Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest: I still live in Suffolk and probably within a mile—perhaps even 500 metres—of where a substation is proposed to be built. The area of the country that I used to represent in the other place is likely, within 10 to 15 years, to accommodate about 30% of the UK’s electricity supply, through generation and the substation infrastructure for offshore wind and interconnectors. That is all within an area of 25 square miles, at best, and includes just one extra pylon, which is on-site at Sizewell C. As a consequence, local people are understandably concerned about the scale of development that is happening in one of the most environmentally protected parts of the country, which is critical to the Government for meeting their legislative targets set out in the Environment Act 2021.

My issue here is not about Sizewell C. I appreciate that my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford has strong views on what sort of nuclear technology should be placed there, but mine is more a beef with the onshore infrastructure for offshore wind and interconnectors, which have been put on green land that is being used right now for food production and environmental enhancement. Quite frankly, this greenfield is being trashed as we speak. Farmers have not been able to plant food. In the grand scheme of things that does not mean that the shelves will be empty but, nevertheless, yet another field is being taken out of food production.

I have tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. There is no sight of any assessment that the Secretary of State would have had to undertake in line with Section 19 of the Environment Act 2021—the environmental principles policy statement. Instead, we have a habitat regulations assessment, outsourced to Atkins. In essence, the non-technical summary says that because the updated energy NPSs

“do not set out specific locations for development”,

The assessment is “high-level”, and therefore we cannot know the potential effects

“until specific proposals come forward”.

The challenge here is that NESO knows exactly where lots of energy projects will be because it has already issued connections. It does this because of the long-term nature of some of them, and I am conscious that there will be a change, helped by the legislation coming through in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, that is not on a first come, first served basis. For what it is worth, I think the primary legislation is not as strong as it is claimed to be and that it could be more development-ready, but it knows where this electricity generation will happen, particularly for the 2030 clean energy plan, so I was very disappointed that Ed Miliband decided not to be more—how can I put it?—probing.

That said, on other aspects of the environment, I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State has, contrary to the proposals in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, kept the mitigation hierarchy. That is in EN-1 paragraph 4.6.10. I am also delighted to see the reference to the local nature recovery strategies in paragraph 4.6.14. That is good news but, frankly, the NESO knows where these sites and the projects will be, so although Parliament is not being misled, it is being let down with this crass comment through the HRA.

In terms of local communities, of which I am still part, the public consultation on these proposals started in April and concluded on 29 May. When can we expect to see at least the summary responses, if not the Government’s response to it overall? It would have been helpful to have that before this debate. I should have said at the start that I could easily speak for 15 minutes on each of EN-1, EN-3 and EN-5. I requested of the Government that we have this debate, so I am glad we are having it. There has not been one in the Commons, and I am tabling an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to try to rectify that for the future.

EN-5 talks about sulphur hexafluoride, which has been used in industry for the last 50-plus years. It is brilliant at what it does. It insulates really well and contains things. The challenge is that it leaks, and it is the most potent greenhouse gas known to man. If you think that carbon dioxide is one, SF₆ is the equivalent of 24,300.

Cooling all these substations then becomes a challenge for a lot of the rural communities that this is going to affect. By the way, one substation is the entire width of Parliament Square going right to the edges of the buildings. In fact, it is four times the size of that and the height of the Treasury. That is just one. Most of these places are interconnections. Offshore wind farms need two of them: one for the developer, and then National Grid, NESO or whoever runs it now will need its own. To give the Committee a sense of proportion, the volume of this room, the Moses Room, then becomes the length of the House of Lords Chamber and the Royal Gallery. That gives noble Lords a sense of proportion of moving away from SF₆—which, by the way, I think is reasonable, but that is what is happening on green fields or is being proposed right around this country. That is what many rural communities are very upset about.

The other thing that surprises me in EN-1 is that paragraph 3.2.4 states:

“It is not the role of the planning system to deliver specific amounts or limit any form of infrastructure covered by this NPS”.


Why not? That is exactly what the strategy should be about. We have moved from a hub-and-spoke basis for the grid in this country to stuff coming principally from the coast and rural areas. The challenge becomes saying that it is the nature of a market-based energy system.

