National Grid has a plan to place green energy infrastructure in Thanet. Steve Roberts, town councillor and Thanet Green Party member explains why his party is opposed to the plan:
National Grid is proposing to increase the capacity of the electricity transmission network. They want to carry more low carbon and renewable energy from where it is generated to homes and businesses across the country. Part of this is a converter station in Thanet.
Sounds wonderful. Green energy, jobs will be created, so why are Thanet Green Party and thousands of local people opposed?
It is the right thing in the wrong place. The proposed site is adjacent to Minster Marshes, a protected Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) wildlife site. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation.
Thanet needs its only SSSI more than most parts of the UK. We have the lowest tree canopy of any district in the UK with just 4.4%. In comparison London has a 29% tree canopy.
The proposal will also cause significant damage to Pegwell Bay nature reserve.
The substation can be built anywhere in the southeast including offshore. So how and why did National Grid decide that Minster Marshes is the best place. If you or I made a list of suitable places the Marshes would be at the bottom. National Grid, quite literally could not have made a worse choice.
The answer lies in understanding National Grid. It is a privately owned for-profit company, the same as Southern Water. The proposal is the best one for their profits and the worst for the people of Thanet.
Let’s understand the scale of what is being proposed. The proposed converter station will be 28 metres high and cover 90,000 square metres. That is up to 18 football pitches.
Will it be safe? The evidence suggests not. The station will use a lithium battery energy storage system which are prone to igniting. Research by Thanet Green Party and the Save Minster Marshes campaign found that it took the fire service 10 hours to get a lithium BESS fire in Liverpool under control. The Liverpool BESS is a fraction of the size of what is proposed for Thanet.
A fire would create highly toxic fumes which winds could spread across Thanet. Imagine being strongly advised to shut your windows and not go out for 20 hours. Would schools need to shut? Would businesses need to close?
National Grid’s proposal acknowledges this fire risk. The plan asks for a 250,000-litre water tank for fire-fighting. But what are the compliance arrangements for preventing water run-off contaminating waterways? And what will the fire brigade use when this 250,000-litre water tank is emptied? Water from the Stour. The proposal is an ecological disaster. The fire will be an even bigger one.
The people of Thanet should not have this proposal and these risks dumped on them.
There are many viable alternatives. National Grid just need to put what is right for the people of Thanet before profit for their mainly foreign shareholders. National Grid plc’s top ten shareholders range from global asset management firms BlackRock and Vanguard to public pension funds, notably those of Norway and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Sir Roger Gale, MP for Herne Bay and Sandwich with West Thanet, has been crystal clear in his opposition to the proposal. He has stated that ‘it seems to me that they’re blundering ahead because they know best. Well, I’m sorry, they don’t know best.’
How can you help? Join the Campaign to Save Minster Marshes https://www.minstermarshes.com/
Write to Polly Billington, MP for East Thanet. Raise your concerns.
Ask that National Grid survey other sites. Sites that are not home to rare and endangered insects, birds, animals and plants.
We must stop the destruction of Minster Marshes. When it is gone, so are our rare animals, birds and plants.
We all know.
The reasons have been previously published here.
This is a combination of NIMBYism and parochial self interest.
Neither yourself or the Green Party are in any way environmentally friendly.
There,s nothing wrong with ” NIMBYISM and parochial self-interest”. I wish that local Planning Departments would put parochial self interest first when making decisions. Instead, they seem to act as local government supporters of big business developers and the rest of us are expected to just accept it.
I don’t disagree.
However, this is not why the Councillor wrote the article. He is having what should have been a private conversation within the Green Party. Which of their leading lights 🤣🤣🤣 reads this journal? Let alone letters within it.
There are protocols for such things.
Not sure what you mean Harry. Thanet Green Party have been researching National Grids plans for ages now. As Cllr Roberts says, their are very serious concerns about damage to flora and fauna but also to population centres. Principally, depending on wind direction, Cliffsend,Minster and Sandwich are at great risk from a fire. And that’s because the toxic fumes within the smoke plume from a lithium battery fire are many varied substances.
The Grenfell report shows what complacent profiteering can lead to. Fire Brigade have already opposed plans for a BESS in other parts of Thanet. But the Minster facility will be massive in comparison.
The Green Party nationally adopt policies about energy but you’ll find they won’t include creating serious risks to life and health so private companies can add to their, already, large profit margins.
A proposal for a development such as this should not be ignored by the local residents in general and only discussed in private.Its pros and cons should be made public.
“There,s nothing wrong with ” NIMBYISM and parochial self-interest”.”
There is everything wrong with both. Especially when that limits progress for the majority at the behest of a narcissists whims. Cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Manston is just a km away. Hundreds of acres of abandoned brownfield site, just waiting for something to do.
Build the converter station on it…
I think your graphic description of the danger of lithium batteries is a bit extreme. Any mechanism used to store concentrated energy has the potential for catastrophic failure. Remember Buncehill Fields? But such things are extremely rare. For obvious reasons – no one wants to see their profits go up in flames.
I seriously regret voting green at the last council elections. I voted green as I care about climate change. They just seem to live in cloud cooko land. They’re now obosed to lithium? What do they think every electric car and hoke storage batteries are made of?
I’ve had enough of this nimbyisoum. Look at the ridiculous backa nd forth that went on with Manston. Make a decion and get on with it. Things need to be built somewhere. Are we going to waste 10 years arguing where? Just get on and build it. I’m glad reforming the planing system is high on labour’s list.
What do the green party want? Do they want home produced low emission energy or would they prefer nuclear or fossil fueled electricity?
Yes BESS installations are not risk free, but what isn’t?
You want to electrify the country but you don’t want pylons?
I also believe that all our infrastructure should be publicly owned, but even it was, there would be pylons.They have been with us since 1927 and the Central Electricity Board.
What this Cllrs is saying like all middle class delittants is that traditionally it is poor people that suffer a poor environment and all the downsides of the modern world, such as poor housing, noisy roads,unsightly infrastructure like pylons and sewage farms, not nice middle class people.Well the world has turned. There won’t be any marshes or SSIs or anything else,unless we get on with it, if sea levels rise due to global warming.
So you have to compromise, a battery unit or a coastal terrain like it was in the 13th century, your choice, but don’t take too long in deciding which.
Many of us want to see a cleaner world, with a less unpredictable climate, but we are not going to bother with middle class NIMBYs using nature as a cover for their own self interest.
George, you misunderstand the Green Party position in this, as does “anon”.
Yes there are issues about lithium batteries, if nothing else the appalling working conditions of those who mine it.
But for the BESS the significant environmental damage and life risks to local populations are unecessary. National Grid are choosing the cheapest options rather than those that are sustainable and safe. It’s rank profiteering rather than considered and effective national utility planning.
The other part of Green Pty thinking is that demand should be reduced by sensible changes to planning rules so every new-build had decent insulation, water capture features, solar energy tech, heat pumps, etc.
So nimbyism is not the motive, rather it’s a desire to have a planned national energy service that meets the needs of the people, not the crazy wealth creation greed of hedge funds.
Every action has a reaction .The Councilor’s comments are apt. Granted, the nation needs clean & secure energy but not at any cost.
If nothing else the last 40 years has demonstrated privatization benefits shareholders to the detriment of the public.
The sooner we as a country wake up and put a stop to this travesty happening to all our Utility Services the better.
If this project proceeds as planned it makes a mockery of the Protection Status it has rightfully earned.