Adding 70GW of renewable energy is necessary to make Britain energy secure, but it will be insufficient if we fail to build the infrastructure necessary to transmit that power into people’s homes. In the next seven years, the National Grid will need to build five times as much infrastructure as it did in the last 30 years but this is not achievable under current planning timeframes. There is also a need to unlock an additional 25GW of flexible generation through long-duration energy storage by 2035.

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25GW

Long-duration energy storage by 2035

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Grid delays are blocking renewables

Long waits to obtain grid connections are holding back the deployment of renewables. For example, battery storage projects and renewable developers have been quoted ten year plus waits.

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Wind farms are paid to switch off due to grid constraints

When grid infrastructure is unable to transmit energy from where it is generated to where it is needed wind farms are paid to stop generating. Curtailment payments to wind farms reached £507m in 2021 and resulted in an extra two million tonnes of CO2 being emitted.

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Long duration energy storage needed to support renewables

Flexible forms of generation are necessary to keep the lights on when intermittent renewables are not producing energy. To accommodate 110GW of renewable generation, Britain will need to deploy long-duration energy storage technology at scale.