How hundreds of millions are being spent upgrading the grid in East Yorkshire to take North Sea wind energy

Seventy years later the grid needs a massive overhaul to transport electricity from where it is increasingly being produced – in the world’s biggest wind farms off Yorkshire, in the relatively shallow North Sea.

Because of its geographic location close to the East Coast, Creyke Beck substation, just outside England’s largest village, Cottingham, which has recently been connected to Dogger Bank A and B wind farms, is set for further expansion.

A new substation and extension, costing several hundred million pounds, are planned along with other infrastructure and a new overhead powerline.

They are part of efforts, dubbed the Great Grid Upgrade, to meet Government targets of 50 gigawatts (GW) of wind power in just six years time – which will be no mean feat if achieved.

The Creyke Beck extension – essentially another substation – will take electricity from Hornsea Project Four offshore wind farm and a solar and battery storage project.

Meanwhile the Dogger Bank D wind farm – the “fourth phase of the world’s largest wind farm” – will plug into into a new substation at Birkhill Wood close by.

Steve Knight-Gregson, head of English regions external affairs for National Grid, which builds and maintains the high voltage network, said: “The work at Creyke Beck is vital to connect the new offshore wind and interconnectors to the electricity transmission network.

“With increasing renewables and interconnectors up to around 13GW may be connected in the Creyke Beck area by 2033.”

Currently the UK’s installed capacity for offshore wind is 14.6GW – the government’s target is to connect 50GW of offshore wind by 2030. The target for solar is even bigger – a five-fold increase is needed to get to 70GW by 2035.

Mr Knight-Gregson said: “I think a lot of people take it for granted when they turn on a light. They don’t realise the logistics. Demand for electricity is set to double by 2050 which is why we need the Great Grid Upgrade to heat homes and for electric cars.

“The government target is to connect 50GW of offshore wind by 2030, while the target for solar is 70GW by 2035.

“There is a huge shift in where our energy is coming from.”

There are powerful reasons why the system has to cope with the extra electricity: “If we tell the wind farms they can’t generate we need to tell the gas-fired plants to generate to meet demand,” said Mr Knight-Gregson.

“So you have two sets of costs – telling a generator not to generate and another to generate – they go onto our bills.

“You are potentially using a less efficient, more carbon intensive source of energy and also hindering the progress towards net zero.”

The transmission element of an energy bill is currently only around £20 per year. National Grid can’t currently say how much it will go up by – but expect the overall cost to “come down in the long-term as a direct result of these projects”.

Looking at National Grid’s handy WhenToPlugIn app yesterday morning is a reminder of how much has changed in the 24 years since the UK’s first offshore windfarm started generating electricity off Blyth.

Just before 10am the north of Scotland was close to zero carbon with 90 per cent of electricity being generated from wind and 10 per cent hydro. At the same time in Yorkshire 45 per cent of electricity was from biomass, wind was at 35 per cent. Coal was nowhere to be seen. Uniper’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant in Nottinghamshire, the only operating coal power station in the UK is expected to shut this October.

Ex- minister stands by oil and gas

Former energy and net zero minister Graham Stuart has branded the green lobby a “wierd cult” with beliefs that “never should be challenged.”

The Beverley and Holderness MP said oil and gas would still be needed in 2050 and beyond and it made no sense to destroy domestic production and tens of thousands of jobs, and use foreign imports with higher embedded emissions.

Last November the government set out plans for new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea, which opposition parties and green campaigners said ran contrary to the UK’s climate goals.

However Mr Stuart who stood down from his role earlier this month to concentrate on campaigning in the general election said he “desperately looks for an argument in their invective and doesn’t find any”.

Mr Stuart said targets of 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 70GW of solar by 2035 are a “big ask” but are “still deliverable”, although ramping up on renewables is putting “enormous strain” on the grid.

He said: “Effectively we are victims of our own success, less than 10 per cent came from renewables in 2010, now it’s pushing towards half.

“It’s an ambitious undertaking, it relies on having all the components delivering. My assessment would be we can do that.”

However oil and gas, he insists, “is not the enemy”.

“We are currently the most decarbonised major economy on earth and in 2022 three-quarters of our primary energy came from oil and gas. Oil and gas is not the enemy, is something we need to transition from - we should do it rationally and logically.”

The MP said pushing the oil boiler ban back to 2035 - the boilers had been set to be phased out from 2026 - was a sign the government was listening and trying to make it easier for consumers.

Instead households are being offered larger grants of of up to £7,500 towards the installation of heat pumps.

“People who were off-grid were worried and we took that worry away,” he said. “It’s not resiling from net zero, it is ducking and weaving to get there. We are making changes in ways people can live with.”

But he said the country stopping producing its own oil and gas “makes no difference whatsoever”.

He said: “The whole green lobby is like some wierd cult. There are certain shibboleths which will never should be challenged. They have no rationale - oil and gas is bad, it’s evil - it’s just crazy. No one can explain to me why it’s bad - because it isn’t the alternative is worse.

“Ceasing to produce our own oil and gas will make no difference whatsoever to our consumption of oil and gas.

“In order to get oil and gas we will have to import it, which has higher emissions than if we produced it domestically.

“200,000 jobs are supported by oil and gas and it is extremely highly taxed at 75 per cent. Over the next five years it is expected to bring in £30bn.”

The Committee for Climate Change wants to see oil consumption fall by 85 per cent by 2050 (from 2022) and fossil gas (without carbon capture) “virtually eliminated”. Their 2023 progress report identified “significant risks with Government progress”.

Aakash Naik, who heads Greenpeace UK’s Stop Drilling campaign, said: “Avoiding further catastrophic climate change means stopping all new oil and gas drilling - and that’s not from some “weird cult” - that’s the view of the International Energy Agency. Instead, we need proper investment in a just transition away from fossil fuels for workers and communities. This means insulating our leaky buildings and electrifying our transport and heating with clean, cheap renewable energy - something this government has pointedly failed to do.”

Andy Prendergast, GMB National Secretary, said the country needs to get to reach net zero “as soon as possible”: “The question is where do we get it from. Do we import it from the likes of Putin or do we support domestic generation and tens of thousands of jobs?

“GMB’s position is that we are better off using our domestic supply - helping to generate the huge sums we need to invest in green technologies - to achieve a true just transition.”

Full quote from Greenpeace if needed: Aakash Naik, who heads Greenpeace UK’s Stop Drilling, Start Paying campaign, said: “Stuart’s comments are either ignorant or dishonest, and from someone who has spent the last year as a climate minister I’m not sure which is worse. Oil extracted from the North Sea is not owned by the UK but is sold to the highest bidder on the international market, so does nothing to increase our energy security or reduce our sky high energy bills.

“Avoiding further catastrophic climate change means stopping all new oil and gas drilling - and that’s not from some “weird cult” - that’s the view of the International Energy Agency. Instead, we need proper investment in a just transition away from fossil fuels for workers and communities. This means insulating our leaky buildings and electrifying our transport and heating with clean, cheap renewable energy - something this government has pointedly failed to do.