Commenting on today's announcement Lawrence Slade, Chief Executive of Energy Networks Association, said:
“Delivering world-class energy infrastructure and ensuring our energy networks remain fit for the future requires policy and regulatory clarity. The UK has an historically stable regulatory regime, which makes it so attractive to infrastructure investors. This needs to be matched by stability from policy makers on their long-term objectives, if the UK is to continue to having a leading role.
“We are working with the government and regulator to improve and accelerate grid connections, to support economic growth and decarbonisation. The connections queue is moving – we will connect 78,000 customer projects to the distribution network this year and nearly 34GW to the transmission system in the next two years.
“The networks are reforming the way projects connect to the grid, but success also relies on planning reforms, as the Electricity Networks Commissioner identified in his recent report. We have set out the changes we’d like to see on planning and hope to see progress here in the coming months as the government sets out further details on the announcement made today.”
Notes to editor
About us
Energy Networks Association (ENA) is the industry body representing the energy networks. Our members include every major electricity network operator in the UK. The electricity networks are at the heart of the energy transition. They directly employ more than 26,000 people in the UK, including 1,500 apprentices. They are spending and investing £33bn in our electricity grids over the coming years, to ensure safe, reliable and secure energy supplies for the millions of homes and businesses reliant on power every day.
Press contacts
You can contact ENA's press office by emailing press@energynetworks.org. For urgent or out-of-hours enquiries from journalists, please call 0204 599 7691.