In this piece, I’ll pick up on some of the major entries on the Transmission Entry Capacity (TEC) Register over the last few weeks.

Over the late summer and early autumn, I highlighted some solar proposals from Noventum (460MW and circa 2,000 acres) at Long Stratton and Elmya (900MW and circa 4,500 acres) at Gissing. Both connect to the new “North Anglia Connection Node A 400kV” substation. Despite me raising it with them back in September, the local media have finally woken up to the scale of this and there has been coverage in the Eastern Daily Press (EDP).

Now, this week, two further schemes have been given connection offers to the North Anglia Connection Node A. Enso Green Holdings X Limited is proposing another 400MW solar farm with the project name Long Stratton 400. Using our usual benchmarks, this – like the Noventum scheme – will likely come in at around 2,000 acres. In addition, we have a 400MW Energy Storage System connection offer granted to Field Devco Ltd. Assessing land take for Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) is not straightforward, but a reasonable estimate would put a 400MW storage scheme at approximately 16 – 20 acres. Not nearly as vast as the solar proposals but, given the typical aesthetic, an example of which you’ll see further down this page, this is not insubstantial. Enso seem a relatively established player and you can view their website here. In terms of Field Devco Ltd, I can’t find a huge amount of information but they could well be a subsidiary, or UK development wing, of Field Energy. Both schemes have connection offers for 2034.

Taken together, the schemes from Noventum, Elmya, Enso and Field Devco could see approaching 9,000 acres of land developed in the Long Stratton area for new energy projects. I’ll stress once again, that we don’t yet know precisely where the North Anglia Connection Node A substation will be but, given the area these schemes are looking at, it’s clearly adjacent to Long Stratton and will, most likely, connect into the Norwich to Tilbury Pylon scheme, should it be consented. My prior entries on these pages set out more of this rationale.

In terms of other substantial connection offers made over the past few weeks, there are five further BESS schemes worth highlighting.

The first of these, which comes in at 1000MW, connects to the Yaxley 400kV substation and is proposed by NP SPV 40 Limited, whose name has now changed to Yaxley Energy Limited. The project name is National Power Yaxley Green Energy Park, which points to the scale of things to come at Yaxley – see my prior entries for a summary of the circa 13,000 acres of solar with connection offers in the area. This new BESS site would likely be around 40 – 50 acres in size. From experience, concerns about battery storage installations are not just about scale and impact on the landscape but, understandably given the BESS fire in Liverpool which took 59 hours to extinguish, focus on hazardous substance and fire management plans.

The second is mirror image, at Tilbury in Essex, connecting to a new “South Anglia Connection Node C 400kV Substation”. Once again, this is a new substation magically materialising along the yet to be consented Norwich to Tilbury pylon run. As at Yaxley, this is a 1000MW scheme and while it’s proposed by Natpower Marine UK Limited, their address is the same as NP SPV 40 Limited / Yaxley Energy Limited. The name too reflects that at Yaxley - NatPower Tilbury Green Energy Park.

There are two further BESS schemes, also at 1000MW, clearly from the same parent company, Natpower UK Limited (registered at the same Mayfair address), at Allington Green Energy Park and Immingham Green Energy Park. All four schemes have connection offers in 2034.

Another scheme which seems to have flown under the radar is at Sizewell in Suffolk. Proposed by Greenswitch Capital Limited, we have a 500MW energy storage scheme called Manor Farm given a connection offer to the Sizewell 400kV substation. Although not as large as the 1000MW schemes above, this is unlikely to be received well in an area already besieged by energy projects and adjacent to a National Landscape (formerly Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). Manor Farm has a connection offer date of 2034 and you can read more about Greenswitch Capital on their website here.

Finally, it’s worth highlighting the 600MW Lightsource BP Amlwch BESS and Hydrogen scheme granted a connection offer at Wylfa South 400kV substation in Wales, with a connection offer for 2037.

As I said previously, the Norwich to Tilbury Pylon proposals already include an East Anglia 400kv Connection Node (EACN), into which the North Falls and Five Estuaries Wind Farms, alongside the Tarchon interconnector, are due to connect in Essex. However, this is an entirely new substation and given connection offers at Long Stratton and now Gissing, we are getting a better idea as to its likely location. The map below shows the route of the proposed Norwich to Tilbury Pylon run and I’ve crudely circled Long Stratton and Gissing. These two connection offers help build up a picture of where the new 400kV substation, which is as yet un-consented and has no plans in the public domain, is likely to be located.

While I stress that it is not confirmed that this new 400kV substation will later form part of, and connect to, the yet to be consented Norwich to Tilbury Pylon run, it is becoming more and more difficult to think it won’t. These two connection offers correlate with my conversations with solar developers where, quite understandably from a commercial point of view, their search corridor for sites is along the Norwich to Tilbury pylon run as they know National Grid will want to sell redundant capacity on the line. Where, as ever, I have more quarrel is the piecemeal and opaque way in which the combination of schemes come about. These two solar schemes are contingent upon a yet to be consented 400kV substation, around which no information is known to the public, and that substation is - seemingly - contingent upon an unconsented transmission scheme, in the form of Norwich to Tilbury. Infrastructure begets infrastructure and nothing is being openly and honestly debated or consented.

Returning to the RPC Elmya scheme, using the now consented Sunnica scheme as our usual benchmark, we can reasonably assume that this scheme near Gissing in Norfolk will be between 3,600 acres and 4,500 acres in size. Alongside the Noventum Long Stratton scheme, this means we already have as much as 6,500 acres of solar with connection offers in this small part of Norfolk. Both schemes will likely be within 5 to 7 miles of the new substation. The connection date for the RPC Elmya scheme is October 2024, the exact same date as the Noventum solar farm.

