Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 6 JANUARY 2010
MR GRAHAM
BOCKING AND
MR RICHARD
COAKLEY
Q40 Paddy Tipping:
Graham, do you want to comment on that point?
Mr Bocking: Yes. In relation to
gas, I think apart from security of supply it is also important
to think in terms of economic availability of supply. There has
not been very much mention as yet of gas prices but that will
also play a role, particularly at times when there are peaks in
gas demand and limits on short-term supply, and we need to take
that into account. Gas prices, apart from any government policies,
will also deliver a very powerful message to the market as to
which direction they should be moving, in the same way as I think
one of the Members mentioned earlier on, that there are other
factors which give a pointer to what should be done in terms of
carbon pricing, for example.
Paddy Tipping: Topical as it is, I am
going to resist the temptation to get into gas availability and
gas prices today. We are going to go on to that exact point, the
notion of carbon and carbon emissions being taken into by the
IPC.
Q41 Dr Turner:
You no doubt heard the comments on behalf of the TCPA decrying
the fact that the NPSs are not specific about the carbon intensity
of projects that should be consented. What is your feeling on
that?
Mr Coakley: I believe that you
cannot give the IPC everything to do looking after everything.
The job of the IPC is to work with others to actually deliver
the proper planning. To work with others is the bit in the overview
that a number of people in the consultation process might be missing
and it is important that is said. Recently Infrastructure UK—
Q42 Paddy Tipping:
Tell us a bit more about Infrastructure UK.
Mr Coakley: Nobody knows enough
about Infrastructure UK.
Q43 Paddy Tipping:
You know more than me!
Mr Coakley: The opportunity here
is to actually have Infrastructure UK as almost a corresponding
member of IPC and the Low Carbon Group as well so that the IPC
is continually working with these particular groups to get the
best of what is a moving picture as we go forward delivering this
massive challenge we have got to continue to deliver energy to
the people of the UK. It is not a one-size-fits-all answer. I
believe that IPC have got a massive challenge to undertake it
correctly, but they will be corresponding and discussing with
these other people. To have Infrastructure UK there as the potential
to discuss and develop ideas with and to get value from the marketplace
as well for information to be coming out is very important for
me.
Q44 Dr Turner:
You have not actually addressed the question I was asking; perhaps
I should have been more specific about it. The fear is that guidance
as it seems at face value at the moment does not prevent the possibility
of future generating capacity being consented which is excessively
carbon intensive. Do you think that the NPSs as currently framed
give sufficient weight to the desirability of non-carbon or low
carbon generating capacity in preference to carbon intensive capacity?
Mr Coakley: The documents do not
give that intent. Again, it goes back to the commercial aspects,
that people are open to submit different ideas of projects to
IPC which have different carbon contents. There is a lot to be
said for someone actually looking after that overall carbon budget
within the UK. It is important if IPC is not looking after it,
somebody very close to the workings of IPC that can actually deliver
that into their collective thought is.
Q45 Dr Turner:
As it is the IPC will have a statutory consultee in the form of
the Committee on Climate Change and one would expect the Committee
on Climate Change to be in a position to do precisely what you
have just said.
Mr Coakley: That is what I refer
to as being a web of information going into IPC and it being used
in this way.
Q46 Dr Turner:
In principle, do you think it would be useful to indicate just
as a principal heading, if you like, in the overarching NPS a
preference for a hierarchy of energy generating sources within
the mix?
Mr Coakley: Yes, I do think that
it would be useful to talk this through but we have got to be
aware that as time moves on that hierarchy might change depending
on the overall marketplace we are dealing in.
Mr Bocking: If I could address
the Member's question for a moment. Yes, there are the other policy
mechanisms which will tend to place greater or lesser emphasis
on particular technology options so that it is not purely the
NPS series which is determining that. I would agree that it is
difficult to expect the IPC to deal with this aspect as well as
carbon emissions and the priority of technologies to reduce them.
You need to look at the other mechanisms as well, I believe.
Paddy Tipping: In your evidence and here
today you have both made wider points about the energy NPSs and
the link to the wider infrastructure. Mike, do you want to pursue
that at this point?
Q47 Mr Weir:
Obviously a lot of major developments will need related infrastructure,
particularly roads and rail for major power stations. Does the
proposed framework provide adequate consideration of the additional
infrastructure for these developments?
