Energy minister: Upgrading power grid is my top priority

Energy minister Graham Stuart has identified grid upgrades as his top priority since taking on the portfolio two months ago.

Stuart told a meeting of the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning (23 November) that building out the electricity system has “gone right up to the top of the list of priorities” since he was appointed to the energy and climate portfolio by ex-prime minister Liz Truss in September.

At the meeting, which was held as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry floating offshore wind in Wales, he said upgrading the power grid to cope with increased renewable electricity generation is an “enormous” “financial and political challenge”.

“This will require change and it’s going to require a large amount of infrastructure, not all of which will be popular. If you don’t have the grid, all the other stuff is not going to function.

“While inevitably there will be disruption, we should ensure that where we can’t eliminate that, we can at least show that we are listening [to people] and providing compensation rather than riding roughshod over them.

“We can’t do something on this scale by making it a central priority and ram it through. Anyone who thinks we can ram this through against the grain of communities doesn’t understand how a democratic country works.”

Stuart also said there may be a need for an over-arching spatial strategy in order to plan for the potentially competing space needs of different low-carbon energy sectors such as offshore wind and green hydrogen.

This could sit above the Holistic Network Design, currently being developed by the National Grid Electricity System Operator to streamline the infrastructure for bringing onshore the increasing amount of electricity generated by offshore wind farms.

He said: “Essentially, we’ve had a reactive system that has served us pretty well, looking to do the minimum necessary at lowest cost. Now we need anticipatory investment but in order to do that and not create orphan assets, we need a joined up spatial strategy.

“If we are going to get the grid infrastructure in place, we need to have a strategic plan rather than leaving it to the market and developers because it is going to need more co-ordination because it’s going to be such a crammed landscape.

“We need holistic joined up leadership that can probably only come from government.”

Stuart also told the committee that an increased roll out of cheap renewable electricity could be a spur for a renaissance of manufacturing in former heavy industrial parts of the UK: “Certain companies would feel this was the place where they can establish manufacturing and other facilities.

“By creating competitive and affordable but net zero clusters, we can reindustrialise areas that lost their industries.

“We could put ourselves in a position where we attract industries because we are not only one of most competitive but most net zero compliant places in Europe.”