After 30 years of managing the energy system in England, Scotland and Wales, government ministers are planning to remove the National Grid as the electricity system operator as it looks to meet its 2050 net-zero emissions target.
Management of the UK’s electricity and gas systems, including balancing supply and demand to ensure electricity supply, is set to change hands as part of a revolution of our electricity network, driven by smart digital technology.
The responsibilities of preventing blackouts and keeping the power on are set to be given to an independent body, following recommendations from Ofgem earlier this year. The government’s business department is looking to create an impartial organisation separate from the FTSE 100 utility, as part of plans that could save £10bn a year by 2050 and create 10,000 jobs for electricians, data scientists and engineers.
Better Value for Bill Payers?
Aside from looking to help the country meet their 2050 net-zero emission target, ministers are taking up the advice of Ofgem that a new independent body overseeing the electricity system would deliver better value for bill payers, as well as more effectively deliver the changes required to meet the 2050 targets.
Speaking to The Guardian, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the energy and climate change minister, said the rules would allow households to “take control of their energy use and save money” while helping to make sure there is clean electricity available “when and where it’s needed”.
Electricity demand is on the rise with the uptake of electric cars on the rise, while many new homes and existing homeowners turn to low carbon heating, such as electric heat pumps.
As reported in the Financial Times, ‘the government said it was important to reassess the “governing institutions” that underpin the country’s energy system as it “undergoes a transformation equal to any it has undergone in the past” as Britain switches away from polluting fossil-fuel power stations to rely on more weather-dependent renewables such as wind and solar.’
Time for Change
In recent years, the National Grid’s role in electricity and gas infrastructure has come under government scrutiny given a conflict of interest over their ownership of electricity and gas infrastructure throughout the UK, and their work with subsea cables that trade electricity with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Furthermore, ministers have already questioned the organisations’ involvement in overseeing the energy system, ever since the power cut that affected 1 million homes in England and Wales back in 2019.
The National Grid’s electricity systems operation has previously been valued at £300m by Barclays.
Greener Energy Supply
There is a string of new proposals currently being mooted to help connect the millions of electric vehicles that will be on UK roads in the future, with new regulations being suggested that aim to make it easy for electric cars to export electricity from their batteries back to the power grid or to property. As reported in The Guardian, the idea behind this is to ‘help large-scale and long-duration batteries play a role in storing renewable energy so that it is available when solar and wind power generation levels are low.’
As technology evolves, the government is looking to ensure our energy systems can cope with the demands of the future. Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s Chief Executive has said that the UK requires a ‘revolution’ in how we use electricity and that a new digital energy system is ‘essential’.
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