Spanish electricity company Iberdrola has announced its intention to invest £6.7 billion across the UK between 2023 and 2025.
The investment, the firm’s largest ever in the country, will be distributed to its UK business ScottishPower and will focus on the electricity network with £3.3 billion allocated to support the electrification of the UK.
In doing so, the renewable energy sector will be provided a boost as the UK ramps up its target of having a net zero energy network by 2035. The company has already indicated there has been an uplift in renewable generation with almost £3 billion being invested in new low carbon energy projects between 2023 and 2025 already.
“If we are to learn one lesson from the current crisis, it is the compelling need to deliver electrification quickly for a more secure, clean and competitive energy system for all,” said Ignacio Galan, executive chairman of Iberdrola.
“We are building on a strong track of delivery across more than two decades, and our plans ensure that Iberdrola and ScottishPower remain at the centre of delivering the enhanced grid networks and the renewables that the energy transition needs globally.
The investment will help provide a continuation of ScottishPower’s successful 2022 with the company having secured 19 renewable energy projects in the first six months of 2022 totalling more than 9GW – a record for the firm.
ScottishPower was amongst others that received leasing via the ScotWind initiative in January 2022. Successful floating wind projects came from SSE Renewables, Falck Renewables, Shell New Energies, Vattenfall, DEME, ScottishPower Renewables, BayWa r.e. and Northland Power. Of these, ScottishPower’s 3,000MW project has the largest capacity.
This project, alongside a 2,000MW project that was also successful, is being developed as part of a collaboration between ScottishPower and Shell. Keith Anderson, CEO of ScottishPower, said the projects would deliver investment, support jobs and boost supply chains, creating “immense opportunities for businesses and institutions across the country”.
This helped boost Scottish Power’s offshore wind pipeline to more than 10GW.
“Electricity networks are the backbone of decarbonisation, bringing more renewables onto the UK power system and managing the growth in demand for electricity for heating and transport,” said Anderson.
“Speeding up investment in this critical infrastructure has never been more crucial as the rate at which people across the UK are moving away from fossil fuels is accelerating and we now see demand for electricity doubling by 2040.
“Our record investment plan sets out to meet this demand by building more green energy security for the UK and upgrading grids to deliver more electricity to people’s homes.”
Despite the positive increased investment for ScottishPower, Ofgem issued a provisional order in September as the company had “failed to protect vulnerable customers”.
Several failings had been reported by Ofgem following a review conducted into ScottishPower and Utilita. For ScottishPower, this primarily revolved around the way in which it has set up its debt repayment plans and deals with customers currently struggling to pay energy bills.
To solve this issue, Ofgem laid out a number of conditions for ScottishPower to fulfil its obligation to support vulnerable households.