Power Struggle: Delivering Great Britain’s Electricity Grid Infrastructure (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for delaying the Committee for another four minutes, but my own Select Committee was cancelled at short notice at 4 pm, so I was able to come here and listen to the considerable wisdom on an issue with enormous implications for the future. In the four minutes, I have time to comment on only one factor—one omission, if I may call it that—in the otherwise excellent and very thorough report.

The omission relates to the transmission and grid system. We have all read in the newspapers about the long queues of would-be applicants to transform from fossil fuels to electricity, and maybe the intention of getting them reduced will be achieved. But there is one obstacle. Although we can get the electricity to switching stations on the coast—from the growth of sea pylons in great numbers, where most of our electricity will come from on fine days—we know that the problem is then the transmission: getting it from the switching stations to the city gates and the markets where it is needed. We know that the problem there is the pylons, which the noble Baroness, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others mentioned. Obviously, this is a huge difficulty and problem. Why? It is expensive and there are all sorts of planning problems and delay in getting these pylons built, because there is a general hostility from environmentalists to this sort of thing.

Therefore, one needs to ask: are we on the right track at all in thinking about the pylon problem? Are there alternatives? Yes, there are: hydrogen tanks, tankers and other vehicles can of course transmit hydrogen just as they transmit petrol now. We do not need pylons to get petrol and diesel to every garage in the United Kingdom. People say, “That’s all very well, but it’s much too costly”. But I wonder. Think about the alternative cost: the £1 billion or more that we pay each year not to produce electricity, despite the increased demand for electricity and the shortage of it—an absurd situation. Think about the enormous delays that will result from trying to put up 1,000 kilometres of new pylons, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Chandos, and others. Think of the years of planning that lie ahead while every single pylon is disputed. Think that the likelihood is that hydrogen technology costs will come down and we will be able to transmit hydrogen by pipeline or tanker easily, and a great deal of these pylons will be completely redundant in five to 10 years’ time. Are we on the right track at all?

That is all I have to ask in my four minutes. I fear that we are not on the right track. I fear that the costs of alternatives—the electrolysis for transforming north Atlantic electricity, clean, to the vast new demands of the electric economy that lies ahead—have not been calculated or set against the enormous cost of trying to build 1,000 kilometres of new pylons, which is said to be £60 billion; I will believe it when I see it. This is really a great gap in the whole argument and strategy which NESO has not addressed properly. Previous Governments probably have not, and the present Government do not seem to be doing so. Therefore we have a case, as the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, said, for another report to look at the real facts of the overall transmission situation in the coming decades. That is all I have to add to an otherwise excellent document and much wisdom around on the enormous problems of trying to get adequate clean electricity 24/7, not intermittent, to our industry in the future. Unless we do, we will fall even further behind in competition in world markets.