Reform of connection offers and regional spatial planning around energy is underway, with Ofgem dealing with spatial planning and the new NESO tackling connection offer reform. However, this is slim consolation to those living along or around the new Norwich to Tilbury Pylon route, and the similar route between Grimsby and Walpole in Lincolnshire, into which connection offers seem to be being made at pace. Ed Miliband’s haste to decarbonise the grid by 2030 will be driving this and much more will follow.

Unlike me, NSIP solar developers have not paused for breath and two new schemes are worth mentioning. I’ll start with the larger of the two, East Lincolnshire Solar, which appeared on the TEC Register yesterday evening. This is an 800MW solar and energy storage scheme so, using our usual benchmarks, somewhere between 3,500 acres and 4,000 acres in size. The project promoter is Statkraft UK Ltd who are, by their own description, “Europe’s largest renewable energy producer and a global company in energy market operations”. The connection offer is at the Lincolnshire Coastal Node B 400kV Substation, with a connection date of May 2035.

I’ve done a little preliminary digging on the Coastal Node B Substation and there is very little information out there. Basic Google searches keep pointing to the proposed Grimsby to Walpole pylon run and the new associated substations but this could be a false positive. Searching the TEC Register doesn’t make things any clearer, as the Statkraft scheme is the only project connecting to it. Unlike other solar schemes, which helpfully give you a clue as to their location by their name, all this project tells us is that it’s in east Lincolnshire. The indicative map below, from the Grimsby to Walpole project page, gives us the location of four new substations associated with the scheme. The Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind Consultation Report Appendix, from March of this year, refers to the Holistic Network Design (HND) of July 2022 recommending two possible connection points be considered for the Project; Lincolnshire Coastal Node (Lincs Node) and Weston Marsh. This Node, albeit without the B, could be one and the same. The second map below is from the HND and the two do seem to line up in terms of the second new substation (large purple dots) from the north on Grimsby to Walpole map.

This is a fair amount of speculation and all we know as fact is that there has been a connection offer given to a new 800MW solar scheme somewhere along the Lincolnshire coast within 5 to 7 miles of a new substation. Typical levels of transparency from National Grid.

It’s far easier to give more detail around the Chapel Rush Solar Scheme in Yorkshire, which was added to the TEC Register just over a week ago. The Thornton 400kV Substation, to which it connects, is just east of Thornton and approximately three miles south west of Pocklington. A vast number of schemes already have connection offers there, including an energy storage scheme from Zenobe Energy Ltd (330MW), an array of already approved schemes from Balwen Ltd (including more large solar schemes) one awaiting consent from Elmya RPC UK Melbourne Ltd (300MW energy storage) and some projects in scoping from IGP Solar 19 Ltd (500MW solar and energy storage), Rewe 9 Ltd (200MW energy storage), GP Thornton Energy Ltd (400MW energy storage), and a 160MW solar scheme from Anesco Ltd.

The Chapel Rush scheme, at 600MW, will likely be in the region of 3,000 acres and within 5 to 7 miles of the Thornton Substation. The promoter behind Chapel Rush is Renewables UK Solar and Storage Ltd based in Swindon. They look to be part of RWE Technology, of the same address, who have a large portfolio of solar projects around the UK.

The scale or projects with connection offers at the Thornton Substation is vast and, alongside Yaxley in Suffolk and Biggleswade in Bedfordshire which I’ve written about previously, it seems to be an emerging hub for renewable energy connections.

I won’t repeat here my criticisms of the way projects appear on the TEC Register or our approach to solar and spatial planning more generally, for those please refer to earlier entries on this Substack.

Please consider normal service resumed and I will be back updating these pages regularly.

Energy is a weirdly tribal political issue. It basically goes something like this: far left – renewables only and nuclear will kill us all, left – renewables plus nuclear and decarbonise really fast, centre – renewables and nuclear but decarbonise a little slower, right – nuclear, hydrogen, cynical acceptance of renewables but let’s hang on to oil and gas for a while, far right – it’s all a globalist conspiracy and we’re weeks from George Soros and Bill Gates instigating  ‘climate lockdowns’. I would wager that I could determine who someone traditionally votes for simply by chatting about energy for less than a minute. There are few other areas where one could say that. Immigration, perhaps.

Returning to the accusation that I’m anti-solar, why has this come about? Well, I’ve led the charge against the Sunnica solar farm from a political perspective for some years. I won’t rehash the arguments but it’s a bad scheme that never should have been approved. In addition, I’ve sounded off about the scale and quantity of solar schemes in the pipeline for Suffolk. In fact, I referred to it as a ‘tidal wave’. Taking these two things together it’s not an unfair leap to have made.

There’s more that I’ve said publicly that could see me further painted as anti-solar. I’ve highlighted, repeatedly, how inefficient it is compared with other forms of energy generation. Taking a broad brushstroke approach, what I’ve dubbed the ‘Ronseal factor’; Nuclear does 95% of what it says on the tin (it has some downtime for maintenance), off-shore wind does around 65% (maintenance plus sometimes the wind isn’t blowing hard enough or is blowing too hard), on-shore wind does around 50% (the same reasons but the wind blows less hard generally) and solar in the UK…14%. Why is solar so gloriously inefficient? Straight out of the blocks, for three months of the year the sun isn’t high enough in the sky for it to do anything and for the remaining nine months there’s a good deal of cloud cover. Therefore, when people say six Sunnica solar farms generate as much energy as Sizewell C, what they mean is the generating capacity is broadly the same – not the actual output. In reality, you’d need around 40 Sunnica solar farms to be sure of generating the same amount of energy annually as Sizewell C and, even then, you’d get nothing for three months of the year. To put that in terms of acreage, you’re looking at 80,000 acres of solar to match the output of Sizewell C. The new nuclear power station at Sizewell will need 80 acres or, to be absolutely fair, 900 acres if you included everything through the build, maintenance and operation. How big is 80,000 acres? It’s bigger than the metropolitan borough of Birmingham. Looking at this in tandem with duration of consent, which is typically 40 years, and the rate at which technology is evolving – is greenfield solar really a good use of land?

