No Pylons Lincolnshire

Campaign group No Pylons Lincolnshire has issued an appeal for more volunteers to help ensure residents make their views known during the next consultation stages into National Grid’s plans for the county.

A non-statutory consultation has just been launched into plans to bring undersea cables from wind farms off the Scottish coast onto the Lincolnshire coast near Anderby Creek and then trench them underground, with ancillary infrastructure, to serve demand in the Midlands and the South East.

A separate statutory consultation into a scheme for a new 87-mile line of more than 400 pylons through Lincolnshire from Grimsby to Walpole in Norfolk will begin next year, although National Grid has not yet given specific dates.

No Pylons Lincolnshire is especially keen to hear from anyone at the far southern end of the route nearer to Walpole.

Volunteers who want to help the campaign with leaflet distribution and by acting as no pylons ambassadors can contact Nicola at nopylonslincolnshire@gmail.com including their name and contact details.

No Pylons Lincolnshire opposes the pylons scheme, insisting that cables bringing wind-turbine-generated power to land from the North Sea stay on the sea bed until closer to where the power is needed. It supports an earlier National Grid proposal to build offshore infrastructure instead of pylons. It fully supports clean, green, renewable energy, but distributed in a clean, green and modern way by use of an integrated offshore network and not using Lincolnshire as a cheap route to other parts of the country, despoiling the landscape with ugly, outdated pylons or trenching a motorway through the best arable land in the country.

Chairman Andrew Roberts said: “Our message is clear and simple - keep all infrastructure out at sea for as long as possible, do not needlessly wreck our landscape and do not waste our fertile food-growing land. The Prime Minister has very recently gone on record to say everything must be done to safeguard our food security.

“Since we launched we have had fantastic support, with tremendous growth in our Facebook group and our committee. But we need to be ready now for the next, very important stages, which will be the non-statutory consultation into the impact on Lincolnshire of the cables from Scotland (Eastern Green Link 3 and 4 - EGL3 and EGL4) and the statutory consultation that National Grid has to conduct into its Grimsby to Walpole proposal.”

EGL3 and EGL4 non-statutory consultation has now started, and will run until June 17. National Grid has emphasised that this consultation is separate from the Grimsby to Walpole consultation. To have your say go to nationalgrid.com/egl3andegl4

Andrew said: “It must be realised that the Grimsby to Walpole pylons consultation which concluded last month (March), which so many people responded to, was non-statutory. We don't want anyone who responded to that thinking that they don’t now have to respond further.

“Of course, if National Grid stick to their word they will listen to comments submitted so far and use these to inform their decisions. But it is vital that everyone has their say again for the more-important statutory consultation.

“The public in Lincolnshire can be forgiven for feeling confused, if not exhausted, by all that National Grid is suddenly throwing at them. The reports people are expected to wade through are literally hundreds of pages long, and often deeply technical.

“Because of this we asked National Grid on March 19 to provide a plain English summary so that everyone could understand everything it has planned for the county, including any third-party proposals, such as solar farms, that would be facilitated by National Grid’s own proposals. It has agreed to do this but, so far, and despite repeated requests, this important document has not materialised.

National Grid representatives have repeated at public consultation events that Ofgem will play an important role in deciding whether or not the cables go overland or undersea. Ofgem has just reported that offshore infrastructure is preferred to connect wind farms to interconnectors so that excess power can be shared in either direction with Continental countries. It says: “Combining interconnection with transmission of electricity from offshore wind generation will provide a first step towards a more strategic and integrated electricity grid in the North Sea.”

The report states that the impact on coastal communities will be reduced by a reduction in the number of cables and onshore converter stations required. Construction and operation costs would be reduced and a “meshed grid” in the North Sea will best enable efficient sharing of renewable electricity between countries, says Ofgem.

Andrew said: “At last National Grid is being told by someone other than us that the future is an offshore integrated grid and not mile upon mile of ugly pylons. If a meshed grid is good enough for us to share energy with other countries it should be good enough to distribute our own energy at home.

“We are most concerned that Lincolnshire is being seen as a cheap route through which power can be transmitted to other parts of the country which need it. Lincolnshire needs none of it and we are not prepared to stand by and see thousands of acres of Lincolnshire’s prime food-growing land laid waste in order for power to be sent to other areas of the country.”

Plans are also being formulated for a wide swathe of farmland to be disrupted by laying underground cables from landfall near Sutton-on-Sea to a proposed new substation at Surfleet Marsh, near Spalding, and then more trenching across top-grade farmland to connect to existing cables at Weston Marsh.

This scheme - Outer Dowsing - is to transfer power from 100 offshore wind turbines planned off the Lincolnshire coast.

No Pylons Lincolnshire committee member Peter Phillips warned: “All this would mean multiple projects running in a corridor around five miles wide and 87 miles long. The local population will be surrounded by noise, dust and air pollution for years, with winter mud on all our transport routes. Outer Dowsing, Grimsby to Walpole and EGL 3 and 4 will all require haul roads cutting across the landscape and all road routes to the coast.The haul roads and cable routes will be 60 to 80 metres wide - three of these for up to seven years from 2026 to 2033 all within a few miles of each other.”

Anyone affected by these proposals can keep up to date by joining No Pylons Lincolnshire on Facebook - a group dedicated to a common cause of protecting the county from the energy onslaught and infrastructure projects in all their shapes and guises… not just pylons.