Petition 780321 asks Parliament for the full cost and impact assessment.
Norfolk shows why that question matters.
There is a basic question running through the transformation of Britain’s energy system:
What is the whole thing actually going to cost?
Not the cost of one solar farm.Not one substation.Not one transmission line.The combined cost of generation, batteries, substations, converter stations, cables, transmission infrastructure, financing, replacement and eventual decommissioning.
That is the issue raised by Parliamentary Petition 780321.
The petition asks for the legal duties associated with the UK’s statutory carbon budgets and 2050 Net Zero target to be temporarily suspended until Parliament has considered an independent national assessment of their full costs and impacts.
Importantly, the petition specifically calls for examination of public and private costs, electricity bills, fuel poverty, food and energy security, land requirements, solar, wind, networks, substations and storage.
Norfolk provides an unusually clear case study of why such cumulative accounting matters.
Because when we stop looking at each application separately and start putting the published figures alongside one another, the scale changes dramatically.
Start with four proposed Norfolk solar schemes
High Grove, The Droves, East Pye and Tasway have a combined advertised generating capacity of up to 2,420MW — 2.42GW.Originally, we estimated their solar capital cost using the large-scale solar benchmarks commissioned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.Arup’s study gives total capital expenditure for large-scale solar of £526/kWp at the low case, £659/kWp centrally and £788/kWp at the high case, in 2023 real prices.
But something important has happened since that first calculation.
For two of these projects, we now have the developers’ own cost estimates.And they are far higher than the simple solar benchmark suggested.
The Droves: £900 million to £950 million
The Droves is proposed as a 500MW-scale solar development with battery storage, a customer substation, grid-connection infrastructure and a new National Grid substation. Its formal Funding Statement gives the current estimated cost as:£900 million to £950 million.The applicant says that includes construction, preparation, supervision, land acquisition and compensation, equipment, installation, commissioning, power export, inflation and project contingencies.
This is no longer a theoretical benchmark.It is the applicant’s own scheme estimate.
East Pye: £1 billion to £1.05 billion
East Pye provides the second hard figure.The project includes solar generation, battery storage, up to three 132kV project substations, up to three 400kV project substations and a new National Grid substation, as well as the associated connection infrastructure. Its Order Limits extend across approximately 1,212 hectares. Its Funding Statement gives a current project cost of:£1.00 billion to £1.05 billion.
Again, the applicant says this incorporates construction, preparation, supervision, land acquisition and compensation, equipment, installation, commissioning, power export, inflation and contingencies.
So before High Grove or Tasway is counted,
two Norfolk solar-and-storage projects alone come to:£1.90 BILLION TO £2.00 BILLION
That is the first hard number around which the Norfolk story should be built.
Then add High Grove
RWE’s High Grove proposal is for 720MW of solar generation with integrated battery storage across five development areas in Norfolk. Its DCO timetable has been deferred after the project received Gate 2 Phase 2 status, with RWE saying its grid connection will now be offered somewhere between 2031 and 2035. We do not yet have an equivalent £900m or £1bn whole-scheme Funding Statement for High Grove.So the responsible approach is to use the Government-commissioned solar benchmark rather than invent a project cost.At 720MW, the Arup figures produce:£378.72 million at the low case£474.48 million at the central case£567.36 million at the high case
Those figures relate to benchmarked solar capital expenditure. They should not be mistaken for a complete High Grove budget, particularly because High Grove also includes battery storage.
Then TaswayTasway Energy Park has been proposed at up to 700MW, with solar, potential BESS, cabling and substation infrastructure. The local authority currently records the project as paused until further notice following its first consultation phase. Again, there is no comparable whole-project Funding Statement available to us.
Using the same Government benchmark gives:£368.20 million low£461.30 million central£551.60 million highSo the four projects now produce this much clearer picture:
ProjectEvidence used
Lower figure
Midpoint
Upper figure
The Droves
Applicant estimate
£900.0m
£925.0m
£950.0m
East Pye
Applicant estimate
£1.000bn
£1.025bn
£1.050bn
High Grove
DESNZ/Arup benchmark
£378.72m
£474.48m
£567.36m
Tasway
DESNZ/Arup benchmark
£368.20m
£461.30m
£551.60m
TOTAL£2.647bn
£2.886bn
£3.119bn
That is the number we should now use.£2.65 BILLION TO £3.12 BILLION
The central working figure is approximately:£2.89 BILLION
And even that needs an important qualification.The Droves and East Pye figures are applicant whole-scheme estimates. High Grove and Tasway are still benchmark calculations.So £2.89 billion is not an inflated maximum. It is a mixed-basis working estimate in which two major projects are still being represented only by benchmark solar costs rather than complete project budgets.
And then comes the grid
This is where Norfolk’s energy transformation stops being a story about solar farms.
