My Lords, I shall speak to all three Motions in my name on the Order Paper at the same time. I am pleased to open the debate. The energy national policy statements set out the Government’s policy for the delivery of energy infrastructure and provide the legal framework for planning decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects. In 2024, the Chancellor announced a review of the current suite of NPSs to provide clarity for industry and stake- holders on the Government’s clean energy superpower mission.
This Government have been clear that the answers to the challenges around energy security, affordability and sustainability point in the same direction: to clean energy. For this reason, we have reviewed all the NPSs and determined that the existing overarching NPS for energy, EN-1, the NPS for renewable electricity, EN-3, and the NPS for electricity networks, EN-5, should be amended to reflect the policies set out in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. This was published in December 2024 and supports the investment required to build the infrastructure needed to accelerate to net zero.
The suite of energy NPSs—EN-1 to EN-5—were updated recently and published in January 2024. Most changes made to the NPSs in 2025 are therefore minor changes to enhance the clarity of the guidance. Some material updates have been made which pertain to policy, and I will outline them for debate.
EN-1 sets out the overarching need case and general assessment principles. The narrative of EN-1 has been updated to reflect the publication of the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. This reflects that all low-carbon NSIPs benefit from critical national priority status, with a presumption in favour of consent. This will include those relevant for clean power 2030. Energy from waste projects will no longer benefit from the critical national priority policy, as they do not meet the definition of a clean power technology in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan.
The Government recently made legislation to reintroduce onshore wind into the nationally significant infrastructure projects regime. This provides an appropriate route for nationally significant projects over 100 megawatts in England to seek planning consent. These projects are of a scale and complexity that local impacts need to be carefully balanced against the national benefits and meeting the UK’s wider decarbonisation goals. To support the assessment and determination of onshore wind projects entering the nationally significant infrastructure project regime, the Government have included a new section within EN-3, addressing the impacts, considerations and other matters specific to onshore wind.
This Government are committed to removing barriers to the deployment of offshore wind and acknowledge the importance of this industry to our clean power 2030 goals. One issue that has recently arisen is inter-array wake effects. This is why, at the design stage for a proposed offshore wind farm, we propose in EN-3 that an assessment of inter-array wake effects is recommended to take place between applicants and those of consented and operational wind farms to inform and support the consideration of potential mitigations.