Mr Coakley: I do not think they
do at the moment and that is because we have different NPSs in
different forms. Yes, the harbours and ports NPS is out as a draft
but I do not think there is this spatial link between them at
the moment. Also, I believe that where we have the interface with
town and country planning processes where you might have different
transportation aspects going through a different process that
could actually create a challenge for the successful delivery
of what we need in this country. I am not sure that we have got
that right yet.
Mr Bocking: Nevertheless, I do
not think that should be seen as a reason for in any way holding
up the introduction of these NPSs until the others are in place,
bearing in mind they are all based on the same policy objectives.
Given that you have a framework in these NPSs which addresses
the electricity generation facilities, clearly those facilities
will then need a transport infrastructure to support them but
that transport infrastructure will always tend to follow where
the location is. That is not to say that on a site specific level
there may not be within the context of the environmental assessment
of an individual proposal issues which need to be addressed if,
for example, there were difficulties in gaining sufficient access
to an individual site, such that the proposal for that site itself
came into question. At a local site specific level that may obviously
be the case, however in general and strategic terms one might
assume one has a policy or series of policies here which help
to determine the development that takes place and then the infrastructure
which is necessary for that development. People affected by it
at a local level need to be respected and the issues dealt with
at a local level, but in strategic terms the NPS for ports or
other transport infrastructure, I would have thought, could follow
from these and these do not have to be held up until the others
are there.
Q48 Mr Weir:
How do you get around the risk of the associated infrastructure
falling into different consenting procedures from the main project?
You can imagine a situation where the IPC perhaps says, "This
new nuclear power station" or whatever type station, "is
necessary" and gives consent to that, but there then is a
problem about access, road access or whatever, which falls under
a different planning system and effectively could be used to try
and scupper such a major development. Does there not need to be
a link-up between the two to ensure that if the IPC determines
this is a national development that is required to go ahead that
is not scuppered by lack of infrastructure allowing access to
it?
Mr Coakley: This was where I was
coming from. This is not yet joined-up. I agree with you that
there is a potential for real delay in that area and that is something
that should be looked at during this consultation, not to delay
the process of delivery of this but small movements in the process
of what is going on in the overarching aspects of these documents
to be corrected.
Q49 Mr Weir:
How do you get over it? Is there a case for saying that if the
IPC determines that a project, whether it be carbon capture and
storage, nuclear or whatever, is a national project then the associated
infrastructure automatically becomes the same and falls under
the IPC? Is that what you would envisage happening?
Mr Coakley: At this stage it is
definitely not. This is what we need to get right. As we have
a priority in the country to create that energy source, and IPC
has looked at it in that priority process, whatever hangs around
that and determines the delivery of that priority also takes the
same.
Mr Bocking: Clearly transport
infrastructure or grid infrastructure are important issues in
themselves and one does not want to get into a controversial situation
of putting forward a particular proposal which then is not necessary
because the power plant it is due to serve is not put together.
Just to take an example: looking at Scotland there is generally
accepted to be vast potential for renewables in the northern part
of Scotland and there is a proposal for a line upgrading Beauly-Denny
which would then facilitate a lot of that development. The point
you have made is very valid, that some people who have opposed
Beauly-Denny have no doubt done so because they see also the opportunity
indirectly to prevent some of these developments taking place
which for their own reasons they would wish to do. In a strategic
sense the Government, or relevant government and bodies, have
put forward proposals for an upgrading of a line to enable developments
in total to take place without necessarily prejudging whether
a particular development here or there or somewhere else should
be the one that is eventually connected or one of those which
is eventually connected. There does need to be some general upgrading
of infrastructure based on a more broad approach to where that
infrastructure needs to connect, for example, offshore wind in
the North Sea or the Irish Sea or wherever.
Q50 Mr Weir:
I take your point but carbon capture and storage is a classic
example. If there are to be pipes taking it from power stations
to feed it into North Sea aquifers or whatever, those pipes could
travel for considerable distances which is going to be a national
infrastructure project that needs to be developed, but it needs
to be developed in conjunction with the power stations that are
producing the carbon in the first instance. It seems to me that
there is a real danger of a disconnect between the two unless
they are linked up to ensure that they are done at the same time.
