In response to the UK, Scottish, and Welsh governments’ announcement of a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP), James Alexander, CEO of The UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF), has emphasised the urgent need to modernise the UK’s outdated energy grid.
This new plan aims to accelerate the transition to clean energy by improving the planning of electricity generation, storage, and hydrogen assets.
Mr Alexander stated, “The UK’s outdated grid has been a barrier to investment in clean energy projects for far too long, and those projects which were built were sometimes wasting that green energy because of insufficient grid capacity.”
He expressed concern that these inefficiencies not only impose direct costs on consumers through constraint payments but also slow the shift away from the volatile pricing associated with fossil fuel power generation.
James Alexander said: “A Strategic Spatial Energy Plan is an essential piece of the puzzle to make the UK’s grid build-out fit for purpose. This is urgent work and its long overdue.
“Estimates from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) are that grid capacity needs to double in order to hit clean power by 2035, the new government’s target is to hit clean power by 2030, so this spatial energy plan is all the more crucial to drive private investment to bring the UK’s grid into the modern day.”
