Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) has opened a public consultation on its Holistic Network Design Implementation Plan, a blueprint outlining how to connect a planned threefold increase in offshore wind generation to the national transmission grid.
The plan covers 37 proposed offshore wind farms and more than 50 gigawatts (GW) of capacity around the UK coastline, NESO said on Tuesday. It builds on earlier design work and incorporates additional environmental assessments aimed at reducing the ecological footprint of new subsea cabling routes.
Director of strategic energy planning and chief engineer Julian Leslie said: “Expanding offshore wind is critical to achieving clean power, but we’re clear that the expansion of the transmission network infrastructure must consider the natural environment.”
“Our teams have worked tirelessly with a wide variety of environmental stakeholders to devise today’s blueprint for the network design, with a renewed focus on the marine environment,” he added.
NESO said it has assessed the impact of 53 planned subsea cables within 5-kilometre-wide corridors, analysing factors such as geology, biodiversity and local marine habitats.
The operator added that responsibility for determining detailed cable routes will now fall to project developers, who must advance through the development consent process and carry out further environmental evaluations.
