A boom with a queue: tackling the UK renewables gridlock

It’s a well-worn trope that Brits love a queue. From the celebrity-studded line that stretched halfway through Central London in the lead up to the Queen’s funeral, to the cheery collection of tennis diehards that forms overnight at Wimbledon each July (The Queue©, complete with a 19-page Queue Guide this year), orderly waiting your turn is embraced by the masses as some strange hybrid of patriotic duty and national pastime.

However, there is currently one queue in Britain that is less jolly hockey sticks and stiff upper lip, and more environmental/economic disaster. According to Bloomberg research, there is more than 200GW of renewable energy awaiting connection to the UK grid – around four times the total capacity of renewables added since 1992.

In 2022, 164GW of new connection requests were received in the year to October, as per figures from the Energy Networks Association (ENA), with wait times of up to 15 years quoted for some parties. Those gigawatts include projects of varying sizes, at various stages of development. Some of them already have planning consent, others will never come close to fruition. As it stands, the queue works largely on a first-come-first-served basis, but there is a growing realisation that this simply cannot continue.