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National Grid reveals £54bn wind power network upgrade plan

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By Paul Homewood

This is another cost that is never factored into the price of wind power:

A huge upgrade of the UK’s electricity network would see a host of pylons and cables transporting power from offshore wind farms around the UK.

Power lines from Anglesey to Swansea, Grimsby to Hertfordshire, and Loch Buidhe to Spittal would be built to pull electricity from the sea to the mainland then to homes and businesses.

National Grid ESO said it was the biggest network upgrade in 60 years.

But critics have called the £54bn project “short-sighted and shameful”.

There are now more than 11,000 wind turbines on and offshore, which produce nearly a quarter of the UK’s electricity.

National Grid ESO, which runs the electricity network, said the plan it has laid out would enable the government to deliver 50GW of offshore wind power by 2030 – a third of the UK’s electricity demand – while creating 168,000 jobs.

It claimed the network could lead to more than £50bn of investments over the next eight years.

Rosie Pearson, a spokesperson for the group Essex Suffolk Norfolk Pylons, said the plans failed “abysmally” to address the concerns of “over 21,000 who have signed a petition calling to have this network offshore”.

“It’s short-sighted and shameful,” she said. “East Anglia is being thrown under a bus while significant additional offshore networking over much longer distances has been recommended for Scotland and North England.”

These network upgrades are deemed essential to accommodate and integrate a new raft of renewable energy projects also announced on Thursday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62085297

£50 billion to disfigure the countryside? And guess who will pay for that?

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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August 3, 2022