Government ‘will not carpet countryside with windfarms and pylons’, new clean power chief promises
The new government will not “carpet the countryside in windfarms and pylons” in its bid to green the power system, the civil service chief in charge of the mission has said.
But the government must “level with people” about all the new cables, steel pylons and more that will criss-cross the country in order to reach clean power by 2030, said Chris Stark, the civil servant charged with reaching the target.
The new government wants to decarbonise electricity – no longer generating it from fossil fuels but from alternatives such as wind, solar and nuclear – by 2030.
It is not drastically different to the last Tory government’s plan to do it by 2035 – both in a bid to improve energy security and lower bills.
But it requires building hundreds of new 50m-high steel pylons at a quicker rate and thousands of kilometres of cables are needed to get the electricity from where it is generated.
“We’ve got to face that truth,” Mr Stark said at an event in London hosted by the Green Alliance thinktank.
“We are going to have to level with people about what is needed for that scale of development.”
But he rejected the “spectre” that they are “somehow going to carpet the countryside with windfarms and pylons”.
“We are not going to do that.”
The Labour Party has also come under fire for plans to build on some Green Belt land, and even the Green Party is concerned about the new infrastructure and its impact on land and communities.
Its Waveney Valley MP Adrian Ramsay was recently criticised for resisting plans for new pylons that would carry electricity from offshore windfarms, through his constituency in East Anglia, to homes onshore.
Some want these cables to run underground instead of through pylons that blight the countryside.
Mr Stark, who used to run the government’s Climate Change Committee advisory body, said “undergrounding” would “cost too much”, take too long”, and that the benefits were “overstated”.
He said a map would be created to show affected communities what they should expect, and pledged to “minimise impacts” and offer community benefits.
Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, said building more cables and pylons was “necessary” but residents must be given a “meaningful say” in plans.
“Otherwise, the backlash could set back efforts to build vital infrastructure,” he said, calling for mandatory community benefit packages.
The government has not yet set out how it will reach clean power by 2030.
It has asked the National Grid’s electricity system operator to draw up a plan this autumn months – with less than six years to reach the 2030 target.
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Mr Stark seemed confident the government could again persuade the public to stomach upheaval and building, as it had done in the 1960s when today’s national grid was built.
“It’s quite interesting to look back on how that was handled,” he said, adding they were “were just very clear” that it was a “wholly owned national endeavour”.