In December 2024, the government launched its Clean Power 2030 Action Plan that highlighted the need to reform the connections process saying “Without these critical reforms, the queue will not align with our strategic needs and the projects we need will be delayed”. On 15th January 2025, the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO) announced a pause to the applications process for new entrants to the connections queue from 29 January 2025, allowing them to focus on implementing reforms to the grid connection process.
Richard Fuller MP said:
This is an interesting development recently regarding connections to our national grid from potential renewable energy suppliers.
This was a point I made under the last Conservative government: the short term attractiveness of the financial offer for large scale solar farms will lead to a long term inefficient allocation of power generation.
So, in part, I was pleased to see this recognised by the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO) – a part of the old National Grid – as they announced a halt to new projects whilst they reform the process to evaluate connections. NESO revealed that “The current connections queue stands at 700GW+, over double what is needed to reach net zero in 2050.”
NESO went on to say that “All the projects that we require for 2030 are already in the queue.”
So what does this mean for the supersized East Park Energy proposal? East Park already has a connection agreement with Eaton Socon power station and, it seems, has secured land rights so it will not lose its place in the queue.
And worryingly, NESO highlights just two criteria for their evaluation: “readiness” and “strategic alignment” to the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: a plan which itself mentions farms only in the context of “wind” and “solar” never “food” or “agriculture”.
I will be writing to the Minister to ask if the government and NESO are retaining the importance of safeguarding “best and most versatile” assessments of agricultural land use in its assessment process.
More information from NESO can be found here. More information on East Park Energy can be found at https://www.richardfuller.co.uk/campaigns/solar-farms
