The UK government has announced the creation of Great British Grid (GBG), a publicly owned body housed within Great British Energy and tasked with investing in electricity network infrastructure. Where Great British Energy puts public capital into generation, storage and supply chains, GBG will do the same for the grid, co-investing with private capital and working alongside existing network operators.
Two regulatory measures accompany the announcement:
- Self-build connections will be expanded, allowing developers and businesses to construct their own grid connections where appropriate instead of waiting for the network company.
- Competitive tendering of transmission projects will be accelerated and opened to a wider range of bidders, GBG included.
These steps come on top of the connections reform under way with NESO and Ofgem, which is removing more than 300 GW of speculative capacity from the queue.