Notes collected from various sources, including JT, giving a view on large infrastructure projects, including Sea/Lion link.
Green campaigners in Suffolk could be responsible for over 20 million tonnes of avoidable CO2 emissions!
The big infrastructure projects affecting Suffolk like the pylons and offshore substations and Sizewell C, garner a lot of campaigners and challenges. But given the escalation of the debate around Labour’s planning changes, the increasingly heated rhetoric and the neutering of the Climate and Nature Bill – here are a few thoughts.
“On balance I’m mainly in favour of them going ahead, mainly because of the need for us to rapidly eliminate carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Climate impacts (not economic growth) trumps all, especially on an already vulnerable coast like Suffolk. I’ve calculated that every year of delay to Sizewell C would lead to 7,850,000 tonnes CO2 from gas fired power stations. Likewise, for the proposed Norwich to Tilbury pylons, every year of delay beyond 2030 causes an extra 2,300,000 tonnes CO2, again from gas power stations filling the hole left by curtailed wind farms. So combined, if green campaigners here in Suffolk, who I know care about the Climate and Nature Emergency very much, keep taking these infrastructure projects to judicial review, you are arguably responsible for over 10million tonnes of CO2 every year you continue your opposition. This is over 2X the county’s entire emissions!
“Likewise with the pylons, I don’t see an affordable or workable technological alternative. – the national grid can’t pool all the offshore wind and interconnectors into one offshore supergrid and bypass East Anglia, as it cannot have a single point of failure larger than 1.4GW. This is why all the individual projects have to come in via their own connection point. HVDC underground cabling would require 3 x additional giant DC converter stations at Norwich, Friston and Tilbury. (Think the black box on your laptop power lead only bigger. HVDC underground cabling would disturb peatland when crossing the Waveney Valley (besides, there are already pylons crossing there at Diss.) -HVDC undergrounding wouldn’t complete until 2034, so a delay of at least 4 years, meaning 9.2million tonnes CO2 from extra gas emissions.
One of the development stages has allegedly been held up by 2 years going through the courts with local campaigners.
Renewable scenarios
JT: we can meet the majority of our energy needs from a combination of solar, wind, batteries and SMRs, especially if we make smarter use of all the batteries in our electric cars. It’s probably not far off where we’re heading.
However we would need a LOT more onshore wind in that scenario for our winter heating needs. Solar correlates really well with refrigeration and spring/summer/autumn EV charging needs, and wind correlates really well with winter heating loads and overnight needs too. Onshore wind in England is the big hole in our clean power plans currently. At least 1 or 2 Holton style turbines for every market town I’d say as a start.
Without Sizewell C would mean more wind, and more SMRs.
Bacton may be looking at an SMR, however there are no commercially available or deployed SMRs in the UK yet. We would likely need to keep a few gas power stations as backup as well. Perhaps converted to hydrogen or carbon capture ideally.
This chart below is useful. It shows the scale of output from sizewell c that would need to be found via other technologies.
