The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and four other leading environmental organisations argue that National Grid should not close a public consultation on their approach to undergrounding new power cables early next month, without waiting for an independent report on the comparative cost of installing new high voltage power cables underground, sub-sea or as overhead lines. This report was requested by Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and Ofgem, at the behest of the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) Chairman Sir Michael Pitt [3] in October last year.
National Grid agreed to fund the independent study, which was to be carried out by international energy consultancy KEMA with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) providing quality assurance. According to a public note of a meeting with Sir Michael Pitt’s officials, the report was supposed to be published in January 2011. However KEMA complained that they could not complete the report with the data available – which included that provided by National Grid. The report, already five months late, has now been indefinitely postponed and KEMA removed from the project.
Paul Miner, Senior Planning Campaigner for CPRE says: “National Grid is a private monopoly which generates billions of pounds in profits. They will be tasked with building new power cables and argue that undergrounding them is far too expensive, yet we are being asked to accept at least a thousand more pylons in the countryside on the strength of cost estimates provided solely by National Grid. The current situation seems to suggest National Grid is happy to bury this report if it helps them to avoid burying their cables.
“Chris Huhne and the regulator Ofgem must not allow that to happen and should step in to make sure we have all the facts before deciding how any new power cables are constructed.”
National Grid continues to contend that undergrounding power cables costs between 10 and 28 times more than overhead lines. In their evidence to the abandoned KEMA study, they estimated the cost of putting power cables in tunnels would be between £26 and £45 million per km yet in a recent real example in London, the company tunnelled a 400kV cable for just £5.7 million per km. Evidence from other EU countries show similar costs to this UK example and puts the real cost of undergrounding power cables closer to four to five times the cost of overhead lines.
Paul Miner continued: “If new lines are essential we should make sure that wherever possible, we minimise their intrusion to our beautiful and valued countryside. However, we should not be expected to make these decisions based on a single quote from those who stand to profit most from its outcome.”
Ruth Chambers, Deputy Chief Executive at the Campaign for National Parks added: ““Undergrounding will be essential if some of the planned new grid connections are to succeed - otherwise the public concern about new power lines in our most precious landscapes could derail these projects or cause them serious delay. With several National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the firing line for new connections, a rethinking of the location of electricity generation and a more joined-up approach to generation and transmission is needed urgently”.
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