Cornwall Insight’s Renewables Pipeline Tracker shows that only 20% of projects submitted for planning between 2018 and 2023 remain in development statuses that could see projects coming to fruition, with “phantom” projects primarily accountable.
During that five year period, 63% of projects were either abandoned, refused, withdrawn or expired; although applications for new renewables projects have increased, the approval rate remains low. According to Cornwall Insight, nowhere in Britain currently exceeds a 20% success rate of projects proceeding through planning.
Lucy Dolton, assets and infrastructure manager at Cornwall Insight, said: “It’s clear that an increasing number of the applications submitted are speculative, raising the numbers in the connections queue and creating obstacles for projects that are mostly ready to connect.”
These recent findings raise – or reiterate – concerns about the speed of renewables development in Great Britain. Cornwall Insight analysis suggests “streamlining the grid connections process and addressing speculative applications will be crucial to ensure a more efficient and successful path forward for renewable energy projects”.
The connections queue haunting the industry
In 2023, Centrica raised the issue of phantom projects, when developers submit multiple applications for many sites with the expectation that only a couple will connect. These speculative and duplicate applications have seen the connections queue grow.
Octopus published Ending the Gridlock: One Year On last week (17 June), terming speculative project applications “zombies”. To solve the issue, it called for an open-source, self-serve process to enable better network analysis so the best use of grid capacity is made.
In November 2023, Ofgem announced that it would allow National Grid ESO to terminate projects holding up the grid connections queue by implementing queue management milestones. The milestones, which mean projects that do not meet certain requirements will be removed from the queue, were inserted into all transmission grid connection contracts with a post-November 2025 connection date.
The ESO is trying to remove speculative projects from the queue to allow projects closer to ‘shovel readiness’, allowing investment in the right infrastructure, in the right order. However, a report published by the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) showed that the milestones put in place by Ofgem and the ESO have not yet reduced the queue length.
Dolton told Current±: “While we are yet to see the impact of Ofgem’s queue management reforms on the wider pipeline, it is expected that these measures should act to alleviate the bottleneck of projects entering planning, and therefore seeking a grid connection. This is especially true considering that these reforms apply to both the future connections queue, but also the existing projects awaiting connections.”
A new ‘gated’ window process is being established, assessing new projects differently but also removing those already in the queue that fail to meet new requirements.
As Hugh Taylor, CEO of Roadnight Taylor, explained in a blog recently published on Current±, to progress to Gate 2 in the connection queue, a company must be ready to submit planning permission within a reasonable timescale, with land options agreed. Those become milestones and if they are not met within designated timeframes, offers might be terminated with cancellation charges applied.
Dolton added: “These conditions will likely help address the phantom applications in the queue, as they will implement set criteria – such as having a secured land rights for the proposed location, and dates for submissions of applications for planning consent – for projects seeking to connect. However, as before, it remains to be seen how soon, and at what scale, we will see changes in the connections queue as a result of these changes.”
