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The newly created National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) needs “strong teeth” to deliver important energy and water projects, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has insisted.
The group has released a report outlining eight key areas of infrastructure which it believes the NIC should prioritise. They include energy generation and supply, low-carbon energy, water and flood defences.
CBI business environment director Rhian Kelly said: “With a strong Commission, we can deliver the projects… that will enable firms up and down the country to get on with growing our economy and creating jobs for the long-run.
“For this to happen though, it’s vital the Commission is not blown off course by politics. This independent body must be given strong teeth by politicians so that it can recommend significant infrastructure decisions.”
On the topic of generation and supply the report called for the UK to “extract and store energy from a wider range of sources” and become better at “embracing the opportunities of the circular economy”, for example through energy from waste schemes.
As well as developing existing technologies, it said Britain needed to foster the development of new ones such as tidal power, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, all whilst keeping costs in check.
When it comes to the low-carbon energy, the CBI said the commission should look at beefing up energy infrastructure and generation in order to enable the electrification of heating and transport. According to the report such electrification could lead to the near doubling of current peak demand.
The CBI said infrastructure for supply of water will need to make use of highly variable volumes, as changing weather patterns lead to shortages in the south of the country and increasingly frequent deluges in the north. It said it was “crucial” that the state of local water supplies were factored into long term planning for housing and infrastructure.
According to the report up to 2.1 million properties in the UK are projected to be at risk of flooding by 2050 as a result of climate change. It called for flood defence schemes to be designed to a higher standard of resilience and said upstream water capture should be embraced, as it could potentially “transform an environmental threat into a valuable water resource”.
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