National Grid's Alice Delahunty: 2030 clean power target is unachievable without "reform"
Alice Delahunty (PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo)
5 min read
Labour is pulling all levers to reach zero-carbon electricity by 2030. Speaking to Sophie Church, the National Grid’s Alice Delahunty warns the government risks missing its target
Delivering zero-carbon electricity by 2030 is one of five missions Labour has embarked on to “rebuild Britain”.
But Alice Delahunty, president of UK electricity transmission at the National Grid, tells The House that the government will fail to reach it’s target without significant reform.
“I think it’s an incredibly stretching target,” she says. “If it went perfectly along current regimes, it wouldn’t get there. So, it needs to go perfectly along reformed regimes.”
She adds: “There has been huge progress, but there’s still an awful lot more to do, and that is going to require that sort of clarity of ambition, continuing the sort of pace they’ve shown, and determination to see it through.”
2030 can’t be at the expense of what happens after 2030
The National Grid is investing £30bn over the next five years in projects that support the government’s net-zero and power decarbonisation targets. That makes the National Grid “one of the biggest green investors in the FTSE”, Delahunty says proudly.
But now the government must implement its own “reformed regimes”. The National Grid is calling on Labour to develop a strategic spatial energy plan (SSEP) by 2025, which sets out the infrastructure – including cables, pylons and substations – that needs to be built to decarbonise the grid, where it should be built, and when.
Shortly after the election, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the government would “build on” the SSEP the Tories had instigated. But there has been silence since. Delahunty says this plan should now be “recognised in planning policy statements and the imperative of net-zero recognised in planning policy”. She says this would be “a key unlock in the longer term”.
One of the biggest challenges facing the National Grid is a growing list of renewables projects seeking connections to the UK’s transmission network. The queue has been operating on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis so far, with the backlog of projects thought capable of generating almost 400GW of electricity – well over what is needed to power the entire British energy system.
Delays are worsening from a lack of supporting infrastructure; overhead lines take at least 10 years to build because of planning and community consent.
Delahunty says the government should intervene to advance certain projects more quickly. “There’s still an opportunity to have fast-track mechanisms for strategically important projects, like transmission projects.” These could include installing new overhead lines, substations and underground cables. There’s still space to bring in more acceleration there, potentially in the medium to longer term.”
The government is already working with the National Grid and Ofgem to implement new rules imposing stricter requirements on developers to connect, which will take effect early next year.
But do developers also need to think carefully about whether their projects really deserve a place in the queue?
“Yes,” she says. “I think there will be a time when developers will need to reflect on their own portfolio. Developers are incentivised to develop quite broad portfolios and to back a number of horses at one time.
“There will be a time when they’ll need to review that in the context of connection reform and which projects they want to demonstrate are the highest priority and most ready for them, so that we get the reordering of the queue right.”
With Labour ministers working round the clock to reach the 2030 target – a government source says Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is working extraordinarily long hours in the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero – does Delahunty think Labour is at risk of making mistakes?
Delahunty replies firmly that “2030 can’t be at the expense of what happens after 2030”, adding: “Everyone wants to avoid that situation where this is too quick and mistakes are made. I think we all have a role to play in that, but it’s right to be alive to the risk. Because, as I said, it’s an incredibly stretching target.”
What are some of those risks? “That it doesn’t put decarbonisation of the wider parts of the economy post-2030 at risk,” she says. “Or doesn’t build something that is good for 2030 but is not in the long-term interests. I think that’s the constant balance as we look at one target, that it’s not undermining the long-term picture.”
The National Grid is also alive to risks from foreign actors. In December, it began removing components supplied by a Chinese state-backed company from the grid, citing cyber security fears.
Delahunty cannot say whether other contracts have been cancelled but says “resilience and security are already a top priority” for the National Grid.
However, she reveals that the new government is not putting cyber security top of its agenda: “I would say it hasn’t been the top discussion recently, but I don’t know that it needed to be. This is already a top priority that’s very well-established and gets a huge amount of focus, and that’s continuing.”
Delahunty, 43, has worked in energy since leaving university. Her first job was at E.ON, where she worked at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal plant in Nottinghamshire as an electrical engineer. Last week, she returned to her former workplace to see the last operating coal power plant in the UK close.
While there was “absolutely” sadness for the people who worked there, she says there was a “very thoughtful atmosphere” around the role the plant had played in supplying Britain’s energy.
“They were proud to have been part of history, but really hopeful for the future and really supportive of the energy transition.”
With the year 2030 looming large on both the government’s and National Grid’s horizon, does Delahunty think it takes an optimist to work in energy?
“No, I don’t think you have to be,” she says. “For most people who have worked in this industry, it is a huge privilege, and we have done so much in such a relatively short period of time. That gives you optimism and hope.”
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