Mr Bocking: Without wishing to
be naively optimistic, nonetheless that has not really been the
experience up until now in relation to gas supplies to gas-fired
plant which has been built so far. Whether it is so much more
difficult in terms of taking CO2 in the other direction remains
to be seen, but I think the indications are it does not have to
be as difficult as one might possibly fear.
Mr Weir: That from the man who mentioned
Beauly-Denny a few minutes ago!
Paddy Tipping: I think you were making
the point that there is an announcement on Beauly-Denny this morning?
Paddy Tipping: It is supposed to be today,
yes.
John Robertson: We have been waiting
on it for long enough.
Q51 Mr Anderson:
This is hypothetical to an extent. If the UK Government decided,
despite opposition in Scotland, that we had to have a nuclear
power plant in Scotland, a new one, we could go ahead with that
and then the local authorities or Scottish Government would say,
"Fine, we will have to live with that but we are not going
to pass the planning permission for the new railway or road infrastructure",
so the company that was building it would say, "There's no
future in it so we'll walk away". Are we in that scenario
potentially or not?
Mr Coakley: I would not express
it in the same way as you have just expressed it with regard to
nuclear and over the border, there are much more practical aspects
on a station in England.
Q52 Mr Anderson:
I am only giving that as an example.
Mr Coakley: I do believe that
could be the case. Although it may be that does not happen, I
think there is a potential for that to happen and more should
be done about that. As I say, it is fundamental to get energy
sources into this country and we cannot stand any delay of this
sort of puerile nature of one having a priority and that priority
being usurped by a minor technical challenge.
Q53 Mr Anderson:
Is Infrastructure UK the body that can identify those problems?
Mr Coakley: We would be delighted
to work with this panel on this area on whatever we can do to
smooth these processes.
Q54 Charles Hendry:
Can I take a rather different perspective on this. Is there not
a balance to be struck between the national and the local aspects?
We have moved significantly through the introduction of National
Policy Statements to saying, "Look, there is a national need
and there has got to be a national structure for how that is going
to be implemented". There is also a fairly natural distinction
between those things which are national, for example a nuclear
power station which is going to have a national significance,
and the roads which service that, the new housing which might
be built to provide accommodation for the workforce, and some
of those things which should quite rightly remain at a local level,
and if the local community feel that they are losing all their
say in all the related matters then they are going to feel very
ostracised indeed. Clearly the grid connections are part of the
plant application, but there is a whole range of other things
which are very local and should they not continue to be determined
at a local level?
Mr Coakley: Yes, you have a very
good point there and it is a national policy that we are putting
forward in these statements. You are quite right, we are getting
into minor details, but it is an opportunity that can delay the
process and it would be good to see some form in which this is
prioritised into the local community somehow.
Q55 Charles Hendry:
Particularly for the nuclear power stations, overwhelmingly these
are communities which are keen to be host communities, they are
looking to be constructive, but they will have a strong view about
how the road infrastructure should be there, what screening might
be done—okay, it is slightly hard to screen a nuclear power
station—where housing should go so, therefore, should we
not try to work with that to involve the local community rather
than saying, "Look, we can't have any delays whatsoever,
we have got to do this in a very top-down approach even on some
of the micro detail"?
Mr Coakley: I am not talking about
those as exceptions, those will flow through. By far the large
numbers of communities that I work with on nuclear power in their
vicinity are very supportive of this process and, therefore, I
cannot see a big challenge in that area. We are not talking about
just nuclear power, we are talking about the whole planning process
and infrastructure here. By exception, yes, I agree but that will
just naturally happen.
Mr Bocking: I think the market
itself will also recognise this. If a developer is looking at
proposals for a particular large power plant development, whether
it is nuclear or some other kind, it will want to know that that
proposal is going to be able to go into operation, not just receive
consent for the proposal on site but also that the remaining infrastructure
which is necessary will be provided. Yes, there needs to be a
sufficiently positive framework put in place to ensure that is
the case. It is quite likely, and in the case of nuclear that
has been demonstrated in relation to the sites that are being
put forward, that if that development goes ahead, and I am not
particularly advocating it, there will need to be a grid infrastructure
and a road network to those sites, for example, most of which
are already in use for the same purpose or in communities which
are already in the vicinity of such sites so that the need for
new infrastructure off-site but connecting to the centres of demand
or sources of fuel supply is at least substantially already there.
