National Policy Statements

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Charles Hendry]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The £1 billion is specifically and only for that project. As I said, that is more than any Government anywhere in the world have allocated to a single project. The additional plants will be funded either by the levy introduced in the Energy Act 2010, or from general taxation. We are looking at the best way forward in terms of deliverability and the Treasury is examining the issue. The funding of projects 2 to 4 is separate from the funding of project 1, which has the £1 billion available to it.

The revised renewables NPS has taken particular account of comments on biomass sustainability for generating stations using biomass as fuel. We have also revised the text regarding noise from onshore wind farms, which is different from general industrial noise, so a specific assessment methodology is used to take that into account.

The method of assessing noise from a wind farm is described in “The Assessment and Rating of Noise from Wind Farms”, known as ETSU-R-97. The report recommends noise limits that seek to protect the amenity of those living close to wind farms. The recommended noise levels are determined by a combination of absolute noise limits and noise limits relative to the existing background noise levels around the site at different wind speeds.

Policy document 4 relates to gas supply and oil pipelines. We have clarified that the gas supply infrastructure and gas and oil pipelines NPS covers only oil and natural gas pipelines and not CO₂ pipelines, which will be an important matter in relation to carbon capture and storage development. We have also added a new section describing the impacts on gas emissions due to the flaring or venting of gas.

Policy paper 5 relates to electricity networks. We have tried to make sure that Government policy on undergrounding and the need to treat each application case by case is expressed more clearly. I welcome the decision by the Institute of Engineering and Technology to make an authoritative investigation of the costs of undergrounding, particularly in relation to the issues that the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) has raised, so that we can have a clear fact-based assessment of the different costs involved.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

rose—

[Charles Hendry]

I thought that might encourage the hon. Lady.

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[Tessa Munt]

Thank you. Will that investigation examine the cost of under-sea infrastructure as well? I understand that the project will look at networks not just underground, but under-sea. Is that correct?

[Charles Hendry]

That is my understanding of the report. We are all keen to have a fact-based scientific assessment of the relative costs. I know that in the hon. Lady’s constituency and many others there has been great concern and a need to know the costs of different ways of dealing with the issues, so I hope the report will examine the under-sea aspects as well.

[Tessa Munt]

rose—

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

rose—

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[Charles Hendry]

I shall give way again to the hon. Member for Wells and deal with both issues together.

[Tessa Munt]

How can I and my constituents be assured that the study is wholly independent and is not in any way informed or directed by National Grid?

[Charles Hendry]

I would hope that the nature of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and its track record for independence and fact-based assessment, would be sufficient to assure everyone that a thorough approach will be taken. There is no doubt in any of our minds that if anybody tried to steer its conclusions one way or the other it would publicly require them to go away. I am absolutely satisfied that the process will be independent and robust, but in due course the institute will publish the full report so that it can be peer-reviewed.

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[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

We have a scandalously short time in which to address these issues this evening. I have calculated that if we were to stack vertically the documents we are talking about this evening—important documents fundamental to the future of our energy planning—the pile would be 7 inches high. We have therefore been allocated 21 minutes per inch of document. As I have seven minutes, I will address just one third of the documents by focusing on EN-1 and EN-5. However, I hope the powers that be will press through the usual channels for a lot more time in the Chamber to discuss these documents as they go through the consultative phase, because it is just not right that we have such a short time to get to grips with them.

EN-1 is an overarching policy document setting out our energy planning framework for the future. It deals with our climate change commitments, and our commitments to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. That, in turn, means the documents have to address the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy supply. The Committee on Climate Change wrote to the Secretary of State for Energy on 17 June, stating baldly:

“The path to meeting the UK’s 2050 target to reduce emissions by 80% requires that the power sector is largely decarbonised in the period to 2030 (e.g. average emissions should be about 100 g/kWh in 2030 compared to around 500 g/kWh currently).”

I assume that the Government largely agree with the Committee on Climate Change that to meet the requirements of our climate change budgets this, or something like it, should be the scenario and that that will be reflected in the planning documents that are published. After all, if we are to achieve these goals we cannot just hope they will happen; we need to plan for them, and to achieve them through a combination of planning signals, market incentives and supply and trading arrangements.

EN-1 states that under some of our pathways some revisions have taken the scenario beyond 2025 towards the 2050 targets. It states:

“Under some of our 2050 pathways, energy would need to be virtually emission-free”.

