More than half of clean energy schemes needed for Labour’s 2030 target offered grid connection

The 700 projects include wind and solar farms, battery storage, gas and hydro plans

More than half the renewable energy projects needed to meet the government’s clean power targets by 2030 are now able to plug into the electricity grid after years of delay, according to the system operator.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) has offered more than 700 clean energy projects in Great Britain a grid connection date since the start of the year, after a two-year process to unblock a bottleneck that threatened to delay projects into the 2030s .

These projects represent almost 60% of the 1,200 clean energy schemes that will need to begin generating electricity by the end of the decade to meet the government’s goal of creating a virtually carbon-free grid by 2030.

The Labour party came to power almost two years ago with a promise to double the UK’s onshore wind, triple its solar power and quadruple its offshore wind capacity in an unprecedented buildout of renewable energy.

However, there were doubts about whether the ambition was achievable, given the years of lengthy delays to connect to the grid amid a surge of speculative applications that created a logjam in the “first come, first served” queueing system.

After a two-year process to clear the backlog that began in late 2023 , the system operator pulled the plug on hundreds of speculative projects which had stopped “shovel-ready” schemes from connecting to the power grid and began offering connection dates to projects which are ready to be built.

Michael Shanks, the energy minister, said: “Upgrading the grid and making it easier for clean power projects to connect to it will help protect bill payers from fossil fuel price spikes.