Then there are the supply chain issues. There is, as yet, no guarantee around where solar panels are produced and how the workers are treated. In fact, quite to the contrary, dig into the subject and you’ll get increasingly alarmed about forced labour in Xinjiang, the appalling treatment of – in particular – the Uighur minority, and the wider production of polysilicon (an essential component in solar panels and 75% of the global supply is made in China). Back in 2022, members of the UK solar energy industry condemned and opposed ‘any abuse of human rights, including forced labour, anywhere in the global supply chain’ and went on to commit to  ‘the development of an industry-led traceability protocol’. Not too much happened until the Solar Stewardship Initiative (SSI) was launched in December of last year. What does this actually do? Apparently independent assessors will be able to evaluate compliance with ‘robust sustainability and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria within companies active in the solar value chain’. That word salad aside, the mission still seems high level and vague – ‘establish mechanisms to create supply-chain transparency’, for example. You would think somewhere between 2021 and 2024 someone would have figured out how to give this transparency, the industry must know where it is buying its panels from, but it has yet to come and nor has the government really pressed the issue. Perhaps they know the answer but don’t really like it.

Now let’s move on to the ‘tidal wave’ of solar facing not just Suffolk but the whole of the UK, particularly now the Tigger-esque Ed Miliband is excitedly bouncing up and down at the thought of all these highly ethical solar farms arriving by 2030. My major quarrel is one I’ve written about before – how connection offers are made and the fact National Grid ESO are legally obliged to provide one within six weeks. No thought is given to spatial planning and, therefore, vast swathes of solar follow new transmission lines, grid connection points and areas where there’s redundant capacity. It’s not driven by best land use or any wider strategic planning, it’s simply led by where we can plug it in.

So, there you have it, I’m anti-solar. Well, no, actually. I’m all for it. Just not the way we’re doing it. First of all, we need to fix the supply chain issue and that will make panels more expensive and solar, initially at least, less commercially viable but it’s important. We need those guarantees. We must not deliver our nation’s energy on the back of slave labour in China. There are, of course, ethical questions about all aspects of all forms of energy production but, hopefully, we can all agree forced labour and the treatment of the Uighur people is abhorrent. It is resolvable though and despite the industry’s procrastination, it should be pretty simple. It will drive up prices and in turn make the energy generated by solar more expensive but eradicating forced labour from the supply chain, or at least our supply chain, is worth it.

But how, you might ask, do we fix solar’s relative inefficiency in the UK? You can’t, although the technology continues to improve, which is why we need to focus on dual land use. Part of my opposition to the Sunnica scheme was the loss of good quality food-producing land. It’s about now someone pipes up and bangs on about 1% of the UK being golf courses and we only need 1% of the UK to be solar. Well, if you wanted to make another 1% of the UK golf courses, I’d have something to say about that too – particularly if they were all concentrated in the same places around grid connection points. But my real quarrel is this; why would you give over good quality food-producing land solely to something so inefficient. It’s just a waste. If you have a rooftop that’s doing nothing, then putting solar panels on it that generate 14% of their total capacity is a win. It’s a lot more than zero. You give dual use to something you live or work under. The same argument can be made for over car parks, schools, down motorway embankments, the sides of railway lines. The list goes on. The big challenge here is local grid connection points. The local distribution grid, managed in my part of the world by UKPN, isn’t up to snuff and not enough effort is going into upgrading it. This matters because to be able to sell excess power back into the grid and contribute to national energy supply, that local distribution network needs to be there and have sufficient capacity. UKPN are one of six Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) in the UK who between them hold the fourteen distribution licences. Let’s focus on this part of the grid as much as we are the transmission network because, ultimately, it means more decentralised power generation and less big infrastructure.

This argument about dual land use can be applied to agricultural land too. Enter agri-voltaics. These are, essentially, panels mounted vertically (rather than pitched), or mounted higher, between or under which you can still farm. This has the added benefit of being able to help reduce water usage by affording shade where it is needed. The panels can be relatively low and robots or casual workers pick crops between or underneath them or high enough – and far apart enough – for full size combines and farm equipment to farm under or around them. Italy is all for agri-voltaics, TotalEnergies in France have been doing some interesting trials and there is growing support in Germany. In effect, they shoot the food security vs energy security fox by allowing land to do both and allowing farmers to make more money out of the same piece of land. Early trials even suggest yields markedly improve. However, agri-voltaics still leave one glaring downside - the changing of our landscape. This is an altogether different argument and if we avoid our most beautiful areas, have the right mitigations, avoid settlements and public rights of way – ie take a constraints led approach, then it’s harder to argue against them. In fact, vertically mounted panels, in the correct location, could arguably have less visual impact than traditional ground mounted panels. We’ve yet to see an agri-voltaic NSIP scale proposal in the UK but I know we’re not far off having the first.

The problem of siting will remain and, at the moment, we’re still in a situation where infrastructure begets infrastructure with nobody watching over the whole. As I’ve mentioned previously, Regional Energy Strategic Plans (RESPs) will likely be coming in 2026, perhaps – with a fair wind – late 2025. Until then, however, we’re in a gold rush situation. I won’t return to it in detail but all of this is another argument for taking a breath and reverting to decarbonising by 2035 rather than 2030. It still allows us to reach net zero by 2050 but allows us to do it better.

