From Climate Scepticism

By MARK HODGSON

Pile on the cost

In Gridlock I transcribed an interview on BBC Radio 4’s flagship PM programme, with Ben Wilson, Chief Strategy Officer for the National Grid. The interviewer, Evan Davis commenced the interview thus:

Now, if you build a new wind or solar farm, helping to de-carbonise the electricity grid in Great Britain, be aware you might have to wait fifteen years for National Grid to connect your facility to the Grid. In fact, there are real worries that it is the Grid which is the constraint on building up renewable energy.

Broadly speaking the interview confirmed that there are serious issues in this regard, and discussed the steps that the National Grid might take to solve the problem of gridlock.

It seems as though the powers-that-be are listening, and possibly also acting. On 1^st July, the Daily Telegraph featured an article under the heading “Pylons to be forced on public to hit net zero goal – Hundreds of miles of overhead cables needed to power electric cars and heat pumps”. The Telegraph article is behind a paywall, but Paul Homewood has the story, and the article can be read in full at his site.

The gist of it is that it is finally dawning on those who are ostensibly in charge of the UK’s energy policy and its implementation, that net zero is about to collide with reality, unless urgent (and potentially highly unpopular) measures are taken. That, of course, is already the case with regard to things like forcing people to buy expensive electric cars that don’t work for them and which they don’t want; making them pay huge amounts for driving old “polluting” cars in towns and cities; trying to force people to use expensive heat pumps, that can’t work well in many UK homes, instead of gas boilers that do work well; endeavouring to move us off cooking with gas and on to electricity instead, etc., etc.

The other part of the equation is that the electrification of our lifestyles, replacing the use of fossil fuels in the home, on the roads, and in the generation of electricity itself, means that we are going to need much more electricity. Generating that electricity by “renewable” technologies, such as onshore and offshore wind, and solar, means transferring the electricity from many more locations scattered all over the country and beyond, to the population centres where it is needed. And as the interview I mentioned at the top of the article made clear, we already have massive delays in the system when it comes to introducing new renewables to the National Grid.

The Daily Telegraph article suggests that currently the UK generates “up to” (weasel words) 14 Gw of energy from offshore wind farms, but the government’s current net zero plans involve increasing that to 50 Gw by 2030. Fossil fuel generation is to be eliminated by 2035 (by 2030 if the Labour Party wins the next general election and implements its plans). BY 2035, some estimates suggest that we will need 50% more electricity than currently, and without fossil-fuelled power stations generating any of it, the only way this can be achieved will be by the rapid erection of hundreds of miles of overhead cables and pylons. That will involve fast-tracking the planning process, even in the face of fierce local opposition.

And so the Daily Telegraph tells us that risibly titled Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is devising sweeping planning reforms. John Pettigrew, Chief Executive of the national Grid, is quoted as saying that:

it would be “incredibly challenging” to expand the existing network to meet the Government’s targets without major planning reforms.

Mr Pettigrew said: “Without planning reform, if you’re trying to get to 50GW by 2030, that’s going to be difficult … You have to see a shortening of the planning process.”

We are told that DESNZ supports the National Grid’s take on all this, and is keen to halve the time period that usually elapses before large energy projects currently receive formal planning consent.

Under the plans, ministers would issue formal guidelines – known as a National Policy Statement – later this year, effectively mandating planning inspectors to approve projects needed to help the UK to meet its targets.

This would be followed by a separate document setting out specific schemes, including electricity transmission cables, pylons and wind farms, that form part of the Government’s net zero plans – in order to put the “full weight of planning law” behind each of the specific proposals.

Ministers would also slash the seven-year planning process to build new transmission cables and pylons.

John Armitt, the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, doesn’t accept that local concerns can be allowed to prevent the major transition that net zero involves.

“Pace“ and „urgency” are the National Grid’s watchwords. It suggests that local communities should be induced (“bribed” would be the word I would use) to support new energy infrastructure by giving discounts off energy bills to those living close to such infrastructure.

Barney Wharton, director of Future Electricity Systems at Renewable UK, the renewables industry body, said that what is going on involves a fundamental change in the way we design our power system. The result is that some areas of the country, such as East Anglia, that haven’t had much electrical infrastructure before are now going to see lots of it. For instance, National Grid plans a 112 mile power line between Norwich and Tilbury to connect two wind farms off the Suffolk coast. There are also plans for 55 miles of new power lines between North Humber and High Marnham in Nottinghamshire.

That’s all problematic enough. As Paul Homewood observes:

And then of course is the cost of all this!

North of the border, the upgrade to the Beauly-Denny transmission lines was the subject of intense and bitter opposition. The damage wreaked on the countryside is well-known, but how many people realise that the cost of this was projected to be of the order of £330M? Or that it represented only a fraction of the work and costs in Scotland? Back in 2010, those costs were estimated at being £4.7Bn. That was then – now the ongoing cost is reckoned to be over £10Bn. In Scotland, National Grid’s remit does not run. Instead, electricity transmission is the responsibility of SSEN Transmission. Its website tells us that:

We are investing over £10bn to upgrade the network around key areas, connecting new onshore and offshore renewables generation in the north of Scotland so the power can be transported across the country.

How much had already been invested, and precisely how much more than £10 billion this is all costing, we aren’t told. But we are told who will pay for it:

Transmission investments are paid for by GB consumers through their electricity bills. These costs are recovered through the Transmission Network Use of System Charges (TNUoS) which are covered by electricity customers and electricity generators across both the north of Scotland and GB.

