Why electricity pylons in Essex are the front line in the battle to hit net zero
In the narrow lanes around Aldham in Essex the countryside is close to the English ideal.
On an unseasonably warm mid-October day the fields recede to a low horizon, broken only by hedgerows and the spire of the parish church, the tallest landmark this side of Suffolk.
If National Grid has its way it won’t stay that way for long.
Aldham is on the route of a new pylon line that will run more than 110 miles, from Norwich to Tilbury on the Thames Estuary, carrying electricity generated on wind farms in the North Sea via high voltage cables suspended from 50-metre tall towers.
National Grid, the listed company that owns and runs the UK’s electricity network, says it’s crucial to a massive grid upgrade without which the transition from fossil fuels to low carbon power cannot happen.
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For locals and campaigners it’s an unnecessary intrusion that will bring steel giants marching through some of the most scenic countryside in the east of England.
This is more than just a local planning dispute.
It’s a story about the most important national infrastructure project you have probably never heard of; about a glacial planning system that fails communities and builders; and the balance between local and national interests as the UK strives to hit its climate goals.
The great grid upgrade
On the road to net zero Britain is like a traveller who remembered their laptop and adapter but forgot to pack the plug cable.
For years we have been preparing for a low-carbon future by focusing on supply and demand, without thinking enough about the bit in between.
While supply has focused on phasing out fossil fuels, chiefly using offshore wind power, consumer and business demand has begun shifting to lower carbon options like electric vehicles and heat pumps.
This has transformed not just where we get our power, but how much we will need.
Demand for electricity will double in the coming decade as natural gas, petrol and diesel are phased out and a world reliant on digital data consumes vastly more power.
The expansion of offshore wind and, in time, nuclear, will meet demand, but those new power sources need to be connected to a grid originally built for the fossil fuel age.
The bones of the national grid were built in the 1960s and 70s, connecting power stations largely clustered around the coalfields of the north and midlands to cities and towns using ‘motorways’ of high-voltage pylons.
With most of our power coming from the coast in the future that has to change.
National Grid has identified 17 new or upgraded lines required, including undersea cables to link Scotland and the east of England and several onshore pylon routes, the largest of which is Norwich-Tilbury.
It will cost up to £19bn and most of it has to happen in seven years to meet the government’s target of decarbonising the grid by 2030.
Carl Trowell, President of strategic infrastructure at the National Grid
“There’s no energy transition without a massive upgrade to the transmission system. It’s an enabler for everything we want to do,” said the man in charge of delivering it, Carl Trowell, National Grid’s president of strategic infrastructure.
“Over the next seven to eight years we’ve got to build five times more infrastructure than has been built in the last 30, so it’s quite an upgrade.”
Fight the power
For Adam Scott, owner of Church House Farm in Aldham, the great grid upgrade means three 50-metre pylons planted on his land, and £6,000 each in compensation.
“You would happily pay £6,000 not to have them,” he said.
“There are many impacts. You’ve got to go round them with machines, you can’t irrigate land near them, if we want to grow trees to help climate change we wouldn’t be allowed to, so there’s a lot of separate impacts the pylons will have if they arrive in our village.”
Sky’s Business correspondent, Paul Kelso with farmer Adam Scott in East Anglia
Mr Scott and residents along the entire route have been galvanised by perhaps the most effective local campaign group in the country, the Community Planning Alliance, founded and run by Rosie Pearson.
Dubbed the “Queen of the Nimbys”, a term she loathes, Ms Pearson has been hugely successful in helping community groups maximise their influence to oppose infrastructure projects, primarily housing.
She believes the pylons are unnecessary and should go under the sea, referring to rough drawings of an alternative offshore plan she says would be cheaper.
“We don’t see why the pylons should be built across East Anglia when the wind farms are offshore and the power is needed down south. It’s offshore, keep it offshore,” she said.
National Grid utterly rejects this, saying campaigners have misrepresented their figures and insisting an offshore route would cost £4bn as opposed to £1bn for the pylons, with consumers ultimately paying the difference.
“The first thing to say is that Norwich to Tilbury is part of a wider system, some of which is offshore and some onshore. Going offshore is four to five times more expensive, and it comes with its own environmental issues,” said Mr Trowell.
“And you can’t put all your infrastructure offshore. It takes hours to repair a pylon but it can take months to years to try and fix a problem or a fault offshore. Ultimately we have to strike a balance, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Local campaign groups oppose National Grid’s Norwich to Tilbury proposals
If the pylons are built, Ms Pearson says communities should be compensated for hosting in the same way as if Norwich to TIlbury was a train line.
Currently the grid, and the government’s electricity commissioner have said only that they should receive “benefits” from hosting infrastructure, such as cheaper bills.