I mentioned one argument at the start of this piece that I often fall back on and it remains the case. Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. It’s why we need an energy mix to make our supply in this country resilient. We need nuclear, small modular reactors, ‘pocket nuclear reactors’, hydrogen, methods of storage (battery and hydrogen), wind and solar. If we want to make best use of technology and our geography, while ensuring a fair and just transition to clean energy, then we need a balanced approach.

So, there you have it, I’m not anti-solar. I’m just against doing it badly.

The Norwich to Tilbury Pylon proposals already include an East Anglia 400kv Connection Node (EACN), into which the North Falls and Five Estuaries Wind Farms, alongside the Tarchon interconnector, are due to connect in Essex. However, I’ve yet to see mention of a North Anglia Connection Node, with - please note - the suffix A! Leaving open, of course, when B or indeed C might appear. We need to press National Grid, with some urgency, on where precisely this new North Anglia Connection Node will be but given the location of the proposed solar farm is Long Stratton, one can reasonably assume it will be within 5, to a very maximum of 10, miles from there. There are plans to expand the Norwich Main Substation to the east and west, which I recently wrote about Ofgem planning to accelerate, but the name doesn’t line up at all. Therefore, we can reasonably assume this is the first of one or more brand new connection points in the “North Anglia” area.

Earlier in the year, I met with a solar developer - who I will not name - and, to their credit, their preferred process of constraints led site selection was far better than we experienced with Sunnica. However, when discussing where, in the broadest sense, they were looking in our region, their search corridor aligned quite precisely with the proposed Norwich to Tilbury route. I queried this and they stated, as we of course know too, there will be redundant capacity on the Norwich to Tilbury line and National Grid will want to sell that capacity. Is this new Connection Node the first in what will be several steps of National Grid cashing in on that capacity?

In terms of Noventum and their Long Stratton proposals, these will be very much in their infancy given they’ve a connection offer of October 2034. The recently consented Sunnica scheme has a connection offer of 2027, so this project is some 7 years behind that. We first had discussion of the Sunnica scheme in public in around 2019, so we are unlikely to see lines on maps for 12 months. Noventum is emerging as a major player in the renewables sector, with multiple schemes on the TEC Register including one at Biggleswade which I recently highlighted. A lot more detail about Noventum can be found on their website.

The announcement of many more vast solar schemes being given connection offers is inevitable, particularly in the context of Ed Miliband’s 2030 decarbonisation target. However, what this proposed scheme at Long Stratton and the new North Anglia Connection Node highlight once again is the glaring absence of any true spatial planning and joined up thinking around energy generation in the UK. As I’ve repeatedly said, communities need and deserve clarity and the iterative and opaque way that schemes emerge, with connection offers granted prior to any consultation, does nothing to build trust in a just energy transition.

You can listen to these two admissions below:

In answer to the clear question about whether West Suffolk Council still oppose the scheme, Cliff says “no” and then goes on to say “we didn't oppose it, we had some objections to the scheme”.

This is quite the reversal of position from West Suffolk’s Labour and Independent “Progressive Alliance” and a position that has never been adopted or voted on in public. In fact, the last publicly stated position from the Council was prior to the May 2023 District Council elections when there was still a Conservative administration. Later in the interview, he says that the approval of Sunnica “puts Suffolk in a really good position”. There are, of course, jobs and skills benefits from some of the energy projects coming forward in Suffolk but few, if any, of those are associated with NSIP scale solar. There is a clear question here of public accountability and transparency - simply put, when did the Independent and Labour administration decide they no longer opposed the Sunnica scheme and why wasn’t this decision taken in public?

This apparent about-turn gives added context to what I expected to write about today, the withdrawal of West Suffolk Council and Cambridgeshire County Council from our joint legal action.

This action was on a key but narrow point of principle - that local councils were being shortchanged by the Secretary of State’s decision and not adequately compensated for the work we do discharging conditions attached to the scheme. During the examination, the local authorities put forward representations on what fair compensation would be and stated that the applicant, Sunnica, was not being sufficient in their proposals. The Examining Authority seemed to side with the councils in their judgement but the Development Consent Order (DCO) as presented to the Secretary of State didn’t reflect this. The Secretary of State, in making his decision, didn’t address this and thus, seemingly without consideration in what was an extremely hasty decision, left local councils inadequately compensated. In such an event, it’s then left to local councils - and therefore local taxpayers - to foot the bill. Given developers stand to make a huge amount of money from these schemes, it’s only right they and not local residents pick up the tab. This is all the more important in Suffolk where, as I’ve written previously, a raft of similar solar projects have been given connection offers.

In withdrawing from the joint legal action, West Suffolk District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council made it unviable for us to proceed for two reasons. First, a fifty-fifty split of costs between East Cambridgeshire District Council and Suffolk County Council was too much for East Cambridgeshire, who are a smaller authority than West Suffolk. Second, it would, therefore, have left Suffolk County Council trying to pursue this action alone. We considered this but our legal advice was as the local authorities adversely affected (ie the District Councils who discharge the vast majority of conditions) were not seeking to challenge the decision, we were highly unlikely to get permission to bring a Judicial Review (JR). In short, West Suffolk District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council killed the JR by withdrawing and making it too expensive and less credible.

