County chiefs are planning to send a formal legal letter to National Grid, requesting evidence to support its claims that building pylons across the county is cheaper than installing an underground cable.
County chiefs are planning to send a formal legal letter to National Grid, requesting evidence to support its claims that building pylons across the county is cheaper than installing an underground cable.
Following a meeting of Lincolnshire County Council’s executive on Tuesday morning, leader Martin Hill (Conservative) claimed the firm had previously refused to share figures regarding how it reached that judgement.
A National Grid spokesperson said the capital cost of an onshore underground alternative for its Grimsby to Walpole project is approximately £6.5 billion, while an offshore subsea cable would cost around £4.3 billion.
Both options are significantly more expensive than the current pylon plan, which is estimated at £1 billion.
“National Grid and the government are claiming that it is actually cheaper to put all these pylons up than laying a cable on the seabed, which is what they have done to date. Frankly, I don’t believe that,” Coun Hill said. “I’ve said to National Grid, I hear what you are saying, can we at least see what these figures are, how you came to these calculations? Have you put all these figures into it? And they have refused to give them to us.
“So, we are now at a stage where we are going to write a formal legal letter to them to say, look, this is a very big issue for Lincolnshire; we need you to justify these claims.
“At the moment, they are just making these claims without any evidence to back it up.
“Everybody accepts we have to bring the power in. Everybody believes putting it on the seabed would be better. And just to remind people, most of this power isn’t for Lincolnshire; it’s all going down south where they have high demand.”
Coun Hill added: “I think there is a building issue that once the minister makes a decision, if they have already stated that they’re going to do it anyway, that brings the whole process into question.”
A spokesperson for National Grid said: “When we are developing new electricity infrastructure projects, we consider all technology options and share them at public consultation. The government and our regulator Ofgem require us to assess our proposals against a range of factors, including value for money to bill payers and impact on the community and environment to ensure they are in line with current planning policy, our licence obligations, and net zero targets.”
l For more on energy projects turn to page seven.
