© Supplied by ScottishPower Renewa The UK’s newly released Industrial Strategy comes with several measures aimed to boost the country’s renewable energy sector.
While the strategy covers eight parts of the UK economy, among its goals is pushing the long-standing government ambition of making the country a clean energy superpower.
Setting out a vision on how to grow the economy, it puts energy at the heart of the strategy by looking to boost other sectors by bringing down industrial electricity prices.
The Industrial Strategy mentions several technologies, including onshore, offshore and floating wind, nuclear fusion, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, among the growth areas for the UK renewables.
Grid
Plans were already under way to tackle the grid problems, with promises of action on the “zombie” queue.
There are more than 700GW of projects in the queue for a connection, according to National Energy System Operator (NESO). The country may only require 200GW.
The Industrial Strategy Zones Action Plan, published as part of the broader piece, noted that some projects face delays of up to 15 years. The reforms could accelerate connection times for some projects by five to seven years.
NESO, it said, is reforming the connection process to “deprioritise up to 500GW of projects that are not ready or not aligned with our strategic needs for clean power from the oversubscribed connections queue”.
The action plan said it would bring in new ways of thinking through Regional Energy Strategic Plans (RESPs).
Furthermore, it will launch a new “connections accelerator service” to boost connections to offtaker projects. This will aim to help demand-side projects, that will create jobs and economic value, secure new grid links. This should begin operating by the end of 2025.
The strategy document will work with the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which should make the building of the grid easier.
The British Industry Supercharger initiative cuts power bills for large consumers. Speeding up grid connections is intended to more than double the amount of demand connected every year, from 2.1 GW on average to 3.5 GW by 2035.
Ports
Grid and ports are both named as “fundamental” to growing the UK’s clean energy industry. The existing constraints, the sector plan said, prevent rapid scaling needed to meet future demand. “Port infrastructure needs significant upgrades to support clean energy deployment”, it continued.
The National Wealth Fund (NWF) has committed to supporting the country’s ports plan. There are specific commitments such as £55mn already awarded to the Port of Cromarty Firth and plans for up to £80mn to the Future Port Talbot project.
The Industrial Strategy noted the importance of location, saying it was “unashamedly place-based”. Growth in the regions is critical for the UK’s broader plans.
© Supplied by DCT / Sandy McCook“We will therefore focus our efforts on the city regions and clusters with the highest potential to support our growth-driving sectors, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.”
Foundational industries, such as steel and ports, will be protected from global headwinds, it said.
Tying into the Industrial Strategy is a new “Net Zero network” that will drive collaboration across the UK, linking up industrial strategy zones and Freeports.
Financing
Without green investment, the UK’s energy transition will ultimately come to nothing. Accessing the billions and billions of pounds needed is a key challenge for renewables that the Industrial Strategy aims to solve.
Among the reports ambitions is doubling the investment in clean energy industries to over £30 billion per year by 2035.
To do this, the strategy said that a new British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme will start in 2027, aiming to reduce electricity costs by around £35-40 per MWh up to 2030.
Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund will be empowered to act as the sources for funding.
Developing the markets for corporate power purchase agreements (CPPA) is also on the agenda to create an additional source of revenue for projects outside the traditional contracts for difference mechanism and give industrial consumers more stable prices.
The other half of the investment challenge is ensuring that other industries have access to cheap and plentiful power to attract their own funding.
Carbon capture
Despite its attempts to be a leader in carbon capture and storage (CCS), the UK has lost ground to Norway on cross-border carbon trading
In 2024, the country signed deals with Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden to ship and store their CO2 in its sites.
© Supplied by Northern Lights/TomWith a ready-made customer base across mainland Europe for the UK’s CCS projects, this led to fears that Norway could build a lead and deny UK companies much needed revenue.
It’s a position the UK Industrial Strategy aims to reverse.
From January 2027, the UK will introduce a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to link carbon prices to those in Europe.
The strategy also said that the government will explore the UK’s participation in the EU’s internal electricity market to help create conditions for CBAM exemptions.
This will help turn the UK into “the CO2 storage hub of Europe,” and provide jobs for people currently employed in the oil and gas industry.