Was this their plan all along and why did they initially join us in a pre-action protocol letter? I’m at a loss to explain. However, the cynic in me finds it hard to get beyond the thought that Labour councillors who form part of the ruling coalition on Cambridgeshire County Council and lead West Suffolk District Council’s “Progressive Alliance”, with independent colleagues, may have found it increasingly difficult to so publicly go against a new Labour government and Labour Secretary of State. The two councils will, of course, say we may have lost the legal action - this is true of any legal action but we were assured we had a reasonable chance of success. They will also say that it was possible we’d go through all of this only for the Secretary of State to make the same decision again. Again, this was a potential outcome but so too was the reverse - that the councils were adequately compensated. Fear of a negative outcome should not prevent us standing up for local communities and all of these outcomes were equally possible when we first sent the pre-action protocol letter.

This debate over fees and Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs) will rage on in the NSIP space and we need to continue to press for adequate compensation for local authorities. Developers will clearly favour a minimal fee arrangement that doesn’t address all of the costs local councils incur. It remains to be seen if the new Labour government will side with developers, as early decisions seem to indicate, or listen to us.

Despite the Independent and Labour Councillors that run West Suffolk District Council turning their back on local communities and now seemingly giving their public support to the Sunnica solar farm, there is still some hope. The Say No to Sunnica action group are continuing with their JR which, unlike ours, has the potential to quash the scheme. JRs from community groups are very difficult to mount and you can contribute to their fundraiser here should you wish to do so. I for one hope they are successful - as I have repeatedly said, the Sunnica solar farm is the worst NSIP we’ve ever dealt with.

You can listen to my full interview with Wayne Bavin on BBC Radio Suffolk here.

The driver for this seems to be interim 2030 Net Zero targets, with the consultation document stating at point 2.3:

“As part of the drive to meet Net Zero interim targets by 2030, there will be a significant growth in offshore wind generation and interconnector customer connections in the East Anglia and Southeast England areas. The network in these areas will require a range of reinforcements to provide these new customers with secure connections and to ensure that there is sufficient system capacity to allow the network to be operated in an economic and efficient manner without exposing consumers to either inefficient levels of constraint or investment costs.”

In a clear signal that National Grid Electricity Transmissions (NGET) are determined to press ahead with the project despite local opposition and calls for a pause, the document goes on to say at 2.8 and 2.9:

“NGET made an application for ECF under Part C of SpC 3.41 of their licence to enable funding of early construction activities for the project. These activities align to early enabling works, and early procurement commitments.”

“The ECF has been submitted at this stage as NGET is satisfied that their plans have sufficiently progressed to make this submission.”

Points 2.10 through to 2.13 speak to the scope of the acceleration, setting out:

“An opportunity has arisen to accelerate part of the Norwich Tilbury delivery works. NGET is contracted to deliver works to facilitate numerous connections at Norwich Main substation set to be delivered by 2027.

These include:

• Hornsea Offshore Wind Farm 3GW

• Equinor Energy – Wind Farm 1.3GW

• Norwich GREEN –1025MW TBC

• O&G Solar – Solar Energy 500MW TBC

• Innova Battery Storage - 400MW

To facilitate these connections, the existing AIS substation will be extended to the east and west, with the Norwich to Tilbury project planned to connect into two new bays in the western extension. NGET are engaging a main works contractor to deliver the substation extension works to facilitate the customer connections above. The FEED works for the new Norwich to Tilbury bays has been factored into the main works contractor’s scope to assess the overall substation design holistically, combining the Norwich Tilbury project’s needs with the requirements of NGET’s contracted customers.

NGET awarded a main works delivery contract for the substation extension works in March 2024, with delivery forecast to start later in 2024. By including the design and build of the two new Norwich to Tilbury bays into the substation contractors main works, NGET state that this presents an opportunity to deliver:

• Accelerated delivery of a key component of the project;

• An ability to optimise the use of skilled resources; and

• An opportunity to leverage cost efficiencies.

This will revise the completion date for part of the works to 2027, instead of 2030 as per the original Norwich to Tilbury programme (all subject to Development Consent Order (DCO) approval).”

The full consultation documents are online here and the consultation runs until 10 September, with replies to be sent to: RIIOElectricityTransmission@ofgem.gov.uk

At a time when I, and others, have led calls for the project to be put on ice while offshore and underground alternatives are properly considered this a blow for local communities and displays a clear desire on the part of the new Labour government and National Grid to push ahead with the new pylons through Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

If there is a small glimmer of hope here, it’s that Ofgem demonstrate in this announcement the willingness to be flexible to ensure projects are as coordinated as possible but just imagine how much more coordinated we could be if Miliband reverted to the 2035 target for decarbonisation and all alternatives to Norwich to Tilbury were properly considered. That Ofgem now seem to believe you can coordinate generation and transmission projects, shows if we are able to win the wider battle over Norwich to Tilbury, the door to a better approach is clearly ajar and that wider opportunity must be grasped.

I’ve held responsibility for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects in Suffolk since 2018 and I’ve gone on record multiple times saying this was the worst scheme to ever come across my desk. It should have been refused. Worse still, in his child-like haste to approve the scheme, the Secretary of State made an embarrassing, clumsy and wholly avoidable error in failing to address how local authorities would be properly compensated for the work they must undertake discharging conditions associated with the scheme. In short, he left already stretched councils – and therefore local council tax payers – footing the bill for this work rather than the developer. It is such an obvious error that the four local councils had no choice but to commence legal proceedings and issue a pre-action protocol (PAP) letter to the Secretary of State. The action from the councils will likely not be the only potential JR and we can only hope that the project can yet be stopped in its entirety.

