Strategic energy planning spotlight: what we’re learning from our renewable energy developer days

Renewable energy developer workshops

We recently held two workshops – one in the Midlands and one in Glasgow - for renewable energy developers on the strategic spatial energy plan (SSEP), which were attended by over 90 people. A third workshop in Wales will be held in October.

During these events, we’re engaging directly with developers, sharing information on SSEP development and gathering valuable insights to drive improvements in our approach. It's our intention to increase transparency around the SSEP for those stakeholders not directly involved in our industry working group and incorporate their insights in the development of the first SSEP.

Engaging industry in creating the energy plan for GB

As part of our strategic energy planning role to accelerate secure, affordable and clean energy to GB, we’re developing the SSEP to assess the best locations for the generation and storage of electricity and hydrogen on a zonal basis.

Our industry working group (IWG) for strategic energy planning (SEP) has been garnering valuable insights to shape the development of the SSEP over the last six months and will continue to do so over the coming months and years. We also place great value on the expertise of project developers and energy industry professionals not directly involved in the working group, and we are keen to create opportunities for this type of engagement. 

Workshop discussions and insights 

At the workshops, we’ve shared details of our economic modelling approach and held interactive sessions on specific technologies to discuss expectations for capacity by 2050, investment interest and deliverability. 

The insights from these discussions will help to refine our SSEP pathway theme modelling outputs. These themes are the result of multiple modelling cycles and will ultimately be narrowed down to form the pathway options we submit to the UK Energy Secretary next year.

Another topic of discussion was the national and regional factors that could influence development potential. We were also asked about the interaction with other strategic energy plans, Reformed National Pricing (RNP) and the Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) charges paid by those who use the electricity transmission system. 

Direct developer engagement and transparency   

A theme that came through clearly in both workshops was the desire for project developers to be able to engage directly in the SSEP’s creation and for us to benefit from their collective experience.

Our formal route for engaging industry – the SEP industry working group – was informed by the need for a central communication channel, given the potential scale of industry engagement. We consulted on and formalised this approach via the SSEP methodology, published in May.  

It's important we adhere to this approach, but we also see the value in conversing directly with project developers. This autumn we’ll hold one more developer workshop in Cardiff, a further round of industry one-to-one sessions, as well as bilateral meetings with industry stakeholders.

During the workshops we discussed the value of using confidential data in our modelling, and balancing this against the value of sharing information more widely for review. Sensitive and confidential information provided to us by other organisations is of great value as it can significantly improve the quality and accuracy of our modelling. But we acknowledge that industry stakeholders, including project developers, would appreciate increased transparency in this area so they are able to give more thorough feedback on our inputs and assumptions. 

We’ve committed to outline what we can and have shared and what we aren't able to and why and also to share further details on our assurance processes. We’re also working through options for how we can verify modelling inputs through industry views without sharing the confidential data; we’ll provide an update to industry stakeholders as soon as possible.

I would like to extend my thanks to those who took the time to attend the workshops and who continue to contribute to the creation of GB’s first SSEP. I look forward to further conversations this autumn.  

Alice Etheridge 
Head of Strategic Spatial Energy Planning, NESO 

More information 

We will publish the slides from the SSEP developer workshops shortly. 

Details of the Welsh SSEP developer workshop will be released soon; email us at [email protected] to register your interest. 

Register for the NESO weekly newsletter, Energising Progress, and subscribe to strategic energy planning to receive updates on further engagement activities.  

You can also read our IWG meeting summaries in the SEP engagement document library here.