The gridlock slowing renewable energy gains

Posted: March 03, 2026

In January, the U.K. awarded contracts to build a record amount of offshore wind projects. The 8.4 GW of planned new energy capacity will be enough to power over four million homes. But as Nick Civetta, project leader at the Aurora Energy Research think tank, told the BBC, “Getting that amount of capacity online by 2030 [will be] extremely challenging.”

That’s because generating more wind power doesn’t always mean that more wind-generated electricity actually reaches homes: Last year, it was estimated that Britain spent almost £1.5 billion switching off wind turbines and buying gas instead. It seems that the U.K. has reached the point where building new sources of renewable energy is the easy part. The aging grid is the sticking point.

This reflects a wider trend. The IEA warns that there’s a global risk of grids becoming the weak link in the green energy transition, warning that “grids are becoming a bottleneck for transitions to net zero emissions.” Worldwide, more than 2,500 GW worth of projects are stuck in grid connection queues.

The U.K.’s grid is over 100 years old in places and was built at a time when almost all of the U.K.’s electricity was derived from coal plants near major cities. Today, grid operators face two key problems—a lack of physical capacity to accommodate supply and demand, and network instability caused by fluctuations in renewable energy. To keep up with the demands of renewables, grids need to expand and become more flexible. Electricity demand is also steadily increasing due to data centers, electric vehicles and air conditioning. To meet projected demand for renewable electricity and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, worldwide investment in electricity infrastructure would need to double to $600 billion per year by 2030.

What’s causing the U.K.’s grid connection queue crisis

For years, Britain has spent far more on renewable energy projects than on upgrading the grid, spending only 25p on cables and power lines for every £1 spent on new energy projects, according to a report by Bloomberg NEF.

Much of Britain’s renewable energy is generated in remote areas: onshore wind in Scotland, offshore wind in the North Sea and solar projects in the southern part of the country. The country needs more high-voltage transmission lines to move this electricity to the more densely populated areas where it’s needed. Currently, there’s a risk of overloading when renewable electricity can’t be absorbed into local grids, so grid managers sometimes pay renewables operators to turn off their power generation.

These factors mean that the U.K.’s electricity grid currently has a very large queue: The grid connection queue has grown tenfold in the last five years, and companies have reported waits of up to fifteen years. Over 700 gigawatts worth of power projects are currently queuing to be connected to the U.K.’s power grids, more than four times the amount of energy actually required to meet government net-zero targets. Some of the projects in the queue are merely speculative, increasing the wait while being unviable—this includes projects that don’t have the basics in place, such as permissions to build or the right financing. Others, like the Stellantis electric vehicle factory with 4 MW of solar capacity on its roof, found itself unable to provide its surplus energy to the grid.

With some industrial leaders seeing the U.K. government’s planning regime as the biggest barrier to upgrading the grid, the government announced a new approach at the end of last year. The Clean Power Action Plan aims to accelerate connecting clean energy to the grid, with an estimated £200 billion of investment, including around £30 billion of investment in generation assets per year, and around £10 billion of investment in electricity transmission network assets per year. 

The government’s connections reform plan has also changed the way grid connections are managed to ensure that the most viable and needed projects are prioritized in the queue, changing the previous “first-come, first-served” system. Projects that are ready to connect to the grid and aligned with the government’s energy strategy will be given a confirmed connection date, point and queue position.

Upgrading the grid with infrastructure and technology

The National Grid is also currently working on what it calls “the largest overhaul of the electricity grid in generations,” aiming to make the U.K. more energy self-sufficient. In a move welcomed by the green energy sector, it’s working to both upgrade existing infrastructure and install new wires, cables and pylons.

This includes a proposed high-voltage offshore connection to send wind energy generated in Scotland to Wales, a new substation and overhead line on the Scotland-England border, and upgrades, including 10 km of new overhead lines to the transmission network in Yorkshire. It’s also building more electricity interconnectors, which mean surplus clean energy can be traded and shared between neighboring countries, which helps to manage surges in demand in both countries.

The IEA says that while countries work to efficiently expand grids and increase their flexibility, they can also improve near-term capacity by gaining advantages from software. National Grid is a case in point, enhancing the grid with technologies like sensors for dynamic line rating that continuously monitor the transmission lines and apply advanced analytics to determine the optimum operating conditions for power lines. It’s also using advanced power‑flow control, which allows operators to intelligently push and pull power across circuits in real time, routing excess power to areas with capacity.

With a global shortage of key components—including electric cables, transformers and turbines—it looks like technology is the most immediate way to make the most of the existing grid.