The Secretary of State’s actions speak to a wider problem. A major pillar of the Labour Party Manifesto at the recent general election was ‘clean power’ by 2030 – ie decarbonising energy generation in the UK. This moved the target forward from an already ambitious 2035 under the prior government. As I’ve written previously, 2030 is an unachievable goal and, in his desperation to get there, Ed Miliband will be forced into increasingly poor, uncoordinated and rushed decisions. Officials will already be telling him it is unachievable, the industry is telling him it’s unachievable and now it’s been revealed that this target will have to be met without material contributions from carbon capture and storage (CCS), new nuclear or clean hydrogen. There is a chasm between the 2030 goal and any credible prediction for energy generation in this country. Not a single pathway from National Grid Electricity Systems Operator (ESO) predicts net zero power by 2030. It is clear, Miliband and the new government must abandon the 2030 goal and they must abandon it now.

Writing things like this could see me painted as a climate sceptic. I am not, as those that know me well will tell you - I am far from one. I believe we should decarbonise energy generation in this country to the prior timeline, that we urgently need to deliver energy security and that – yes – a changing climate is a real and present danger. For those sceptically tutting at me and muttering ‘the climate has always changed’ and ‘without CO2 trees will die’, consider this; the biggest driver of mass migration and conflict in the coming decades will be a warming world and the fact that places that could once grow food, no longer can. Unchecked, it will make the waves of migration currently seen across western Europe look like nothing before. So, if you don’t take climate mitigation and adaptation seriously for any other reason, consider our borders and the already huge pressure on them.

It's because I take these things seriously that I find Miliband’s 2030 goal so dangerous. To meet our energy needs, the amount of energy generated in the UK will need to more than double, likely nearly treble, from a base of circa 120GW to over 300GW in 2050. That energy doesn’t just need to be generated; it needs to be transmitted to where it is needed. The scale of change required to do this is vast and to deliver change on this scale you need to carry people with you. Already we can see that the uncoordinated and piecemeal way that this is being done is having the opposite impact. Speak to communities in East Suffolk, particularly around Friston, Aldeburgh and Saxmundham and they will tell you that nothing feels particularly just about the way the UK’s energy transition is currently being undertaken. This isn’t the fault of the new government, for too long the way connection offers are made (see what I’ve written about the TEC register and new solar farms) has been opaque and iterative. What was proposed as a substation for two wind farms at Friston, Scottish Power Renewables EA1N and EA2, has become a hub into which a myriad of schemes are connecting. Planning consent was never sought for a hub of this kind, it’s just emerged over time. There is not, and will not be until 2026, spatial planning around energy generation. At the moment, projects just ‘plug-in’ to the grid where there is capacity to connect, and National Grid are legally obliged to make connection offers.

Look at this in tandem with the Norwich to Tilbury Pylon proposals. We have seen from National Grid ESO’s own report that in 2034 under-grounding the project becomes at least cost equal, if not cheaper. We know that offshore transmission technologies are developing and being deployed overseas and that, by the second half of the next decade, will likely be where we need them to be to alleviate some of the strain on communities like East Anglia. That is why I, and others, have called for the project to be put on hold while alternatives are explored. That pause, however, is not compatible with Ed Miliband’s new 2030 goal.

It's not just Norwich to Tilbury, there are so many schemes coming forward at pace that could be delivered in a better, more joined up, way if we paused for breath. Returning to the prior target of clean energy by 2035 does not put Net Zero by 2050 at risk, in fact 2035 is in line with the Independent Climate Change Committee’s recommendation to achieve that goal. It is an exercise in vanity from the new Secretary of State and one, for the sake of our communities, that we need to convince him to abandon. In November of last year, David Powell wrote for Climate Outreach on the need for public engagement and the risk of a Net Zero ‘backlash’, we are very much at that point.

Doing our energy transition badly, and in a few short weeks Miliband has demonstrated he is doing it badly, will turn people against it. Very few people I speak to, particularly in East Suffolk, are against clean energy but they see nothing ‘green’ in the piecemeal industrialisation of their area. To do it better, we need to slow down.

Today, the Daily Telegraph reported that the South East risks blackouts within a few years, partially due to an increasing over-reliance on wind and solar and the inconsistent level of generation they provide. Last year, FTI Consulting carried out a review for the former government highlighting this risk and, in analysis for Ofgem, found that splitting the country into regional pricing zones would encourage energy companies to generate power closer to where it is needed. They also found it would lower bills for consumers in every region. Such an approach would be music to the ears of communities in East Anglia, a region that will be responsible, under current plans, for generating upwards of 30 percent of the nation’s energy whilst using just 6 percent. The obstacle? Once again, it’s Miliband’s new 2030 date for decarbonisation and warnings, predominantly from the offshore sector, that big regulatory changes would make his impossible goal even more distant.

A shift back to 2035 would also make Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) a much more realistic part of the decarbonisation agenda. These can generate the same amount of energy as the 2,000 plus acre Sunnica solar farm on an area the size of two football pitches. Oh, and the sun doesn’t need to be shining. Currently, we are likely to see the first SMR trial from Rolls Royce online by the end of the decade. Too late for Mission 2030 but not too late for the prior 2035 goal. Add into the equation even smaller nuclear options, likely the size of a shipping container, and we begin to build a picture of much more sensibly constructed generation and distribution of energy around the UK. These innovations are just a few short years away and I’ve not even mentioned hydrogen and CCS in detail. Nor have I mentioned the increased cost, ultimately to bill payers, of chasing 2030 - you can find much commentary on that elsewhere.