“That’s patronising,” she said. “Full compensation needs to be paid to any farmer that’s having his business disrupted, any homeowner who can’t sell, any business that can’t run in the same way, not sweeteners.”
Planning problems
Where she and the grid agree is that the planning system is not working.
It can take a decade for major projects to pass through a system ill-designed to cope with the net zero infrastructure boom.
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De-carbonising Britain’s electricity grid
Rosie Pearson may have helped around 600 local groups challenge various building projects, but she rejects the accusation that they stand in the way of progress.
“I think people look at it the wrong way.
“The system creates the objector, the planning system even calls us ‘objectors’. If the system involved communities right from the beginning, presented them with options or alternatives, with facts and pros and cons, then you’d end up with decisions being made much faster.
“I can certainly say with this pylons campaign, if we’d all been consulted at the beginning we’d probably be working towards a better solution for everybody.”
For National Grid and other infrastructure developers the problem is a lack of clarity. Major planning decisions are guided by National Policy Statements, many of which are out of date and leave many decisions open to interpretation.
Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Committee and the government’s senior adviser, told Sky News they need urgent rewriting and regular updating.
“The process gets bogged down partly because there isn’t clarity of direction from the outset that enables an inspector to judge a project against the importance of the project to the nation, much more than to a locality,” he said.
“What we have to do over the next 20 years does require boldness, it requires clarity, it requires a sense of leadership and a sense that this is very important for our country in terms of the economy, our ability to grow jobs to spread that wealth around the country, our ability to compete.
“If we don’t make the changes to our infrastructure that’s necessary, we risk being left behind.”
Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has told Sky News that Britain is ready for a change of government after scolding the Conservatives over their handling of the economy and immigration after Brexit.
While insisting his petrochemicals conglomerate INEOS is apolitical, Sir Jim backed Brexit and spent last weekend with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer at Manchester United – the football club he now runs as minority owner.
“I’m sure Keir will do a very good job at running the country – I have no questions about that,” Sir Jim said in an exclusive interview.
“There’s no question that the Conservatives have had a good run,” he added. “I think most of the country probably feels it’s time for a change. And I sort of get that, really.”
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Sir Jim was a prominent backer of leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum but now has issues with how Brexit was delivered by Tory prime ministers.
“Brexit sort of unfortunately didn’t turn out as people anticipated because… Brexit was largely about immigration,” Sir Jim said.
“That was the biggest component of that vote. People were getting fed up with the influx of the city of Southampton coming in every year. I think last year it was two times Southampton.
“I mean, no small island like the UK could cope with vast numbers of people coming into the UK.
“I mean, it just overburdens the National Health Service, the traffic service, the police, everybody.
“The country was designed for 55 or 60 million people and we’ve got 70 million people and all the services break down as a consequence.
“That’s what Brexit was all about and nobody’s implemented that. They just keep talking about it. But nothing’s been done, which is why I think we’ll finish up with the change of government.”
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UK needs to get ‘sharper on the business front’
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has indicated an election is due this year but Monaco-based Sir Jim is unimpressed by the Conservatives’ handling of the economy.
“The UK does need to get a bit sharper on the business front,” he said. “I think the biggest objective for the government is to create growth in the economy.
“There’s two parts of the economy, there’s the services side of the economy and there’s the manufacturing side. And the manufacturing, unfortunately, has been sliding away now for the last 25 years.
“We were very similar in scale to Germany probably 25 years ago.
“But today we’re just a fraction of where Germany is and I think that isn’t healthy for the British economy… particularly when you think the north of England is very manufacturing based, and that talks to things like energy competitiveness, it talks to things like, why do you put an immensely high tax on the North Sea?
“That just disincentivises people from finding hydrocarbons in the North Sea, in energy.
“And what we need is competitive energy. So I mean, in America, in the energy world, in the oil and gas world, they just apply a corporation tax to the oil and gas companies, which is about 30%. And in the UK we’ve got this tax of 75% because we want to kill off the oil and gas companies.
“But if we don’t have competitive energy, we’re not going to have a healthy manufacturing industry. And that just makes no sense to me at all. No.”
‘We’re apolitical’
Asked about INEOS donating to Labour, Sir Jim replied: “We’re apolitical, INEOS.
“We just want a successful manufacturing sector in the UK and we’ve talked to the government about that. It’s pretty clear about our views.”
Sir Jim was keener to talk about the economy and politics than his role at struggling Manchester United, which he bought a 27.7% stake in from the American Glazer family in February – giving him an even higher business profile.
Old Trafford stadium in Manchester. Pic: AP
Push for stadium of the North
He is continuing to push for public funds to regenerate Old Trafford and the surrounding areas despite no apparent political support being forthcoming. Sir Keir was hosted at the stadium for a Premier League match last weekend just as heavy rain exposed the fragility of the ageing venue.
