09:30 Graham Stringer (Labour)

East Anglia Green Energy Enablement, or GREEN, is the title of the project that proposes to build a new high-voltage network reinforcement between Norwich, Bramford near Ipswich in Suffolk, and Tilbury on the Essex coast. As an MP, I have never received as many emails from my constituents about a single topic.

The most difficult thing in the whole process is that not even the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), is accountable for what is being decided; he will tell us, “This is the framework and this is what we have to stick to.” He will then tell us that there is going to be a new proposal for a different regime that would arrive at different outcomes, but that is not going to affect this consultation, and we will be left with decisions being forced down corralled pathways by an outdated regulatory and planning framework.

I could not agree more. We have environmental policies and net zero policies that are costing the earth, even though they are designed to save the earth—they are very important policies and we put a great deal of money into them—and yet we have other policies that despoil the environment and communities. The damage they do is not costed into the proposals.

Dare I mention the words “judicial review”? If my constituents go for a judicial review—they are very well funded and well organised, and we are backing them—how many years will that hold up the proposal? Would it not be better for the Government to cut through and say we should go for an offshore grid, which has public support and which people recognise will help us to achieve our net zero targets more quickly and protect the environment and communities? That is what we should do.

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10:00 Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)

My main focus is on how the proposals fail to offer choice and the lack of meaningful consultation with my constituents. Like many, I fully support the work being undertaken to achieve net zero. Indeed, looking at the temperatures that we are currently working in and enjoying, it is essential to move towards adaptation as well. Low-carbon energy production has a crucial role, and the contribution of the east of England is likely only to grow, given the likelihood of Sizewell C, further offshore generation and the new generation of sea-tethered wind farms that could give us greater capacity. Our 4,100 MW of generation today is destined to rise to 25,000 MW by 2030, but as my hon. Friend pointed out, we have slightly put the cart before the horse. I would gently say that we are talking about energy resilience and critical national infrastructure, so we should take a step back and think about what we are doing here.

Allowing those interconnectors to be put offshore would be a move forward, but I am led to believe no alternatives to the Norwich-to-Tilbury proposals have been fully explored. They appear to have been discarded without a full explanation as to why they are not viable. The recent consultation by National Grid offered no alternative to overland transmission. Indeed, many of the questions were somewhat irrelevant as they were closed, such as “Do you want green energy?” Who is going to answer anything but yes to that? There has been no ability to put forward a different view. To be frank, it was a fait accompli. It serves no purpose but to reinforce a decision that has already been made—“Sorry, overhead pylons are the default and that is what you are getting”—and to silence that local voice.

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10:10 Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair, Mr Stringer. I offer my condolences to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for his loss. I congratulate him on his choreography to secure the debate, which is ultimately about the roll-out of zero carbon renewable energy on what is likely to be the hottest day ever recorded in the UK.

The transition to net zero provides enormous opportunities for East Anglia to be the engine room of the UK, bringing new sustainable and rewarding jobs not just for Waveney and Lowestoft, which I represent, but across the region. If we get it right, we can be a global exemplar of how to deliver the transition. That, in turn, will create enormous export opportunities.

National Grid’s East Anglia green energy enablement project, known as GREEN, should be set in the context that approximately one third of today’s UK energy demand can be met by the energy that will come into East Anglia by the end of this decade. While much work has taken place to upgrade the existing transition network, it needs significant reinforcement. GREEN is the preferred option that National Grid has worked up in accordance with the existing regulatory framework, which includes the relevant national policy statements and the so-called Holford and Horlock rules.

In Norfolk, Vattenfall is delivering its Norfolk offshore windfarm zone by pursuing a co-ordinated approach to the onshore element of the transmission. Business organisations, such as the East of England Energy Group, Net Zero East, Opergy and the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, together with the East Wind Offshore Cluster, are developing new ideas to help address future connection. That includes collaborative project design with shared or modular grid connections, and encouraging and facilitating hybrid projects such as wind to hydrogen and wind to storage.

