Responding to the publication of the Government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan detailing the steps they will take to deliver their mission of 95% clean power by 2030, Simon Virley CB, Vice Chair and Head of Energy and Natural Resources at KPMG UK, said:
“The Government’s plan for delivering the Clean Power 2030 Mission is a welcome step forward in providing investors with greater clarity on the likely direction of travel over the next five years.
“The enabling actions identified, including on reform of planning, consenting and connections; as well as actions to tackle supply chain and skills shortages, all need to be taken forward with similar pace and urgency right across Government.
“We also need to see greater engagement with the public on what this next phase of the energy transition involves and the choices and opportunities available to them. This is best led at a local or community level, through Local Area Energy Planning, which is already underway in many large cities.
“Finally, if this plan is to succeed, we will need more comprehensive action on affordability and consumer bills. Energy bills are currently going up, not down. While the National Infrastructure Commission, and Committee on Climate Change among others, point to the shift to low carbon energy being good for bills in the longer term, the investments required for the transition still must be paid for. Both households and businesses will be more concerned about the direction bills are going in over the near term.”
Commenting on the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) update also published today alongside the Clean Power 2030 Plan, Simon Virley added:
‘If the Government does decide to implement a system of zonal electricity pricing in the GB market, then it will have to ensure sufficient protections are in place to avoid an investment hiatus, just at the time when it is seeking to accelerate investment in low carbon technologies and power grids. It must also be realistic about the time and resources involved in implementing such a major reform, learning from the experience of the Electricity Market Reforms (EMR) of the 2010s and before that the implementation of new electricity trading arrangements (NETA and BETTA1) in the early 2000s. Based on those experiences, it seems unlikely that any system of zonal pricing could be in place before 2030 even if a decision to proceed was reached early in 2025.”
