the Government, the industry, National Grid, the Crown estates, councils and MPs to work together to put in place a sustainable solution to the problems that he is quite rightly highlighting?

[George Freeman]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that excellent point, and I hope that the Minister will pick up on it in her closing comments. He has pointed to something very important.

The key question that is being asked in our part of the world is: if we are to host this incredible investment—there is up to £50 billion of investment already in the pipeline; I have two wind farms connecting through my constituency and there are 10 more coming—what voice should the people of Norfolk and their elected representatives have in shaping the way in which that infrastructure is connected? At the moment, it looks very much like a free for all. Each wind farm applies for its own cabling and its own substation, with the result that we waste energy, we waste huge amounts of land and we massively increase the environmental impact. This leaves Norfolk powered by renewable energy but disempowered when it comes to the democracy of those decisions and without any benefit. In our part of the world—I say this as a supporter of renewable energy—it is beginning to feel as though the applicants are using the national significant infrastructure planning regulations to bypass and circumvent the need for any meaningful conversations at all. This explains why I have had such strong support from other colleagues in the area.

I have taken an interest in this, and I have been a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department, so I was quite surprised that I first heard about the scale of this infrastructure in my role as a constituency MP, when I was confronted by the application for the Dudgeon wind farm. At the time, the proposal was to put it close to Necton. I did not particularly have a problem with that, but I did have a problem with the siting. It was proposed to put it on the top of a hill in an area of natural beauty with environmental protections. Anyone who had actually been to that area would have said that it was a daft place to put a substation. With the active co-operation of the then applicant company, we sat down with the parish councils and were able to agree that it should be put in the low-lying land next to the village of Necton.

A few years later, in 2013, it became clear that the Vanguard and the Boreas wind farm applications were coming, and that they would need another substation. That was my first surprise, because I felt that the first substation would have been big enough for all those wind farms. However, it turns out that each wind farm will have one. The process of consultation, led by Vattenfall, has led to increasing levels of concern not just for me but for the local community. Throughout all the consultation phases, no one is actually listening to the voices of the people on the ground. We have ended up with this enormous structure placed on top of the hill, visible to five villages and raising all sorts of environmental impacts, including light pollution and impact on the landscape. This has happened in the teeth of a howl from the local community. They do not mind having a substation, but could it not have been put out of sight in the low-lying land next to the previous substation? You could not have made this up.

What has been shocking in this process is the absolute lack of interest from the applicant in the voice of local community representatives, from the parish council to councillors to the MP, because it seems to have been led to believe that it is able to circumvent that local representation under the nationally significant infrastructure planning rules.

The more that one looks into the process by which we have ended up here, the clearer it has become that there has been no proper consideration of the strategic options for taking this scale of energy offshore. Indeed, a number of people in both Norfolk and Suffolk have suggested at various points that it would be rather more efficient to have an offshore ring main to collect the electricity and then have it brought onshore at one or two points with a major substation, instead of requiring each individual wind farm to have its own cabling and substation. You might think that a sensible proposal, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I see you nodding, which is encouraging—neutral though you are—but at no point in the past three, four, five, six or seven years has there been a strategic discussion in Norfolk or Suffolk to which the elected representatives at council or parliamentary levels could contribute.

It appears that the National Grid has merrily gone through the national planning process and has responded to applications, but we are in danger of having hugely unnecessary levels of cabling and substation infrastructure, all of which involve high-security installations that represent something of an energy security challenge to the UK in these dangerous times. To illustrate that point, the two wind farms coming to my constituency are responsible for 2,500 acres of land over which 115 km of cabling will run, and reasonably sophisticated local projections have shown that if the cabling were unified for just those two, it could be reduced by 80 km, but there seems to be no basis upon which that conversation could be had. Therefore, what consideration has been made of such options? If there has been none, what consideration should be made of not only the cost and benefit, but the environmental implications? I know that the Minister, as a passionate activist and campaigning Minister, takes such matters seriously.

In the event that little villages such as Necton end up carrying major substation infrastructure—hopefully on the right site—what benefit should such communities expect? It has always seemed fair that if a village should host a wind turbine, for example, it should benefit in a small way locally. Where a village takes a massive piece of national infrastructure, perhaps the benefit might be proportionate. The people of Necton would be happy if something flowed back into the village by way of some community facility. Given the scale of the infrastructure, that could perhaps come as a transport upgrade to the dangerous junction with the A47. Normally, I would relish sitting down with the applicant to try to broker something sensible, but the way that the regulations appear to have been drafted means that there is a no conversation to be had, which seems wrong.

It is late at night, and I have made my points, so I will invite the Minister to reply. However, I close by saying that the applicant should not be able to plead that because this is national infrastructure—although understandably that may bypass the minutiae and the eddies and currents of the local planning system—then somehow the voice of the local community and elected representatives should be cut out. That is important not just for Necton and Mid Norfolk, but for trust in our planning system and for the sense that this energy revolution will work for everybody’s benefit. At the moment, however, it looks horribly like it will be for the benefit of a few energy companies and very few people in our part of the world, so I welcome the Minister’s interest in this matter both offline and in her comments now.