Because billions are also being spent moving electricity into, through and out of the region.
The clearest example is Norwich–Tilbury.
National Grid’s April 2026 evidence to the Planning Inspectorate gives the 2025/26 cost analogue for the predominantly overhead-line scheme, including around 20km of underground cable, as:£2.2239 BILLION
National Grid also explained that an earlier £1.2001bn figure related to the wholly overhead-line alternative and had been included in a revised funding paper in error. So there is another hard number.£2.2239 billion.
It covers the whole Norwich–Tilbury route through Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. It cannot therefore be assigned entirely to Norfolk.
But Norwich is one end of that system, and the project forms part of the wider infrastructure transformation affecting the county.
Necton: another £49.699 million
Necton gives us a genuinely Norfolk-specific regulated network figure.
Ofgem has approved £44.120 million in RIIO-2 and £5.579 million in RIIO-3 for the Necton 400kV Substation Connection.
Total:£49.699 MILLION
The work includes extending the existing Necton 400kV substation by 12 bays and changing the overhead-line configuration so that three offshore wind farms can connect. And that £49.699m is only the defined National Grid connection project.
It does not represent the entire cost of the offshore-wind cable corridors, project substations or other infrastructure associated with bringing those projects through Norfolk.
Then £6 billion of major contracts converges on West Norfolk
The numbers become larger again at Walpole.Eastern Green Link 3 is a 690km, 2GW HVDC connection between Scotland and England, terminating at a converter station in West Norfolk.
National Grid announced in March 2026 that its converter-station and cable contracts total:NEARLY £3 BILLION
That includes the converter stations at both ends and the subsea and underground cable system across the complete project.
Eastern Green Link 4 is another major Scotland–England HVDC project terminating in Norfolk.National Grid has announced:£3 BILLION OF MAJOR CONTRACTS
including an earlier £2bn cable contract and the converter-station contract. That means approximately £6 billion of major contract value is attached to two transmission links that converge on West Norfolk.
Again, that is emphatically not £6bn spent in Norfolk.The links stretch hundreds of kilometres and include infrastructure in Scotland, offshore waters and elsewhere in England.
But Norfolk is receiving the converter stations and connection infrastructure at the southern end.That distinction is important because the purpose of this exercise is to expose the costs accurately , not exaggerate them.
Now look at what we know
The Norfolk solar schemes alone currently screen at:£2.647bn–£3.119bn
Norwich–Tilbury carries a whole-route cost analogue of:£2.2239bn
Necton’s regulated connection work adds:£49.699m
EGL3 carries:nearly £3bn of major contracts
EGL4 carries:£3bn of major contracts
Those numbers should not simply be added together and called “the cost to Norfolk”.They represent different things.
Some are developer project costs.Some are Government benchmark estimates.Some are Ofgem-regulated network allowances.Some are contract values for complete national transmission links.
But that is precisely the point.
Even before we price every Norfolk battery installation, every substation expansion, every offshore-wind cable corridor, every converter compound, every replacement programme and every financing cost, the public record is already dealing with infrastructure measured in billions upon billions of pounds.
And there is still no single cumulative Norfolk account in the public material we have reviewed that brings those categories together and shows what each component costs, who finances it and how the expenditure is ultimately recovered.
That takes us back to Petition 780321
The petition is not asking Parliament to judge one Norfolk solar farm.
It asks a much bigger question.
The published wording calls for an independent national assessment of the full costs and impacts of the statutory carbon budgets and 2050 Net Zero target before Parliament decides whether those targets should continue unchanged.
It expressly identifies energy, transport, heating, industry and land use, together with bills, fuel poverty, food security, energy security, solar, wind, networks, substations and storage.
Norfolk illustrates the accounting problem behind that request.
We can find £900m in one developer’s Funding Statement.
£1.05bn in another.
£2.2239bn buried in transmission examination evidence.
£49.699m in an Ofgem determination.
Nearly £3bn in one National Grid contract announcement.
Another £3bn in another.
What we have not identified is the one document that puts the entire transformation together.Generation.Storage.Grid connections.Substations.Transmission.Financing.Replacement.
Decommissioning.And the eventual route by which the costs are recovered.
That is the financial question the cumulative assessment would have to answer.
Petition 780321 was published on 21 September 2026 and remains open until 21 March 2027.
Parliament’s petition system states that 10,000 signatures trigger a Government response and 100,000 signatures mean the petition will be considered for debate.
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The campaign’s challenge can therefore be stated very simply:
MAKE THEM SHOW THE EVIDENCE.
Cost and project information checked against published sources on 25th September 2026.
Whole-route transmission figures are deliberately distinguished from Norfolk-only expenditure. High Grove and Tasway remain benchmark estimates pending comparable developer whole-scheme budgets.
Shane Oxer. Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy
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