Great British Energy had 52GW to 53GW of opportunities in its pipeline when Dan McGrail joined as chief executive, before the publicly owned energy company began engaging with the market, he told Stuart Broadley, CEO of the Energy Industries Council (EIC), in an interview on the EIC Clearly podcast.
McGrail described the figure as approaches from organisations that wanted to work with GB Energy. The company has since set a target to establish a portfolio, through investment and ownership, that will deliver at least 15GW of clean-energy generation and storage capacity.
“When I started, there were about 52, 53GW of opportunities in our pipeline, which was before we cultivated the market, before we’d been out and started to say, this is what we’re going to do,” McGrail said.
He said GB Energy had to narrow those opportunities to technologies where public investment could have the greatest impact. The company is focusing in part on technologies that have passed the early innovation stage and need projects to prove that they can operate commercially at scale.
GB Energy was established in 2024 as a government-owned company, and the Great British Energy Act 2025 put it on a statutory footing. The operationally independent company is headquartered in Aberdeen and can develop, invest in, own, build and operate clean-energy assets.
McGrail said GB Energy’s energy-industry expertise may lead it to assess technical, economic, commercial and legal risks differently from a bank.
“Sometimes you really need that deep understanding to see where something is going to fit into a future energy ecosystem, to be able to form an opinion, a risk positive opinion about it,” he said.
He also drew a boundary around GB Energy’s role. “As a publicly owned body, we shouldn’t be investing in things which compete with the private sector,” he said, pointing to gas-fired power stations as an area where private companies already have mature development, ownership and operating capabilities.
Supply-chain constraints are already affecting delivery. McGrail said a large power transformer ordered three years ago could have arrived in about a year. Buyers now face a lead time of about four years.
“If we want to deliver it at speed, then we need to invest in supply chains,” he said.
McGrail said GB Energy expects about 300 people to be working for the company by 2030. It is onboarding roughly eight people a month, with the vast majority based in Aberdeen.
GB Energy separately aims to fund projects that directly support at least 10,000 jobs by 2030, including skills and locations historically dependent on oil and gas.
The full interview is available on the EIC Clearly podcast page.
