Britain’s power network will need £60 billion investment in new offshore wind farms if it is to hit the government’s target to decarbonise the electricity system by 2035.

Are we having a good experience with privatised utilities delivering timely investment in infrastructure? – Owl

Caroline Wheeler www.thetimes.co.uk

National Grid, the FTSE 100 company which is responsible for keeping the lights on, will unveil its plans on Tuesday.

It intends to connect up to 86 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2035, which on a windy day is enough to meet peak demand. It says 20,000 jobs will be created annually, of which 90 per cent will be outside the southeast of England.

The plans will, however, raise fears of hundreds of new pylons spoiling the countryside.

National Grid receives about £20 a year from each household bill as part of a transmission charge. These payments will finance the network upgrade.

Demand for electricity is set to rise by nearly two thirds over the next decade as people’s everyday lives, from increased smartphone usage to running an electric car, place more demand on the network.

To meet the government’s net-zero target, thousands of miles of new cabling will be required to move electricity from the sea and on to homes and businesses.

National Grid’s ESO division (electricity system operator) has recommended the creation of an “electrical spine”: onshore cables that will move a huge volume of power between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Merseyside.

Although the route is yet to be determined, the cable is expected to run down the east coast then through the central belt of Scotland to the northwest of England.

In addition three offshore links connecting windfarms in Scotland to those on the east coast of England will be recommended to “innovatively connect up the turbines offshore”.

Fintan Slye, the ESO executive director, said: “Great Britain’s electricity system is the backbone of our economy and society and must be fit for the future”. He said the company had to take “swift, co-ordinated and lasting action” to meet the net- zero target.

Up until now offshore wind farm developers have built individual connections to the shore. This approach was both criticised by affected communities and created bottlenecks, resulting in wind farms being paid to turn off turbines.

The ESO said this was now untenable as ministers pursued a near fourfold increase in offshore wind capacity to 50GW by the end of this decade. At present 14GW comes from wind although offshore capacity, from 130 projects at all stages of development, stands at 100GW.

Its aim is to reduce construction costs and minimise disruption after opposition from communities, notably Conservative constituencies in Suffolk.

Campaigners there argue that plans for onshore substations, as well as new connections between Suffolk and Kent, and an interconnector to the Netherlands, could cause long-term damage to ecology and tourism.

This year Ralph Fiennes, the actor, who was born in Ipswich, called for a halt to plans for “acres of steel and concrete in areas of profound natural beauty”.

Under National Grid’s plans, which seek to answer some of the concerns from residents, three times more undersea cabling could be laid than pylons. This will include 900km of upgrades to the existing network, a new 3,800km offshore network and a new 1,600km onshore network which could be overhead or underground.

Last year gas accounted for 32 per cent of Britain’s electricity generation, ahead of 29 per cent from wind and 14 per cent from nuclear. The last coal-burning plant, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, is due to close in September. Britain is set to have the second-largest offshore wind fleet by 2035, with 20 per cent of global capacity.