I acknowledge the worries that all my colleagues are articulating on behalf of their constituents. However, there must be no holdup or delay in the roll-out of the offshore wind projects off the East Anglian coast. Already, they are making a significant contribution to the local economy. ScottishPower Renewables has a £25 million operations and maintenance base in the Hamilton dock in Lowestoft that is already running and providing jobs for people in my constituency and across Suffolk and Norfolk. ScottishPower Renewables is also planning to invest a further £6 billion up to 2030 as part of its East Anglia hub development. Such projects provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, creating new, exciting and well-paid jobs for local people, which is vital as part of the levelling up process. They are also critical for the overall prosperity of East Anglia and for us to play our role in mitigating the impact of climate change, which we are feeling so forcefully today.

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10:19 James Cartlidge (Conservative)

Let us be clear what we are not debating today. No one is debating the policy of pursuing net zero—all of us East Anglian MPs support that. No one is debating the need for sovereign sources of energy, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Actually, no one is debating the need for an offshore grid. That is now Government policy. When my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) held an Adjournment debate in November 2020, the current Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, then the Energy Minister, said to him:

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10:30 Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) made a point about time. He said that “there must be no holdup” in the development of offshore wind. Amen to that—we all agree. The one way we can be absolutely sure there will be a huge holdup is if the lawyers get hold of this. If the Minister wants to be bogged down in judicial review and legal battles for years to come with no progress towards our net zero targets, all he has to do is ignore what all of us are saying, and I guarantee that that is where he will end up.

If we want to make progress on this, as everyone agrees that we need to do, particularly in light of the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and if we want to become more energy independent, more quickly, and hasten the drive towards net zero, which every single person in this room would like to see happen, we should listen to my hon. Friends, and the Minister should too.

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10:35 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

When I found out that I was speaking for the Labour Front Bench in this debate and saw that the subject was posited as local opposition to renewable energy projects, the first word that came to mind was nimbyism. Such debates can be about people not wanting something that spoils their view, but it has been made very clear that the debate today is not about that.

The hon. Member for South Suffolk also said that all East Anglian MPs support net zero. Having listened to some of the contributions to the Conservative leadership contest, I am not entirely sure whether the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch) would say the same, but that is a debate for another day. The hon. Member for South Suffolk said that the consultation was inadequate and did not cover the offshore options, which were buried in the small print. Again, I will leave it to the Minister to say whether he feels that the consultation was adequate. The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) also said that the consultation was not adequate and warned about getting lawyers involved, which we would probably all want to avoid. I speak as a lawyer myself.

Let me conclude because it is important that the Minister has plenty of time to reply. The need to make the shift to low-carbon energy is real and urgent, and the push for 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030 is very much part of that. In recent weeks, the Government have been criticised by the Climate Change Committee for the inadequacy of their plans to reach net zero, although they are doing better on energy than on some other aspects, and only yesterday, Friends of the Earth successfully brought a court case against the Government, which will require them to rethink their net zero strategy.

I hope that there will be a revised strategy as a result of the court case and the criticisms of the Climate Change Committee, and that must include a big push to get the right low-carbon infrastructure in place. Opposition to onshore wind has been a disaster for efforts to ramp up renewable energy capacity in the UK, and it is now easier to build a road than to put up an onshore wind turbine in this country.

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10:44 The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)

I welcome the support of my hon. Friend the Members for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk and others for the strong contribution that offshore wind makes to the UK’s energy needs. Currently, it produces 11.4 GW. However, connecting that cheap, green energy and transporting it to where it is needed in East Anglia and across the country will require more electricity network infrastructure, both onshore and offshore, than we have today. We need that infrastructure to be built more quickly. Timescales for delivering transmission network infrastructure can be as long as 11 to 14 years—often far longer than the time taken to deliver the generation that is being connected. That constraint is already biting: about 5% of wind generation is curtailed, which means that its output is reduced because there is not enough capacity on the network to transport it. That could increase to 15% to 20% in the mid-2020s as wind generation increases.

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