Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department will (a) operate and (b) meet the maintenance costs of the electricity superhighways from Torness and Peterhead in Scotland to Hawthorn Pit and Drax in England.

Ofgem, as the independent energy regulator, uses the price control process to determine the amount of funding allocated for network infrastructure projects, including the Torness and Peterhead projects. This includes regulating the cost of their build, ownership, operation and maintenance. The Government welcomes such strategic network projects and their acceleration to support the 2030 offshore wind ambition, as set out in Ofgem’s Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment framework. National Grid ESO estimates that these links will facilitate the transmission of an additional 5 TWh of energy from north to south in their first year.