The UK government has launched connection reforms to tackle the massive backlog and pave the way to more viable developments
Chris Stark says grid connection pace must double to meet 2030 clean power targets, with reforms to prioritise projects that are ready to connect
Industry is broadly supportive but has called for more certainty to maintain investor confidence

The UK has big energy ambitions. But it faces a critical bottleneck in the speed at which it can build out these projects.

More than 1,700 projects are in line for a grid connection – more than enough. But which of these projects are viable? And which can be delivered?

This is the question that threatens to undermine the Clean Power 2030 plan.

The report, written by energy security secretary Ed Miliband and Mission Control head Chris Stark, stated there are enough projects to wean the UK off gas-powered electricity by 2030. However, it stressed, delivery will require “accelerated rates of planning and consenting decisions”.

Picking up the pace in planning “is essential to support effective delivery of the connections queue and wider actions enabling Clean Power 2030,” the report said.

“Though construction timelines for clean power technologies vary, it is clear we must act urgently to get them through the planning system, while also delivering positive outcomes for nature and communities.”

Ambition on the line

During the keynote address at Scottish Renewables’ Offshore Wind Conference in Glasgow this week, Stark admitted the government’s plan was ambitious.

“There will be scepticism about our ability to achieve it. I fully accept that scepticism – I embrace it, revel in it even,” he said. But he added that, with electricity demand expected to double between 2030 and 2050, it was vital to meet the goal for wider climate targets.

The problem is that while there are plenty of offshore wind projects, “none of this works without transmission, none of this works without the grid”.

That means the grid construction pace must double. Reforms brought forward by electricity regulator Ofgem and the National Energy System Operator (NESO), to prioritise projects ready to connect, aim to achieve this.

“We have a connections-queue problem at the moment, in this room you will have a connections-queue problem,” Stark said. “I spent a very unhappy time when I was in government last dealing with many complaints about connection queues and in the last five years they have absolutely exploded. We’ve seen a huge increase in delays to connecting to the grid.”

According to NESO, there were over 1,700 queue applications during 2023-24, meaning more projects await connection approval than required by the system in 2030.

*Committee hearing in the House of Lords with Ed Miliband and Chris Stark*

Zombie surgery

Stark said the Ofgem-NESO reforms were the “most radical thing” in the government’s action plan. They will enable the government to “put our hands around the power system that we want to try to curate for 2030 and then allow grid-connection reprofiling to happen”.

The official said this would mean that “we have all the projects that we need for 2030 and we’ll be bringing them in, in the parts of the country where we need them”.

Despite the backlog, the government is pausing new applications to reorder the existing queue. Stark acknowledged some projects would miss out, which will be “difficult news for some developers”.

But he added that with “zombie projects and repeat applications gumming up the system” the reforms are necessary to achieve the 2030 goal.

“It [will] free us up to connect more demand to the power system,” he said.

“One of the big uncertainties in the demand story is will we have data centres, will we have huge new demands from EV manufacturing. [But] housebuilding requires grid connection, new schools and new prisons require grid connection,” he said.

“If we do the grid queue-connection reform we can also connect those projects on time. That queue has within it over 700 GW of new-generation storage projects. We will never need that much, so we’re going to have to do some surgery to that queue.”

Investor confidence

A panel including ScottishPower Renewables chief executive Charlie Jordan and Corio Generation chief executive Jonathan Cole welcomed Stark’s comments.

Both warned the government needs to go further to ensure investor confidence in the sector.

Noting investors withdrew $30bn from climate-related mutual funds last year, Jordan said there needs to be “increased certainty about the process” of connecting to the grid to prevent the impact “filtering through the industry”.

“Companies are looking to decide where they’re going to spend their money and we need to make it as attractive as possible to invest in renewables so that we can get the growth,” he said. “We absolutely need the grid – it is fundamental to the success of our industry, but it also brings about other challenges because it takes up a lot of money … With offshore wind you can put hundreds of millions at risk with a low level of certainty of returns being realised. That’s something we need to address.”

Cole, who is also chair of the Global Wind Energy Council, said that developers typically spend £200m to £300m before deciding to invest in a project. Thus, it is vital they see the UK as a positive business environment.

Enthusiasm returns

However, he added that despite ongoing challenges, from a global perspective the UK market is attractive.

“We’re very hard on ourselves in the UK,” he said. “We set ourselves up so well in offshore wind and then we probably didn’t keep pace. We knew what we had to do to evolve from a regulatory perspective and somehow didn’t get it done, which is frustrating. But when you look at it from a global point of view, the UK’s probably still the most attractive market to invest in – it’s the one where the fundamentals make most sense and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.”

Welcoming the government’s action plan, Cole said that over the past decade he had morphed from being “young, idealistic and enthusiastic” about offshore wind. Now, he is “a cantankerous old bugger who just complains that nothing changes”.

But maybe things are changing. “Seeing what real action is starting to come out of government, I’m starting to feel like that young, enthusiastic guy again,” he said.

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