Green light for £2bn England-Scotland ‘electricity superhighway’

Ofgem has given the green light to a new £2 billion ‘electricity superhighway’ between England and Scotland.

The proposed Eastern Green Link 1 – a 2GW high-voltage direct cable subsea cable connecting East Lothian and County Durham – is the first project to be approved under the regulator’s new Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) scheme.

The initiative was introduced to expedite the delivery of 26 strategic transmission projects, worth a combined £20 billion, that are considered necessary to achieve the government’s target of deploying 50GW of offshore wind by 2030.

Ofgem says the ASTI scheme, which enables project to receive funding approval outside of the usual price control process, could accelerate the delivery of these projects by up to two years.

Eastern Green Link 1 is being developed by the transmission arms of National Grid and SP Energy Networks. The vast majority of the 196-kilometre cable be laid along the seabed of the North Sea, with remaining 20 kilometres of cable linking the power line to substations and converter stations at Torness in East Lothian and Hawthorn Pit in County Durham.

The project will help to alleviate grid constraints across the Anglo-Scottish border. This bottleneck has led to rising constraint payments to renewable generators to turn down their output during periods of high wind when there is insufficient capacity to transmit all of the power produced in Scotland down to demand centres in England.

For the same reason, the Electricity System Operator (ESO) revealed proposals earlier this week to construct a new “high-capacity electrical spine” between the North of Scotland and North West England. It was one of dozens of projects recommended by the ESO as part of a £58 billion “blueprint” for upgrading the transmission network to achieve the government’s target of decarbonising the power sector by 2035.

Ofgem has provisionally approved just over £2 billion (2018/19 prices) of funding for Eastern Green Link 1, comprised of £1.65 billion of direct costs and £344 million of indirect costs and risk. It has also proposed to disallow £43 million of indirect costs requested by the developers.

These costs are now subject to a consultation, which is due to close on 17 April.

Commenting on the decision, Ofgem director of major projects Rebecca Barnett said: “To meet future energy demand and government net zero targets, we need to accelerate the pace at which we build the high voltage energy network, which transport homegrown electricity to where it’s needed.

“Eastern Green Link 1 is the first project to reach this stage under our new fast track ASTI process designed to unlock investment, speed up major power projects and boost Britain’s energy security.”

She added: “We’ve streamlined the approval process without neglecting our due diligence. We’ve carried out rigorous checks to ensure consumers are shielded from unnecessary costs and made cost adjustments, where we don’t see maximum efficiency and consumer benefit.”