Sitting where I do, at the coal face (we need to find a new decarbonised term) of all these schemes in East Anglia, and their impact on communities, it is clear that the biggest danger to decarbonisation, and by association Net Zero, is now the very man tasked with delivering it. His ‘bounce off the walls’ videos, excitedly running past wind turbines, may endear him to his well-heeled Guardian reading friends but they fill communities here in East Anglia with dread. We sit on the cusp of another industrial revolution. To deliver that, it is incumbent upon those leading the charge to deliver it well and to get the societal consent to make it possible. Any Secretary of State serious about clean power and net zero must carry communities with them. The first step is abandoning Mission 2030.

What looks to be today’s new addition is quite a big one. Connecting at the new National Grid Biggleswade 400kv Substation in the North Bedfordshire Parliamentary Constituency, represented by Richard Fuller MP, we have a new Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) scale Solar Farm and Storage scheme entering scoping. The project has been given a connection offer of 31/10/2034. The Biggleswade Substation is currently under construction, on land north of Dunton Lane, and is looking to go into operation in February of next year. The Google Maps screenshot below shows the location of the substation site.

Where the solar farm will be, or where they are trying to assemble land, doesn’t yet seem to be in the public domain. Looking at proposals elsewhere, it is usually within a 5 - 7 mile radius. The Company behind the proposal is Renewable Energy Systems Limited and the scheme name is Greengage Farm.

Taking the recently approved Sunnica Solar Farm in West Suffolk as a benchmark, a 500MW scheme is likely to be in the region of 1,500 - 2,000 acres in size depending on the proportion of battery storage to PV. This is a very rough guide and by no means exact.

While taking a look at this scheme, I thought I would see what else had also received connection offers at the new Biggleswade Substation. Sizeable schemes include:

1000MW (1GW) Solar and Storage scheme from Biggleswade 10 Renewables Limited, known as “Biggleswade” on the TEC Register. This is a sizeable scheme, double that of Greengage Farm, so feasibly as large as 3,000 - 4,000 acres (again a very rough guess). Surprisingly, I can find nothing online about this proposal either and it doesn’t yet seem to have had any press attention. Given the potential scale, the lack of attention is odd. This scheme has also been given a connection date from 2032.

249MW Solar and Storage scheme from NOVENTUM POWER SOLAR 7 LIMITED, known as “Noventum - Biggleswade” on the TEC Register. Noventum seem to be an established operator in this space, there is a lot of information on their website here although nothing as yet about Biggleswade. This is perhaps unsurprising as the scheme looks to have a connection offer for 2037.

200MW Storage scheme from Harmony Energy Ltd, known as Biggleswade BESS on the TEC Register. There is also a smaller 57MW scheme with same name on there being brought forward by Central Bedfordshire Council. The Council scheme has a connection offer for 2029 while Harmony’s is in 2035.

All of these schemes, and the new Greengage Farm scheme, are currently in “scoping”.

From what is currently on the the TEC Register at Biggleswade, like Yaxley and Bramford in Suffolk, it could well be a hub for multiple solar and battery storage schemes that will dominate the debate around land usage over the coming years.

I’ll finish with the health warning I put in my last piece about the TEC Register, just because something appears on there does not mean it will be built. There is more on the TEC Register than needs to be delivered but appearing on there is always the first step in the process of scoping, consultation and consent.

Taken together, this all means we need to more than double the current level of energy generated nationally – likely closer to treble it – and in the near-term build as much energy infrastructure in the next five to six years as we have in the last thirty. Around how specifically we get there, there is alarmingly little clarity or joined up detail in the public domain.

Previously, the Network Options Assessment (NOA) would tell us what was coming in terms of transmission infrastructure, now it’s the Centralised Strategic Network Plan. We may be critical of the content but at least there is some visualisation and over-arching strategy, albeit a flawed one, for the future of energy transmission in the UK.

But what about generation? How do we see, at an early stage, what might be coming. This is where the TEC Register comes to the clunky and difficult to navigate fore.

Accessible here, you can download a csv file and crack it open in Excel. But to find out what has been given a ‘connection offer’ in your area isn’t as simple as you might hope. There are no geographical search criteria and no maps. Instead, the easiest way I’ve found is to figure out where your nearest big substation is (or is proposed to be, an important distinction) and search the spreadsheet for it. So, taking my home county of Suffolk as an example, put in Bramford, Friston, Hadleigh or Yaxley and your eyes will be opened.

This is why I referred to it as obscure. Despite it being online and everyone having the ability to access it, a new addition to it is not advertised. The parish councils are not informed, district, county or unitary authorities are not informed, the local MP is not informed, and the press is not informed. Yet this is the point at which vast schemes first enter the public domain and communities are not told a single word about it. It just appears here, on a csv file, waiting for someone to find it and begin to ask questions.

How vast are we talking? Take Yaxley in Suffolk. Search for it and you will find over 3,200MW (3.2GW) of large-scale solar farms. Let me put that in perspective. The circa 500MW Sunnica Solar Farm started off as a 2,500-acre proposal and eventually ended up as a proposal taking over 2,000 acres of agricultural land out of food production. So very roughly, we’re talking about schemes totalling between 13,000 and 16,000 acres and that’s just one substation in one small part of Suffolk. To put that figure another way, 3.2GW is the generating capacity of Sizewell C. Imagine a proposal for that hidden away in a csv file with no real announcement.

Here, it’s important that I insert a caveat. Not everything on the TEC Register will come to pass. There is more on here than will be progressed by developers, but it is the starting point – everything that is proposed starts here. If only 25 percent or 50 percent of what is listed here comes forward, the scale remains massive. Another important point to make is that while the horrible way in which it is presented is the fault of National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), the fact that a given project has a connection offer isn’t their fault – when approached for one, they legally have to provide it. The process around those offers is also worthy of much discussion - I’ll leave that for another day.

