Britain’s drive to net zero is being undermined by a grid connection system that discourages factories from even applying, according to a report published today by ADE: Demand, the UK’s largest non-profit trade body for energy users.
The report finds that industrial companies cannot get a reliable early estimate of what it will cost to connect their sites to the electricity network. Faced with vague timelines and unpredictable bills, many walk away before filling in a single form. These abandoned projects never appear in official statistics, meaning network operators, regulators and government are judging the system on incomplete data.
The report documents factories choosing to replace ageing equipment with gas rather than electricity because connection costs and timescales were impossible to pin down before investment decisions had to be made. In one case, a manufacturer abandoned plans after informal signals suggested an eight year wait – longer than the remaining life of the furnace it needed to replace.
ADE: Demand is calling for the new government to start measuring these lost projects, requiring network operators to provide indicative cost ranges before businesses commit time and money. The reforms, the trade body says, are essential if industrial electrification is to play its part in achieving clean power by 2030 and protecting the up to 3.6m jobs that depend on decarbonising dispersed industry.
Dr Phil Nicholson, Research and Insights Lead and Author of the Report said, “If a business explores electrification and decides not to proceed, that project is never counted. The queue stays short, the backlog looks manageable and the lost investment remains invisible. We are measuring the wrong thing, until we count the projects that never apply, we won’t know whether the system is delivering.”