Paddy Tipping: Richard, you made some
interesting points about heat and transport earlier on and I think
Judy is going to pursue those with you.
Q56 Judy Mallaber:
As I understand it, in your evidence you were talking about the
big shift there would be towards the electrification of heat and
transport as we move towards a low carbon economy. Do you think
the NPSs give sufficient consideration to the role of heat?
Mr Coakley: No, I do not think
they give sufficient understanding of the position of heat or
transport and to the movement of transport away from fuel, from
gas, from petrol and diesel. As we actually move into the area
that currently we are seeing in 2050, and we are now designing
for infrastructure that will be with us in 2050, the work that
we need to be designing for now for our commitments for 2020 I
see as just going through in our overall process for our design
process which will go out into 2050/2060. When we are talking
about those horizons we are talking about different transport
systems which may well be all electricity which means we are talking
about a total electrified system. If we do not think of these
processes now we will be missing a clear infrastructure process
in the 2040s and 2050s and the NPSs do not give that clear distinction
for me.
Q57 Judy Mallaber:
So what should they be saying? Can you give us any idea about,
for example, what the impact of the electrification of heating
will be on our demand for electricity in the long run? What are
the projections we should be making? What would you like to see
within the NPSs to deal with that?
Mr Coakley: Again, it is the prioritisation,
but it is a programming of prioritisation. It is getting to the
point we want to and for the IPC to understand the implications
of their approvals in that long-term process, for example looking
at the use of heat from power stations and how that is incorporated
in the NPSs, but the way in which that is incorporated in the
design of new infrastructure is not incorporated, it is not tied
together. I feel as though there should be more work done on that
in the NPSs.
Mr Bocking: The CCC's report from
last autumn did, however, express the view that the impact of
electrification of heating and even of vehicles to 2020 was not
expected to present any major problem, and even thereafter the
staging, if you like, of peak demand or the relative timing of
peak demand for charging of vehicles or charging of heat storage
units was likely to avoid much of the conflict with peak demand
for other purposes in the early mornings, late afternoons and
early evenings. There does not have to be a problem. Clearly the
more need there is for intermediate charging of vehicles during
the day the more likely there is then to be a conflict with, say,
industrial demand, but that should be manageable given sufficient
capacity in the system and flexibility to provide it where it
is needed.
Q58 Judy Mallaber:
So you are saying electric fires, for example, will not create
a particular problem in terms of managing our energy needs? Are
you saying that we do not need to have anything else within the
NPSs that we have got at the moment because it will sort itself
out?
Mr Bocking: I am not sure that
it necessarily belongs in the NPSs given the nature of urban development
in the UK as compared with the Continent where you have much more
dense populations in multi-storey dwellings compared with the
UK with rows of houses or smaller units. Clearly the potential
for schemes such as are going to be referred to the IPC to contribute
significantly to improving the use of surplus heat from this plant
is not going to be as great and, therefore, maybe the schemes
which can contribute most in terms of heat supply are going to
be of a smaller nature. Important in total, hopefully, but the
individual schemes may not be those which are then referred to
the IPC, particularly give that some of these larger schemes are
going to be situated around the periphery, say closer to fuel
sources, closer to the coast for cooling water or whatever the
siting criteria are.
Mr Coakley: What I was referring
to in particular was the fact that we need to be looking at 30/40
years into the future on the design horizon and if we are saying
we are going to have a carbon emission in this country of a certain
amount and are going to decrease it to that amount we cannot be
using gas-fired stations to deliver the electricity to deliver
what we are saying the community will look like because the delivery
process of that electricity will not deliver the carbon emission
statements that we have made so far and, therefore, we need to
be thinking of what particular generation capacity we are using
for that design horizon.
Q59 Judy Mallaber:
Is the requirement that developers consider the potential for
combined heat and power within their applications strong enough?
Would you like to see that strengthened or is that adequate as
it stands?
Mr Coakley: That is a particular
case in point to which I referred at the start in passing. I do
not think it is strong enough at this point and, again, that is
the spatial aspect of what these NPSs are omitting at the moment,
it is not joined-up enough to require the developers and CHP potential
for new plant to be all there at this stage. There are a few sentences
about it but at this stage it is not joined-up.
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