Environmental considerations

Our pipeline will bring positive long-term environmental benefits by helping industrial customers across the region to decarbonise their activities.

However, any major infrastructure development can create short-term impacts and it’s really important these impacts are identified, avoided, managed and minimised.

In early 2022, we published our Scoping Report, which set out what we understood to be the likely effects upon the environment and how we would assess them. Our Scoping Report was followed by the Secretary of State’s Scoping Opinion. This is available to view on the Planning Inspectorate’s website here.

Since then, we have been carrying out a range of environmental assessments to understand the potential impacts of the project. This included desk-based research, supported by on-site surveys. We have also engaged with statutory bodies like the Environment Agency and Natural England. This has helped us to understand in greater detail the areas that we’re working in.

Our Preliminary Environmental Assessment Report

To support the second, statutory consultation, we published a Preliminary Environmental Information Report (PEIR). This provides the preliminary findings of our environmental assessments, including the likely environmental effects of the project and how they could be mitigated.

You can read the PEIR in full, and a non-technical summary (NTS) of the PEIR, via the Knowledge Hub.

Our Development Consent Order (DCO) application will include an environmental statement which builds from the PEIR, setting out the environmental considerations for the project and how we propose to mitigate them.