Eastern Link Undersea Cable Electricity Generation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

The Eastern High-Voltage Direct Current Link is a multibillion-pound project, taking up to 4 GW of clean power from Scotland to England via HVDC subsea cables. That is enough to power 2.8 million homes. In cost and scale, it is the largest electricity transmission investment in the UK’s recent history.

Two undersea cables will run—one from Peterhead to Selby, and another from Torness, in East Lothian, to Hawthorn Point, County Durham. Preparatory work can already be seen on and offshore in my constituency, as a transmission station is constructed and soundings are taken for subsea cabling. What can possibly be wrong with that? Of course, it makes sense. Scotland has a surfeit of electricity and power. Scotland has been bestowed with a great natural bounty. Already, almost 97% of Scotland’s domestic electricity supply comes from renewable energy. In the north of Scotland, it has been 100% on many days.

For all its history, Scotland’s geography has been an impediment—distant from markets and with a climate that Scots have more often cursed than blessed. The four seasons in one day is sometimes the reality, not just Billy Connolly’s humour. Now, though, location and climate are of great advantage. Scotland has 60% of Britain’s onshore wind capacity and 25% of Europe’s potential offshore wind. Talk about the “Saudi Arabia of wind” largely refers to Scotland or Scottish waters. Those wind assets are in addition to existing hydro schemes, along with tidal and wave projects that are still largely to be commercialised. But as with floating offshore wind, concept will become reality.

One offshore site alone—Berwick Bank, at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, between East Lothian and Fife—will provide enough power for almost 3 million households. Scotland only has 2.4 million households. That field alone could provide for all of Scotland’s needs, and there are many more.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Ever mindful of the surplus that the hon. Gentleman has referred to, and given that Northern Ireland cannot generate its own electricity, we fully understand the value of sharing and maintaining good connections across the United Kingdom for electricity use. Does he agree that there must be good connectivity across the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and that that merits UK-wide investment? We in Northern Ireland deserve equal choice as well.

[Kenny MacAskill]

I am sure that the Minister will probably concur. We are not just in a UK market, but in a European market, as I will set out.

Transmitting the surplus energy south is sensible and would provide the supply required there from the surplus produced in Scotland, while also allowing access to the European network—and no doubt to Northern Ireland as well. Energy supply, as we have been finding from the Ukraine war, is transnational. Accessing European markets is an economic opportunity for Scotland and a necessity for other lands, as Putin switches off Russian gas. It also provides for the transition that all nations require to make, as global warming threatens our planet.

However, there is a problem, and that is grid capacity. Scotland’s renewable resource cannot get to market, as the transmission system cannot cope with the volume produced. As offshore comes on stream, that will only worsen, and it has resulted in the absurdity of 17.6% of turbines being switched off on an annual basis, the majority in Scotland. Turbines are curtailed not due to a lack of wind, but due to a lack of grid capacity. That absurdity is compounded by the perversity of paying energy suppliers more to switch off than to provide power, and the highest rates are paid in winter. As the House of Commons Library has confirmed, the figure has approached £1 billion over the last five years.

Debates on the debacle of privatising national infrastructure and the urgent need to provide for battery storage, along with those on the opportunities from green hydrogen, are for another day, but these are locally-based solutions that must be progressed urgently. Simply cabling 40% of the Berwick Bank energy directly south is another. Doing so without any compensatory payment to Scotland is theft of a nation’s natural resource —but that, too, is a debate for another day.