“There’s a very good case, in my view, for having a stadium of the North, which would serve the northern part of the country in that arena of football,” Sir Jim said. “If you look at the number of Champions League the North West has won, it’s 10. London has won two.
“And yet everybody from the North has to get down to London to watch a big football match. And there should be one [a large stadium] in the North, in my view.
“But it’s also important for the southern side of Manchester, you know, to regenerate.
“It’s the sort of second capital of the country where the Industrial Revolution began.
“But if you have a regeneration project, you need a nucleus or a regeneration project and having that world-class stadium there, I think would provide the impetus to regenerate that region.”
Marks & Spencer’s website and app has not been working for several hours, with a message telling shoppers “you can’t shop with us right now”.
“We’re working hard to be back online as soon as possible,” it adds.
All the menus and images have disappeared apart from one showing a model in a green jacket.
Customers trying to use the app got the message: “Sorry you can’t shop through the app right now. We’re busy making some planned changes, but will be back soon.”
The site is understood to have been down for several hours.
Replying to one customer on X, the retailer said: “We’re experiencing some technical issues but we are working on it.”
M&S is the latest high street name to have technical issues – last month some Sainsbury’s shoppers had problems with their online orders.
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The outage comes a few days before M&S is expected to reveal a big jump in annual profits.
It’s been a successful year for the brand, with strong sales across the business following a turnaround plan that has included store closures and cost cutting.
Bosses at Revolut, Britain’s biggest fintech, are drawing up plans to allow employees to cash in with a sale of stock valued at hundreds of millions of pounds.
Sky News has learnt that the banking and payments services provider is lining up investment bankers to coordinate a secondary share sale worth in the region of $500m (£394m).
Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street bank, is expected to be engaged to work on the proposed stock offering, which will take place later this year.
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City sources said this weekend that Nik Storonsky, Revolut’s co-founder and chief executive, was determined to seek a valuation of at least the $33bn (£26bn) it secured in a primary funding round in 2021.
“This will not be a down-round,” said one person familiar with Revolut’s thinking.
Although the fintech, which has more than 40 million customers, is not planning to raise new capital as part of the transaction, any sizeable share sale will still be closely watched across the global fintech sector.
It is expected to be restricted to company employees.
Revolut ranks among the world’s largest financial technology businesses, with revenue virtually doubling last year to around £1.7bn, according to figures expected to be published in the coming months.
Founded in 2015, it has experienced a string of regulatory and compliance challenges, with reports last year highlighting its release of funds from accounts flagged by the National Crime Agency as suspicious.
The company’s growth has taken place at breakneck speed, with customer numbers soaring from 16.4m at the point of the Series E fundraising nearly three years ago.
The company’s growth has taken place at breakneck speed. Pic: Revolut
Insiders argued that despite the protracted downturn in tech valuations over the last two years, Revolut’s relentless expansion would easily justify it maintaining its status as Britain’s most valuable fintech.
Monzo, the UK-based digital bank, recently confirmed a Sky News story that it had closed a funding round worth nearly £500m, including backing from an arm of Google’s owner, Alphabet, and a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund.
Elsewhere, however, the funding landscape has been bleaker, with a growing number of tech companies which had attracted unicorn valuations of more than $1bn now struggling to stay afloat.
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Revolut has allotted stock options to many of its 10,000 employees as part of their compensation packages, although it was unclear how many would be eligible to dispose of equity in the transaction later this year.
A source close to the company said it had had numerous expressions of interest from prospective investors.
Revolut’s current shareholders include SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Tiger Global.
News of the proposed share sale comes as Revolut’s investors continue to await positive news about its application for a UK banking licence.
Revolut applied for a UK banking licence more than three years ago. Pic: Reuters
The company applied to regulators to become a bank in Britain more than three years ago, but has so far failed to secure approval.
Mr Storonsky has been publicly critical of the delay, and last year questioned the approach of British regulators and politicians, as he suggested that he would not contemplate a listing on the London Stock Exchange.
An initial public offering of Revolut appears to still be some way off, although it would not surprise investors or industry peers if it initiated a listing process in the next couple of years.
One person close to Revolut said board members were among those expected to participate in the secondary share sale, although further details were unclear this weekend.
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The company is chaired by Martin Gilbert, the City veteran who has faced governance and performance challenges at Assetco, the London-listed asset manager he runs.
Its other directors include Michael Sherwood, the former Goldman Sachs executive who was jointly responsible for its operations outside the US and who was regarded as one of the most skilled traders of his generation.
An external shareholder in the company said the exclusion of non-employees from the deal could draw criticism from some investors.
Revolut has conducted secondary share sales of this kind in the past, including after its 2021 Series E round.
This weekend, Revolut declined to comment.
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