But who is deciding if Yaxley is the right place for a nuclear power station’s worth of solar to connect? Or where, more generally, NSIP scale solar should be clustered around the country? The answer, worryingly, is nobody. Where is the wider spatial planning for all the energy projects we need as a nation? The answer, equally worryingly, is nowhere. We will start to get this with regional strategic plans in around 2026 but we don’t yet know what form that will take and what role communities will have in shaping them.

So, what do I want to see? Some sort of overarching ownership of connection offers and a clear strategy behind them. Someone actually asking if, for example, Suffolk is the right place for all this solar. We need clear visualisations for the public too – even at a very high level – and that means online maps. These schemes are in their infancy, some developers will still be trying to piece the land they need together, but even if you could just hover over an area, or substation, and see what was being proposed there it would make life much easier. We need much earlier engagement with communities and councils from developers too. At the moment, they seem afraid of it, not wanting the public to get wind of their proposals and turn people against them.

When we do reach the stage of regional strategic planning for energy, it needs to be properly transparent. All proposed schemes for a given period need to be viewed in the round and the issues and options properly debated, and consulted on, in public - in much they same way as we currently do with local plans - before it is decided what does and, importantly, what does not proceed.

Hopefully by lifting the lid on the TEC Register and encouraging others to dig into it, we can start to bring about that change. This lack of clarity, in fact the outright opacity, is bad for everyone.  

This is difficult news for Friston, where a myriad of projects are now converging on the small village. These include the infrastructure needed for the Scottish Power Renewables (SPR) EA1N and EA2 wind farms, the Sea Link subsea HVDC link between Suffolk and Kent, the LionLink interconnector between the UK and the Netherlands and now, of course, Nautilus.

What is of huge concern, and has concerned me and local communities for some time, is the iterative nature of these schemes. They were not proposed as a whole, rather one came first, in the form of the SPR wind farms, and that onshore infrastructure became the trigger for more projects. To be fair to one very astute member of the local community, who I won’t name here, he saw this coming before many of us, back in 2018, and has been at the forefront of the battle ever since. It was these schemes, in combination with Sizewell C, that first saw us raise real concerns about cumulative impacts. In short, nobody was taking ownership of ‘the whole’ or giving communities any clarity about what was coming forward, where it was coming forward and when.

For Friston, the reality of this has been stark. Recently, with colleagues in Public Health, Suffolk County Council has been looking at the impact of the deluge of proposals on mental wellbeing in the area. When looking at Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), this cannot be underestimated and it is my view that it is something neither developers or government has taken seriously to date.

Clearly, if all of these projects are to converge on Friston - and my hope is they may not - then they must be coordinated to at least minimise the impacts. While it’s inexcusable that the schemes have emerged in such an iterative way, it would be doubly inexcusable to now not see them work together.

There are broader questions to be asked about Ofgem’s role and their assessment of cost. I’ve long argued that the cost to communities, rather than just the end cost to consumers, should at the very least be an additional factor they consider.

I will return to the new Secretary of State’s ‘Mission 2030’ for decarbonising the electricity system, or grid, but wanted to get this update out. Suffice to say, the clear driver for the new government is pace, not concern for the communities that have to live with the new infrastructure.

Late yesterday afternoon, we had the disappointing news that Ed Miliband has approved the Sunnica Solar Farm proposal.

This scheme will take over 2,000 acres of farmland out of food production and permanently change a unique landscape shaped by agriculture and horse racing. The approval is despite objections from all the relevant local councils, the local community, local amenity groups and Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service, who cited concerns around fire risk and battery storage. It is a shocking and disappointing decision that does not bode well for our region’s countryside and rural communities.

Moreover, the decision to approve was contrary to the recommendation of the independent Planning Inspectorate, following an Examination in Public last year. They stated, the ‘disbenefits are not outweighed by the public benefit’. In short, that the Sunnica scheme does more harm than good.

I’ve led on Suffolk’s response to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects since 2018. This has included Sizewell C, the Scottish Power Renewables wind farms, new pylon runs and interconnector projects. I can say with clear conscience that the Sunnica scheme is the worst of any proposal I’ve dealt with.

Sunnica didn’t hold briefings with some of the affected parish councils, such as Chippenham. Information webinars were poorly promoted and run. They refused to meet with local farmers to discuss the quality of the local land. They refused to meet with the then local MP and councillors when invited. The materials they produced were poor quality, hard to understand and maps weren’t labelled properly. The list goes on. And that was just the process.

Despite the term ‘temporary’, a 40-year consent is permanent to anyone living nearby. The 24-month construction period will have a huge detrimental impact on local communities and narrow country roads. Furthermore, because of how poorly presented the scheme was, and how little the mitigation measures were tailored to the local context, it is impossible for us to yet fully understand the impact the scheme will have on communities.

There were thousands of objections and responses to the scheme. The new Secretary of State cannot possibly have properly considered them in the seven days since his appointment, nor can he have credibly formed a view as to why he should go against the recommendation of the Planning Inspectorate.   

We only received the news late on Friday, now it is time for local councils and community groups to fully study the decision notice and take a view on next steps. Thus far, local councils and I have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Say No to Sunnica group and, alongside the new MP for West Suffolk, Nick Timothy, I’ve no doubt that we will continue to do so.

This decision, sadly, looks to be a marker of things to come. The new government’s target to decarbonise the grid by 2030, rather than 2035 under the Conservatives, will be a huge driver. It is an unrealistic target and one that boxes the Secretary of State into a corner. A corner that will pit him against local communities with no breathing space for a just transition to clean energy or a fair deal for communities. I’ll write more on this in the coming weeks.