£3.4 billion 500km electricity superhighway from Scotland to Yorkshire underway – Scottish Business News

OFGEM has given the green light to a £3.4 billion funding package to build a proposed new subsea ‘superhighway’ – with an underground 436km North Sea cable taking clean power to 2 million homes across Britain. 

Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2) is the first of 26 projects to complete Ofgem’s new fast-track process to speed up sign-offs by up to two years under the Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment programme (ASTI). 

To summarise:  

EGL2 will deliver a 2GW high voltage electricity ‘superhighway’ cable link between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and a new converter station at Drax in North Yorkshire, which will help harness the potential of British offshore wind power  

Most of the cable (around 436km) will be under the North Sea from Sandshore Bay to Wilsthorpe, Yorkshire with the remaining 70km buried underground onshore to converter stations at either end of the cable to plug into national the grid and from there onto consumers from Yorkshire. 

This is a joint venture between National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) and SSEN Transmission – expected to be the largest single investment in electricity transmission infrastructure in Britain to dat, with full construction expected to begin later this year and to be operational in 2029. 

ASTI slashes the time that clean offshore power is approved so gets to British consumers and businesses. The projects delivered via are vital to upgrade the energy system and allow more renewable energy to be brought onto the grid. This is a big step towards the new Government’s target of the national power grid being clean 2030 to reduce Britain’s reliance on volatile international gas markets with cleaner, cheaper, more secure wind energy. 

Ofgem is required to upgrade the energy system at least possible cost to customers – with EGL2’s developers required to make £79m savings in its forecast expenditure. 

It is estimated ASTI will expand the national power network, reduce grid constraints and deliver an estimated £1.5billion of savings by reducing the need to compensate generators asked to turn off production during times of high wind, due to lack of grid capacity. 

Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem CEO, said:  

“Ofgem is fully committed to supporting the government to meet its aims of getting clean power by 2030. Today’s announcement is a further step in putting the regulatory systems and processes in place to speed up network regulation to achieve its aim.  

“ASTI accelerates approval times for projects such as EGL2 by up to two years. Streamlining the process does not mean blank cheques for developers as we are able to step in and make financial adjustments to maximise efficiency and consumer benefit.” 

Ofgem gave provisional approval to a sister scheme in March 2024, the proposed 196km Eastern Green Link 1 high voltage subsea cable which transport another 2GW of homegrown wind generated electricity between Torness, East Lothian and Hawthorn Pit, County Durham. This is developed by by NGET and SP Transmission, part of SP Energy Networks. 

Ofgem has also today approved an early construction funding (ECF) request for a Scottish Hydro Electricity Transmission (SHET) bulk submission for six onshore and two offshore projects. This is to boost electricity transmission capacity to enable more clean energy to be transported to where it’s needed.