Government will have to be ‘brave’ in the face of local opposition to meet net zero goals, former energy head warns
The government will have to be “brave” in the face of local opposition to its electrification plans, including hundreds of miles of new pylons, a former head of energy has warned.
Adam Bell, head of policy at consultancy group Stonehaven and former head of energy at the department for business, energy and industrial strategy, told City A.M. that lump sum payments for households were unlikely to be enough to convince opposition to new projects.
“It really depends on how brave the government is feeling,” he said, when commenting on the potential impact of Nick Winser’s recommendations into grid reform last week.
In his freshly published review, the electricity markets commissioner and former chief executive of National Grid, call for the speeding up of grid connections with a ‘carrot and stick approach.
This would include lump sum payments to households alongside reduced opportunity to object to new projects, as the UK’s races to decarbonise the country’s electricity grid by 2035 and meet its long-term net zero ambitions.
Winser estimated this could halve connection and installation times from 14 years to seven, bringing them in line with pace of construction and development for new renewable projects, so that new electricity cables and substations can keep up with new wind turbines and solar panels being built.
However, Bell believed that providing the future system operator (FSO) – a new vehicle backed by National Grid and Ofgem to oversee electrification from next year – with the ability to minimise objections to new projects did not mean there would no longer be challenges.
While it would cut time for delivery it would also intensify political backlashes, and he argued it was down to the government to decide whether it “really wants to get busy building or get busy appeasing”.
“Reducing such rights comes at a political cost, and it’s not clear that the payments the review envisages would be enough to prevent people living near a planned line from seeking judicial review of the FSO’s decisions,” he said.
The energy expert noted that there has already been a backlash from Conservative politicians with seats in Essex and East Anglia, who are opposed to a mooted 112-mile expressway of pylons planned by National Grid, running from Norwich to Tilbury.
MPs lead backlash to energy security projects
The group, known as the Offshore Electricity Grid Taskforce and consisting of MPs and local councillors, is instead calling for an offshore network of electricity.
Tory MP for Harwich and North Essex MP Bernard Jenkin told BBC Radio 4 that the report vindicated their views, as Winser calls for a “strategic approach” rather than “endless offshore to onshore connections, creating a real sort of messy patchwork.”
He said: “What Winser’s report does is a complete vindication of our campaign. He says there’s little political or engineering contracts being established or at system level, that policy statements are all out of date.”
A separate review is due later this year into the proposed East Anglia network, examining the feasibility of offshore routes to avoid local opposition and speed up transformation of the country’s electricity infrastructure.
Meanwhile, trade body Renewable UK has released new polling from Survation showing that nearly two-thirds of people (64 per cent) support the development of new electricity grid infrastructure to boost energy security, while only five per cent oppose it.
The survey showed that 61 per cent of people said a guaranteed community benefit fund provided by a grid developer would make them more in favour of an electricity power-line within five miles of their home.
This support increased to 65 per cent among Conservative voters.