In turn, that is used an excuse to avoid the use of underground cables, with SSEN preferring unsightly overhead cables in many locations, despite local opposition to the visually damaging impact this has on the environment:

While undergrounding and subsea has less visual impact there are some considerations which need to be taken into account, such as the land required for construction, the environmental impact and the additional costs associated with undergrounding which will ultimately be passed onto the end consumer. Furthermore, the higher the voltage, the more challenging it is to underground due to the increased impact higher voltages have on underground cable corridors and associated environmental and land use impacts.

Other factors are mentioned to justify using overhead cables rather undergrounding, and there may well be some validity to them, but of course none of this would be necessary in the first place were it not for the net zero policy. That is made abundantly clear by an article on the BBC website early in April this year, under the heading “Campaigners fight ‚pylon threat‘ to Highlands”:

SSEN Transmission said the project was part of a UK-wide programme of works that are required to meet 2030 renewable targets.

The “project” in question is a new powerline between Spittal in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland, to Beauly. That’s the same Beauly that has already suffered from the line south to Denny, as mentioned above. But that’s not the end of SSEN’s targeting of Beauly, which lies at something of a transmission lines crossroads. As SSEN’s own website makes clear, the plans go much further:

In order to support the continued growth in onshore and offshore renewables across the north of Scotland, supporting the country’s drive towards Net Zero, further investment in network infrastructure is needed to connect this renewable power and transport it from source to areas of demand across the country.

Following extensive system studies, Spittal to Beauly has been identified as a critical corridor in establishing this required reinforcement, connecting into new substation sites at Spittal, Loch Buidhe and Beauly along the way. Network studies have been completed demonstrating the need for a new 400kV connection between these sites, supported by the instruction to ‘Proceed’ in National Grid’s Networks Options Assessment (NOA) Report and the subsequent Holistic Network Design study.

The pylons are bad enough. There are also the substations:

Extensive studies informing the ESO’s Pathway to the 2030 Holistic Network Design confirmed the need to reinforce the onshore corridors between Spittal and Beauly, and Beauly and Peterhead, and an offshore subsea cable between Spittal and Peterhead and also offshore/onland cable between Beauly and the Western Isles.

To enable these new reinforcements, a new 400kV substation is required within a 10km radius of Beauly to connect to the following:

• New Beauly area HVDC Converter Station
• Existing Beauly/ West Balblair 400kV substation
• Existing Beauly- Denny 400kV OHL
• New Beauly- Blackhillock- Peterhead 400kV OHL
• Spittal – Loch Buidhe – Beauly 400kV overhead line

To think that Beauly is said to have derived its name from a comment by the visiting Mary Queen of Scots: „Ç’est un beau lieu“. Sadly, beautiful places count for nothing where net zero is concerned.

South of the border, in England and Wales, we must look to the National Grid. A year ago the BBC reported that its upgrade was to cost £54 billion:

A huge upgrade of the UK’s electricity network would see a host of pylons and cables transporting power from offshore wind farms around the UK.

Power lines from Anglesey to Swansea, Grimsby to Hertfordshire, and Loch Buidhe to Spittal would be built to pull electricity from the sea to the mainland then to homes and businesses.

National Grid ESO said it was the biggest network upgrade in 60 years.

It appears that most of the electricity pylons will follow traditional lattice designs, but some new ones, mostly those associated with Hinkley Point, might be less intrusive. Still, it’s somewhat ironic that a major part of their structure is made in China, using energy generated by coal-fired power plants, before being transported half-way round the globe. That’s all the more ironic given that the acting president of National Grid Electricity Transmission is quoted as claiming that their use is to deliver increasing amounts of low carbon energy and support the UK’s drive towards its net zero target.

As the BBC tells us the grid upgrades extend to Northern Ireland too. The cost of the upgrade required to “help its 910,000 customers connect to low-carbon technologies like electric cars, solar panels and heat pumps” is put by the BBC in its report at £3 billion. As usual, the cost is being incurred only because of the drive to net zero:

The Centre of Advanced Sustainable Energy (Case) said Northern Ireland’s targets for dealing with climate change were „ambitious“ but could not be met without major investment in energy infrastructure.

The cost to consumers is put at £10 to £20 per annum, which is curious. The Managing Director of NIE Networks owns up to this cost, he says, because of the importance of being transparent with customers. Which is perplexing, because even at the higher end of that range, and over a period of ten years, it adds up to only £18.2 million, which is a long way short of £3 billion. Somebody else must be paying, then. Perhaps the UK taxpayer?

Adding up the costs of the grid upgrades across Scotland, England & Wales, and Northern Ireland, we arrive at a figure of more than £67 billion. That’s around £2,500 per household, and is only for the grid upgrades at this stage. It factors in none of the other subsidies and costs associated with net zero.

Is there any good news associated with all this? Perhaps – just perhaps – this is the moment when reality about the environmentally destructive nature of the net zero project dawns on people living far away from the wind farms destroying our beautiful wild places (and the bats and birds that made their homes there). So far, the bulk of the UK population hasn’t really noticed the environmentally damaging nature of “green” energy policies. Now, however, pylons are coming to a place near most people. And the public, or at least a significant proportion of it, doesn’t like it. The plans for East Anglia have met significant local opposition. As the opposition website notes, National Grid’s plans involve:

180km of 400kV overhead cables

50-metre high pylons (except in the Dedham AONB, where they will be buried

From Norwich to Tilbury, cutting through countryside, past villages and near historic buildings in Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk

New 400 kV connection substation proposed at Elmstead Market, near Colchester.

And such things aren’t popular. Let’s hope that net zero is about to meet its nemesis.