A reckoning is due for Great British Energy – the UK government’s nascent £8.3b industry accelerator. Announced as the centrepiece of the UK “growth mission” its launch was accompanied by the news that it had spent £640m buying the nerve centre of the National Grid – the control room that apportions energy across the country on a live daily basis. In 2035 we may look back on that deal and think “only £640m…” British energy Minister Ed Miliband has firm plans to waste billions by then – on carbon capture and Contracts for Difference, as well as reparations to low-lying islands in the Pacific, and thousands of hotel nights spent attending Cops30-40.
Literally anything could happen to the UK energy supply this winter, and almost all of it is bad.
But there is also something we can all do in our individual communities – to prepare for possible power cuts, this winter or any other winter.
After all, every household in the UK spends an average of £1700 a year on energy.
Ed’s big problem is that he has raised expectations. He announced that not only will he solve the nation’s energy conundrum, but that he will also save money while doing it, keep the lights on, build 1.5m new home and launch a new global Britain on the back of it.
The energy industry, and the entire country, is waiting for action. But Britain can never be an energy super-power, and Ed must know this.
Consider the facts – Annual GB electricity consumption is 292.7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2023, about the same as Texas, a vast state with multiple connectivity issues in outlying areas. The UK has a small, compact grid, which is currently undergoing major re-engineering for decarbonisation.
Electricity demand is forecast to grow at 5% a year, but generation is not increasing at the same pace until 2029. The maximum power to be provided by two new nuclear plants planned (if they are on time it would be a first) is 56TWh. And Ed wants sharp reductions in oil and gas for electricity production. That produces a shortfall of another 50TWh by 2029
Then there is a 10-yr waiting list for new housing estates to get on the grid. That’s right – ten years from time of application to secure a supply from the grid. Yet Labour says it will build at least a million homes in the next 4 years. How will it power the new homes? There is also a 10-yr waiting list for new solar farms to go on the grid, due to structural problems that require hundreds of miles of new cabling and pylons. Quite simply, the grid is not fit for purpose, and nor is there the slightest chance it will be re-engineered until well after 2030. Nevertheless, the government says it wants to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030.
Ed, and the teams of mission control managers and civil servants currently drafting something called the Local Power Plan; and the members of various advisory boards set up under the Dept for Energy Security and Net Zero (known in Whitehall acronyms as DESNEZ), are yet to break cover. One energy company, Spain’s Iberdrola, has announced a £17b investment in UK PLC. There were few details.
Miliband quickly announced a grab-bag of large projects in his first few weeks – buying NESO from National Grid for £630-640 million being the largest, under a deal agreed by the previous government. NESO is the nerve centre of the National Grid – like an airport flight control tower, permanently manned to manage all the electricity flowing around the system and ensure the right amount is flowing to the right place. It sounds impressive.
But objectively speaking, NESO is nothing but a scrap collection of legacy computer systems, old hardware, and executives on index-linked pensions. National Grid should have paid HMG to take it off their hands. Along with the new government-controlled grid comes the hidden cost of modelling the next-generation control centre. This process is currently operated by a private company called Energy Exemplar, which was bought by US financial services company Blackstone in May 2024.
All over the UK, the largest international energy players are buying and selling British energy assets like pieces on a Monopoly board. In Doncaster North, Ed Miliband’s own constituency, a planned battery farm has already changed hands twice this year, most recently from EDF to Total Energie, the French oil conglomerate, without a single spade hitting the ground. The MD told me that he expected to go on stream in late 2026 – he sounded completely relaxed about this long delay, and declined to volunteer a start date for the project.
Miliband has announced billions in subsidies for carbon capture (an unproven technology), and several new clean energy projects that will bring in a total of perhaps 10TWh in a few years. But I have not seen a single measure that will improve UK energy resilience this winter.
That seems like a missed opportunity – because a high-speed rollout of small-scale renewable energy — implemented immediately — would have an immediate effect on both the total amount of electricity available today, as well as the total power supply in future winters. 1000 small microgrids (of 5 MW each) could be built in a few months using standard products – and because each project is small, they are unlikely to attract much opposition from local residents.
The chances of a cold snap this winter – 20%. The odds of another attack on Iran, say, 20% – not to mention Ukraine, Houthi shipping lanes, cyber-sabotage, and the looming demands of Data centres, EVs and Heat pumps forecast in The National Grid ESO’s Future Energy Scenarios (FES) 2023, and its Electricity Capacity Report.
Maybe our Ed will be lucky, and global warming, the gift that keeps on giving, will come to his rescue with skiing on Hampstead Heath in the winter sun.
But what if it doesn’t? What is plan B?
When they are asked about plans for small-scale local energy, Miliband and his ministers become evasive. All parliamentary questions are met with the response that a Local Power Plan, is being prepared “at pace”.
Surely, it’s time to put up or shut up? Labour’s 5 Pledges promised “2000 small-scale renewable” projects over 5 years. That is approximately one a day. We should have had 120 announced by now. Where are they?
The cost of 1000 microgrids producing 1.5 TWh between them would be about £3 billion – that is competitive with other forms of energy, and much quicker to build. Such projects, if implemented today could still protect swathes of the UK in the event of prolonged power cuts. We are cutting it a bit fine for this winter, but the announced wind farms and solar farms and battery farms will not be on stream until 2027 at the earliest.
At the moment only the Community Energy Fund annual budget of £10m a year is providing local energy funding. The local energy budget will re-emerge next year, within the local government budget, which is itself bogged down in the “biggest local government reform for the past 50 years”,
It should be a massive national priority- an urgent part of Civil defence and energy resilience as NATO gears up for war
if the government was serious about driving through reform it could by now have a plan B that powered communities all over the UK – from city centres to outlying army bases – while significantly increasing the country’s energy security.
Perhaps we will have to do it for ourselves. Recall that we spend £1700 a year on energy per household.
If we cannot rely on govt. or energy companies, then we will have to build our own power supplies. It needs entrepreneurs to come forward. And that needs deregulation, so that the new entrants can compete on equal terms with the large incumbents. Build it and the consumers will come. H
However, there is an obstacle – OFGEM is a beauracratic obstacle rather than an engine of innovation. Until we deregulate, we are simply forced to hand our money to Ibedrola, Total Energie, National Grid and all Ed Miliband’s other overpaid and underachieving new friends.
