New Pylons: East Anglia

Debate between Richard Bacon and Jerome Mayhew

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

I am glad to lend my support to the arguments of many MPs whose constituencies are directly affected by the proposed pylon route of East Anglia GREEN. I represent the constituency of Broadland in Norfolk, which is not directly affected. The run starts at Dunston in south Norfolk, just south of Norwich, heads through Suffolk and into Essex. The reason I wanted to join the debate is to question the rationale for reinforcing the transmission network from Norwich south in the first place.

The consultation, which has already been much criticised and will be by other contributors, starts with the assumption that there is a problem that needs to be solved. That problem is additional power being applied to the network at Dunston, at Norwich south. The power comes from offshore wind farms, both those connected in the past five years, since the previous review by Ofgem in 2015, and the huge number of additional wind farms anticipated between now and 2030, and thereafter.

We know from last year’s National Grid ESO report of an anticipated 17 GW of offshore wind constructed in the southern North sea alone—part of the 50 GW by 2030 ambition—but there is a problem. Although we won the argument for a holistic network design leading to an offshore transmission network, with the Secretary of State making that announcement on the Floor of the House, we appear to have lost the battle when it comes to East Anglia. The holistic network design comes into force from 2030 onwards, we are told, yet the connections for East Anglia affect our counties between now and 2030. It is between now and 2030 that the 17 GW will be constructed and connected.

We have here the most classic example of putting the cart before the horse. Much better would be to look again at the design for East Anglian connection, follow the advice of the National Grid ESO report, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), and create an offshore transmission network. Accelerate it; do not accept the argument that it can be put in place only by 2030 and push for 2025. If we do that, on its own estimates, there are £6 billion of savings to be made: £3 billion in reduced capital expenditure, because it is much easier for a wind farm to connect to a grid that is already offshore, and £3 billion of further operating savings between now and 2050.

[Mr Bacon]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, with this enormous extra offshore capacity that is coming, if we do not follow his suggestion of an offshore grid as soon as possible, which is Government policy, we could be faced with the current nightmare being duplicated or triplicated? In a few years it could be said, “Well, actually the pylons we installed a few years ago are not efficient, so we need even more pylons.” How lunatic would that be?

[Jerome Mayhew]

Of course, Ofgem would say, “Well, we’ve done the calculations. We know that there isn’t going to be any more offshore wind, and we think this is going to be enough.” But in 2015, when it last looked at this subject and was asked to assess whether an offshore transition network would provide value for the money to the consumer, its advice to the Government was, “No, it would not, because we will never have enough offshore wind to justify it.” Well, how wrong it was. Just seven years later, here we are bitterly ruing that short-sighted failure to make anticipatory infrastructure decisions. We could have avoided all these arguments and be leading Europe in the development of this innovative design, which now is absolutely technically possible. In fact, I have spoken, with others, to the managing director of Hitachi, who told us that this is off-the-shelf technology now.

We come back to the consultation, which has just been closed, and the position of the regulators and National Grid. Their argument is essentially that it is too late to change the decision about connection points. We already have radial connections coming into Norfolk. Given that the power is being delivered to south Norfolk, the network has to be reinforced to draw the electricity south, hence East Anglia GREEN and 112 miles of pylons. However, I invite the Minister to take a step back and look at the rationale behind the decision to write contracts to allow the offshore wind farms to connect to Norwich south. All those offers must have been subject to planning permission, because the regulator knew, or ought to have known, that the connection point did not have sufficient capacity to deal with the anticipated measures.