Campaigners look to different path for required infrastructure

Council leaders in Lancashire believe they have evidence which could convince the government not to allow plans which damage the Fylde coast in order to connect an offshore windfarm with a Penwortham substation.

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Campaigners and politicians are working to persuade Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and the developer to work with local officials to help plot a different path for the infrastructure required.

Under the current blueprint for the Morgan and Morecambe scheme, huge underground cables would come ashore at St Annes beach and run across the district through the excavated trench to two substations, south of Kirkham and west of Newton-with-Scales.

They would then continue onwards, beneath the Ribble, to their final grid-connection destination at Penwortham. According to councillors, this will involve an 18-mile trench that would be “the width of the M55”.

A cross-party group of Lancashire County Council (LCC) councillors last year worked to draw up an alternative route for the cables that will have to be laid in order to transfer the energy generated by planned turbines in the Irish Sea to the national grid.