Ministers say energy planning should be reviewed every five years

The national planning framework for energy projects should be reviewed every five years, government ministers have told MPs.

While scrutinising the draft National Policy Statement (NPS) for energy on Tuesday (18 January), the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee pressed ministers on the ten-year lag between the original document’s publication in 2011 and the updated version last September.

The suite of documents in the NPS should be reviewed more often in a “fast moving area” like energy, said energy minister Greg Hands: “The frequency needs to be more often than ten years.

“Five years sounds like a reasonable approach.”

He said that in a “dynamic field” like energy policy, where technological change is rapid, the NPS is “never going to be up to date on everything”.

“Ten years is too long, five years is probably right. The ability to update as and when necessary is likely to be necessary.”

Planning minister Chapman Pincher, who oversees the entire suite of National Policy Statements across other areas of infrastructure, had earlier backed a five yearly review.

He said: “We need to make sure we get balance between clarity and relevance and five years is right.”

Hands also defended the government’s decision to not include targets for specific technologies, like hydrogen, in the NPS.

“Targets set through the NPS would not assist delivery.

“There are other ways of facilitating delivery of nascent technologies”, he said, giving as an example the inclusion of a dedicated pot for floating wind in last December’s Contract for Difference auction.

Hands said it was “preferable” to use the NPS to encourage companies to come forward with solutions rather than adopt a “prescriptive” approach that may hinder the development of what often remain emerging technologies.