Grid Expansion for the UK
In July 2022 the BBC’s business editor outlined plans for the biggest upgrade of the UK’s electricity network in sixty years (Jack, 2022). The expansion would allow an increase in the number of onshore and offshore wind turbines from 11,000, producing “nearly a quarter of the UK's electricity”, to a 2030 total which the National Grid electricity system operator believed would “deliver 50GW of offshore wind power … a third of the UK's electricity demand”. The £54bn project was not without opposition, for example to the building of a 110-mile line of 50m high pylons across East Anglian countryside. In May 2023 National Grid issued a press release setting out its case for the reforms needed to drive the energy transition, the “priority actions to ensure the networks can play their full role in achieving net zero” ( National Grid, 2023a). The five priorities are reform of the planning system, centred around a strategic clean energy vision; ensuring that the regulatory and governa...