Energy and climate experts have hit out at Conservative plans to hold a review into electricity pylons, saying the manifesto pledge could increase energy bills and make it harder to reach net zero.
Industry sources and climate action groups have criticised the Tories over the party’s manifesto commitment to hold a “rapid review” of overhead pylons, which it announced amid mounting pressure from anti-pylon activists in rural areas.
The manifesto said the review would “consider moving to a presumption in favour of undergrounding [laying cables underground] where cost competitive”. However, government ministers have previously warned that burying electricity cables could cost up to 10 times more than pylons, delaying much-needed grid improvements and increasing prices for bill payers.
Lawrence Slade, the chief executive of the Energy Networks Association, said: “Upgrading the grid without delay is crucial to meeting our future energy needs. It’s worth noting that in his independent review last year, the government’s electricity networks commissioner estimated that undergrounding cables can cost five to 10 times as much as going overhead.”
Max Wakefield, a co-director of the climate charity Possible, said: “In order to decarbonise and meet our net zero targets, we will still need urgent action to upgrade our grid infrastructure, which is currently not fit for purpose if we are to move towards renewables and away from fossil fuels.
“Anything that acted as a barrier to those upgrades would hinder our climate progress at a time when we can’t afford to wait.”
Dale Vince, the founder of the energy company Ecotricity and a Labour donor, said: “Talk of alternative network technologies is nonsense. The choice is simple: overhead or underground power cables – and underground costs 10 times as much. Nobody that was seriously concerned with the cost of energy would propose to ban overhead cables.”
The government commissioned Nick Winser, a former UK chief executive of National Grid, to write a report on electricity networks in 2023. The report found: “There is a large difference in cost for overhead lines, underground cable and offshore cable. Underground cables cost between five and 10 times more than overhead lines and offshore cables are more expensive again.”
Those findings were accepted by government ministers at the time. Lord Martin Callanan, the energy minister, told the Lords in 2023: “We need this new infrastructure and, unfortunately, it is not possible to say that no community will be affected. It is possible to bury power lines, of course, but it is up to 10 times more expensive and that cost will fall on the bill payer.”
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Since then, however, the Tories have faced mounting pressure from rural voters to abandon their commitment to building new pylons, and some candidates are now actively campaigning against them in their own constituencies.
They include Andrew Bowie, who was removed from his post as energy minister after it emerged he had campaigned against pylons in his own constituency. Bowie is now campaigning heavily in his West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine seat against what he calls “monster pylons”.
John Hayes, who is seeking to be re-elected as MP for South Holland and the Deepings, demanded in May that the government “recognise the threat of a monstrous string of pylons stretching right down the east coast of England”.
