National Policy Statements (Energy)

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charles Hendry]

Thank you for your strictures, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will be very observant of them in considering which interventions to take.

My hon. Friend does make an important point. We are working with communities that have volunteered to take forward some of this work to see whether there are appropriate locations for a waste disposal facility, and we are committed to making this happen. We have expressed an ambition that we should have such a facility open 10 years earlier than previously planned—by 2029 rather than at the end of the 2030s. I hope that that will show to him and others our commitment in this area.

On the renewables national policy statement, we do not specify areas in which to locate wind farms, nor have we placed limits on generating capacity in each area, although, as in all cases under the Planning Act 2008, it will be open to the Infrastructure Planning Commission—or, through the Localism Bill, to Ministers—to refuse an application for consent if it considers that the adverse impacts outweigh the benefits. To complement the electricity generation national policy statements, policy statement EN-4 addresses requirements for gas and oil infrastructure and EN-5 addresses those for electricity networks. Changes in the pattern of supply and demand, and shifts in technology mean that we will need more of both those types of infrastructure in the coming decades.

Electricity transmission networks most familiarly mean overhead lines supported on pylons, and it is only that type of connection that requires Planning Act consent. Considerable concern has been expressed about the impact on landscapes of an increasing number of networks. The overarching NPS and the electricity networks NPS make it clear that developers should consider undergrounding or subsea cables for transmission networks. The electricity networks NPS also explains that although it would be preferable for grid connections to be applied for at the same time as the generating infrastructure it is associated with, there are circumstances where this may not be economically sensible. We have also stated that the Holford rules should be followed when developers are planning the routes of proposed overhead lines. That actually strengthens the policy, because before this NPS the use of the Holford rules by developers was voluntary.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I hear what the Minister says. I hope that once the IPC has some guidance, perhaps from the failure of the KEMA study, Sir Michael Pitt and the IPC will have some other way of considering the undergrounding and subsea options on the basis of costs that are realistic and that they will be judged against the work that has been done, both in this country and abroad.

[Charles Hendry]

I could sense that my hon. Friend was going to intervene even before she had risen to her feet, because she has been such an assiduous campaigner on these issues. That work is being taken forward. We want very robust evidence about the alternative costs, and I hope that she is reassured by my words about the need to consider alternatives.

The sixth NPS is on new nuclear power stations. It sets out the issues to be considered as part of the planning process where new nuclear power stations are proposed; a number of other matters are, of course, considered under other regimes. It also identifies the eight sites that we have concluded are potentially suitable for new nuclear development. That provides an important degree of clarity for industry and communities over the next few years. However, any application to build a nuclear plant on those sites still needs to go through the same rigorous processes as any other proposal under the Planning Act. The nuclear NPS also clarifies how the IPC should consider any issues regarding waste during its examination of an application and the role of the regulators and their relationship with the IPC. In addition, we have set out how applications for non-listed sites are treated by the IPC.