How have we ended up with this in the first place? When ScottishPower Renewables was developing EA1, it said it was going to do it through direct current, and that it is the best way, especially high voltage DC. For what it is worth, I think the Government should be insisting on HVDC as it is the most effective way. It would reduce the amount of generation and inter- connection that we would need as a country if we moved to HVDC as the principal method of transmission. That was what ScottishPower Renewables started off with.

To accommodate that, ScottishPower Renewables worked with the council, the developer and various bodies. The cable came onshore at Bawdsey. It went through Martlesham on its way to Bramford, an already developed station. The decision was made to allow the compulsory purchase of a much wider area so that, when other windfarms came onstream, the cables could literally be pulled through. It needed only one tunnel, basically, one channel. It needed to be quite wide because there is a lot more heat with DC, so you need more land to be able to absorb that. When you are doing underground cabling, that is the main difference between DC and AC and why there is now this strong preference—it was actually by the previous Government, my Government—for wanting pylons everywhere. However, in the contract for difference, ScottishPower Renewables basically did not get what it wanted, so it switched to the traditional AC, which meant fewer turbines. The same amount of land was taken, but ScottishPower Renewables did not now have to find other sites along the Suffolk coast to absorb this—is my intention to keep going, so I had better sit down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I was considering aspects of information that would be provided. It would have been helpful to know at least the summary responses, but we will have a further opportunity at the next stage of consideration to go into this in more detail.

Building on what the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, mentioned, it is right that energy from waste should not be considered any more, partly because we have more than enough now, and planning permission does not need to be granted to any more projects. I fully respect the circular economy approach. That was started by the previous Government and has been continued, which is good news.

I go back to my concerns. Most of my focus is on EN-5, which covers transmission infrastructure on the ground, underground, overground or in the air. One thing slightly concerns me in paragraph 2.2 on

“Factors influencing site selection and design”.

In paragraph 2.2.2, regarding:

“the location of new generating stations or other infrastructure requiring connection to the network … system capacity and resilience requirements determined by the National Energy System Operator”,

two things happen. I am slightly surprised that an extra factor here is not: where is the electricity needed? Surely, the siting of all this network should be as close as possible to where it is needed. That is energy efficient.

I understand the issue about nuclear power stations. I do not accept it for SMRs, but for something like Sizewell C, I can understand why that needs to be away from places of high population. On the other elements, I think in particular of the connectors. There are two interconnectors, one from Belgium called Nautilus, which is now going into the Isle of Grain after a successful campaign to go to a brownfield site with existing substation infrastructure. The other one is LionLink, which is due to come into a place called Walberswick. Officials were quite open about this. They were not going further down the coast because they would have to crisscross 17 other cables. The seabed in that part of the country is almost like the M25 on steroids. The National Security Strategy Committee should be considering this because this also comes back to energy security and resilience.

Another interconnector that has already been granted permission is called Sea Link and is basically backup insurance. If the network goes down in the south-east of England, energy can be diverted from Sizewell C. That is costing £1.5 billion, and a lot of this energy gets lost in transmission. The majority of electricity in this country is needed in London and the south-east, so why are we not putting more into areas closer to London and other parts of the south-east where there is existing infrastructure? By that I mean Bradwell and the Isle of Grain. It would be straightforward to develop something in Tilbury. As a consequence, I am concerned about that aspect.

I am looking at paragraph 2.12.3. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich talked extensively about East Anglia, which I would expect him to do. I know it covers parts of where I live. Twice in this document, the east of England is singled out, predominantly, but not exclusively, East Anglia. It also covers significant parts of the east coast all the way from Scotland down to the Wash. That is why I hope that careful consideration will be given to the responses coming from that part of the country.

I will speak briefly regarding something that comes up in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill as well as here. The Minister has already referred to it. It is the public benefit. This goes wrong when damage to the public benefit or public area is set aside when the commercial benefit collapses. I would have more time for this thinking through the national policy statement if, in a market-led system, they sign up to it and do it and do not pull out, causing more misery for people in different parts of our country.

I could go on. When I last debated a previous national policy statement in the other place, I spent 45 minutes on it, and that was on just one statement. I will not do that today, but I just say to the Minister that I understand how much work has gone into this by officials and I understand that the overall thing is energy security and net zero. I get that, but these things impact local communities. I ask him to think about the genuine science, the evidence about the transmission of energy and about biting the bullet on getting a lot of this infrastructure a lot closer to London rather than destroying some marvellous parts of our country.