As the UK approaches another General Election our CEO Peter Cunningham considers what this election could mean for the energy sector

In all likelihood, the UK is about to get a new government – and should Labour win, as the polls predict, it will be one with energy at the top of its agenda. For the energy industry, this will mark the start of a period of change, but one where we have the opportunity help shape its direction.

For the first time in over fourteen years, political power looks set to move from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party who have publicly stated ambitious plans for the energy sector.  

Labour’s sense of purpose on clean energy – especially when it comes to increasing the UK’s capacity – is clear. Over the past year, as they boiled down their offer to the country into five missions, ‘making the UK a clean energy superpower’ came in at number two - behind ‘growing the economy’ and alongside the totemic NHS, an unmistakeable illustration of the importance attached to the issue.

Their best-known policy – and certainly their boldest in this space – is the creation of “GB Energy”, a new public company that will spearhead an ambitious drive to doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power, and quadrupling offshore wind by 2030. Money will also be made available from a new National Wealth Fund. Throw in some more loosely defined manifesto commitments to investment in carbon capture, hydrogen, new nuclear, marine energy and long-term energy storage, and it’s clear the Labour Party flag is planted firmly in the clean energy camp.

This is an encouraging beginning from an industry perspective and from an investor perspective, the certainty for the sector that Labour’s proposals give is also a welcome signal.

In terms of the detail however, there are still plenty of things that those of us within the energy industry would like to see. Take GB Energy, the remit of which has been slow to crystallise since it was first announced back in 2022 and remains incredibly wide. We know now that it will be backed by £8.3bn of public investment in its first year and that the plan is for it to co-invest with industry in net zero technologies, capital-intensive projects and local energy production. That’s a huge amount of scope for what is a relatively small sum for national infrastructure investment.

GB Energy will therefore have to be hugely strategic if it is to make a dent in Labour’s 2030 clean power targets and will need to rely on significant private sector support. To this end, knowing more about how, where and with whom GB Energy intends to invest will be crucial for businesses in trying to understand how we can interact with it, and making the public-private partnership that Labour envisages a success.

Just as important as accelerating the UK’s ability to generate low carbon energy, is ensuring our electricity networks have the capacity to connect up these new sources of energy and transmit them efficiently to homes and businesses around the UK. National Grid says it will need to build five times as many transmission lines that have been erected in the past 30 years, the UK hasn't built anything like this since the 50’s and 60’s or possibly since the war.

Labour’s plans will seek to complete a process that has already begun of flipping the makeup of the UK’s electricity output on its head. Large-scale generators will move from making up our energy baseload, to becoming more predominantly used as backup. The more intermittent, local energy sources that have historically occupied the fringes of the UK’s energy networks, will soon be the predominant sources of power in this country.

Our electricity networks therefore desperately need to adapt in kind. The greater proliferation of domestically produced low carbon energy sources means the UK will need networks that can handle more complex power flows, as well as a changing demand landscape that takes into account private and local energy generation and the increasing electrification of our vehicles and, eventually, heat provision.

For the UK grid system, this is a generational challenge. To meet it, we need a number of things. First, to understand where we need to develop new infrastructure, and where our existing grid can be optimised and most efficiently utilised to meet the changes outlined above – something on which Camlin Group has much to offer. Our UK Energy Business, Kelvatek is currently collaborating with Northern Powergrid on GridLINK, an Ofgem Programme managed in partnership with UKRI funding, looking to build on existing industry learnings and explore how flexibility can be unlocked within DNO and IDNO networks - something that has not been done before. This will provide benefits in unlocking greater network flexibility to reduce costs to customers and further optimise their network.

In addition, we need top-down leadership to push through the planning, construction and optimisation of the grid of the future. Ideally, this would also come with an understanding of the associated changes that need to take place within the industry, such as the management of risk and the realigning of the current binary relationship between asset managers looking after the infrastructure and network operators focussing on the distribution of power, to something more interconnected, where both parties are better informed and more invested in each role. Camlin has been working in partnership with network operators and asset managers around the globe for decades to optimise performance and drive quality of supply for customers. Our industry-leading solutions and services for Fault & Load Management and Asset Monitoring support our highly accurate ability to target interventions and investment, all while minimising unplanned interruptions.

Labour’s manifesto showed some understanding of these issues. Their commitment to upgrading national transmission infrastructure and the pledge to come up with local power plans are again encouraging. As with the intricacies around GB Energy however, the scale of the issue demands an in-depth knowledge of the detail, and close collaboration with industry expertise to succeed.  

The good news for Labour is that a large amount of this thinking has been done for them in the form of the Winser Review, which sets out a number of recommendations to halve the total development time for transmission infrastructure. We now need them to confirm whether they would adopt the Review’s recommendations in full, or if not where they would deviate and for what purpose. Beyond this, as much resource as has gone into formulating GB Energy needs to go towards the grid that will sustain it.

In all, the prospect of a new government gives us a lot to think about. The rhetoric is there, and the intent to back it up appears to be genuine. This will go some way to giving the UK’s homegrown energy sector a further boost. It suggests that Labour wants to give the multiple issues involved both bandwidth and resource in order to reform our energy infrastructure for the better. Some of the gaps and challenges will be the new administrations to solve, but industry should stand ready to play its part and ensure that the substance of Labour’s proposed reforms matches their ambition. Developing innovative solutions that deliver tangible results for customers is at the core of what Camlin does, and we look very much forward to being included in these conversations going forward.

Thanks,

Peter Cunningham

To learn more about Camlin’s vision to help build a smarter, more sustainable future through maximising the health and efficiency of grid infrastructure in the UK and across the world, visit https://camlingroup.com/