David Toke on Labour and Green Party steps forward and back
The wind industry has curtly rejected the opposition of the Green Party of England and Wales to new pylons in the East of England. Adrian Ramsay, the Green Party Co-Leader and new MP for Waveney Valley has called for a review of the pylon plan which is designed to connect offshore windfarms to the National Grid. Ramsay wants a review of the decision and argues for the connections to be done by an offshore transmission grid.
Peter McCrory, RenewableUK’s Policy Manager for Networks & Charging, told me that:
“The idea that we’re not putting a huge amount of electricity infrastructure offshore is incorrect. We are putting huge amounts offshore, including the transmission lines to take power from Scotland to England….Adrian Ramsay is calling for a review. But there have been reviews already.”
Not only will the extra offshore transmission system cost more than the onshore option but the offshore system will take rather longer to put in place. According to the analysis conducted for the National Grid Electricity Supply Operator (NGESO) it will also take at least until 2034. This is compared to the (Government) preferred onshore line option which should be ready by 2030. A new review will cause an even bigger delay. We have a climate emergency, and the logic of the wind industry is to want the quicker solution so that more power from offshore wind can be sent to the grid earlier.
It is all very well saying that the preparation for more offshore transmission should have been made a long time ago. However, we are where we are. The proposal that is ready to go is the onshore pylon scheme. Demands for a “pause” in construction whilst a(nother) review is done seem oddly in contrast to the Green Party’s call to attend to a climate emergency.
Meanwhile, back at the Miliband Energy Ministry, his proposals for “Great British Energy” could radically reduce the costs of offshore wind compared to the existing way of building offshore windfarms in the UK. This will be very important for rolling out the large number of GWs of offshore wind that are needed to meet the exacting targets for clean energy by 2030.
Under the Great British Energy Company concept the initial pathway of the new offshore windfarms will be developed and owned by the state company, Great British Energy, and paid for by public investment. Projects will (I expect) then be sold off through a competitive tender system based on what price developers put forward to be paid for the electricity produced by the projects. The electricity will be sold to the state, as is done now through the “contracts for difference” (CfD) system.
Essentially, the Government will be taking a lot of the risk currently facing private capital when they decide, under the present system, to buy a lease for some land on the seabed for an offshore windfarm. That is a “risk” investment for a start which the developers must pay. The Crown Estate may get the money, but in effect the energy consumer will be paying that money back to the developer later through their bills, plus a lot of interest for taking on the project risk. Miliband’s model is broadly similar to one that has been proved to be a winner in Denmark. It should be a winner in the UK as well.
There is less good news on the home energy efficiency front. Green heating researcher and campaigner Richard Lowes warned that “I’ve heard repeatedly that new members of parliament are being lobbied by the gas industry on hydrogen for heating which we all know is a terrible idea.’
Heat pumps are several times more energy efficient than conventional gas heating. Following this big lobbying push by the gas industry it seems that the new home energy building standards (the “Future Homes Standard’) will be delayed until next year. Miliband has promised that solar panels will be mandatory on new homes (good!) but has been silent about whether heat pumps will betoo.
Originally (as planned back in 2021) the new heat standards, to effectively mandate heat pumps in new build, were planned to apply to new building proposals from 2025. However, this timetable slipped under the Conservative Government, and it now appears to be slipping still further under Labour. Mandatory heat pumps for new buildings (where they are very cheap to install) are already in place in Scotland – so why not in England?