Britain’s regulator warns power grid’s red tape is stifling climate push

LONDON – Britain’s push to

reach net-zero emissions

in its power system is being undermined by the long wait time for new projects to connect to the electric grid, the head of Britain’s energy regulator warns. 

In a speech to the energy industry on Tuesday, Ofgem chief executive Jonathan Brearley will pledge to reform the planning system that has many developers waiting for years to connect new projects. Without a quicker pace, Britain’s goal of a decarbonised grid by 2035 will likely be impossible to achieve.

“We can’t scale up the grid capacity needed by 2035 without much bolder intervention to get new power on the grid as quickly as possible,” Dr Brearley said. “It is meaningless to dub the North Sea as the ‘Saudi Arabia of Wind’ if offshore farms can’t be integrated into the energy network.”

Connection delays are also set to make it harder for Britain to reach its goal to have 50 gigawatts of offshore wind operating by 2030 – more than triple today’s amount. 

To help alleviate the congestion, Britain’s grid operator is speeding up the time it takes battery developers to connect to the grid as part of a wider effort by National Grid ESO to cut wait times to speed up the deployment of renewable power.

Under the new rules, the grid operator will treat batteries as having zero megawatts of impact on the grid, meaning they will not require extra reinforcements to infrastructure. That is because batteries can both take power to charge and send it back. The grid will also be able to occasionally instruct battery assets to reduce output.

Overall, National Grid ESO expects the changes to speed up grid connections for batteries by as long as two to 10 years for projects that are currently expected to connect after 2026. BLOOMBERG