[Tessa Munt]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Infrastructure Planning Commission successor body appears to be carbon-blind in its decision making under the arrangements? The IPC successor body should give significant weight to any project’s carbon emissions and ensure that cumulative emissions from the various projects do not jeopardise the UK’s carbon targets and their budgets. The national policy statement should provide an additional safeguard to that process.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. In response to the Energy and Climate Change Committee report examining the previous national policy statements the Government have accepted they need to undertake some sort of spatial planning arrangement which will look at the cumulative impacts between various arrangements as they progress. She is also absolutely right that in this NPS that question of decarbonisation of supply needs to be part of the process, not anterior to it. The current level of emissions of our energy supply means that if we are to get to that position, gas at about 450 grams per kWh unabated probably will have no part to play in the energy economy by 2030—when abated, it comes in at about 100 grams per kWh.

What are we planning? What are we looking for in these overarching documents? According to EN-1, we are planning to require a capacity of about 113 GW of installed power sources by 2025, which is a substantial increase on 2010 levels because of the penetration of wind, in particular. According to the scenario of that capacity projection, wind needs greater capacity to balance its variability. So the 113 GW, which is an increase on the about 80 GW of installed capacity that we have at the moment, will need to be installed by that point. However, 22 GW are expected to go offline, including most nuclear plants and a number of power plants, under the large plant directive and the industrial emissions directive. So 59 GW of new power will need to be built between now and 2025, one way or another.

If we reach the renewables targets for wind, and we probably will, given the amount of wind power already in planning, we will have about 33 GW of wind power on the grid. That means that we will need 26 GW of new build non-renewables or non-wind. Of whatever type, they will, for the reasons I have outlined, need to be low-carbon or lowish-carbon. Some 8 GW are under construction and almost all that construction relates to gas. That leaves a balance of 18 GW. Some 9 GW is not under construction but has planning permission. The Government dismiss that as uncertain, but 5 GW of that relates to gas; plans for a further 7 GW are under consideration, most of which also relates to gas. So it appears that most of the current gap is set to be made up by gas. As the Select Committee has been told by the Committee on Climate Change, more gas is in the pipeline in terms of planning, permissions or build than we need for that future decarbonisation strategy to work.

The NPS says that

“it would be for industry to determine the exact mix of the remaining 26 GW of required new electricity capacity, acting within the strategic framework set by the Government”.

If industry decides as it appears to be deciding, it will choose gas. If it is to be gas and that gas is unabated or only partially abated, the decarbonisation of our electricity supply will not happen.

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[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I will return to my favourite subject of the electricity grid, particularly as it affects Somerset, Suffolk and the other areas that have been mentioned today. Electricity networks have a significant effect on the beauty and tranquillity of the countryside, and to date the industry has been guided by a set of principles called the Holford rules in routing new overhead lines. I particularly want to note that the second draft of the NPS on electricity networks proposes to weaken the standing of the Holford rules. The latest draft says only that decision makers

“should bear them in mind”.

That is likely to mean that there will be no requirement on either the electricity companies to demonstrate that they have sought to avoid damaging impacts on important areas of landscape, or that the decision maker should base its evaluation for proposed overhead transmission line schemes on whether the Holford rules have been met. Neither does there seem to be an expectation that the mitigation measures suggested in EN-5, at paragraph 2.8.9, should be carried out for schemes where one or more of the Holford rules are not met. The effect of this will be seriously to weaken the protection of the countryside from unnecessary or intrusive energy infrastructure.

The other minor points that I would like to make include the wording of several sections of the NPS where minor changes of wording could have major impacts. I will write to the Minister in detail about those if I may, but certainly there are paragraphs in EN-1 that relate to the historic environment where there is weakened protection for non-designated but still important heritage assets, and there are impacts on the visual landscape that relate to the regional economy departing from existing protections for nationally designated areas such as national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty. In addition, EN-1 also seems to advise applicants on how to circumvent green belt protection.

Finally, I cannot reflect the comments that were made earlier, and I should like to be sure that there is some way in which local authorities can negotiate a realistic contribution from developers, especially, for example, for residents in my area, which will be providing a storage facility for nuclear waste on a temporary basis that I understand to be somewhere in excess of 100 years.