UK to release 2030 clean power action plan by end-2024: Mission Control

The UK government will publish an "action plan" by the end of 2024 on how it intends to achieve a fully decarbonized power system by 2030, according to Chris Stark, head of the government's new Mission Control that is tasked with delivering the target.

The 2030 goal was one of the Labour Party's key manifesto pledges on its way to winning a landslide victory in the July 4 election. It includes a doubling of onshore wind capacity, a tripling of solar and a quadrupling of offshore wind.

"Right now, as we begin to move the pieces into place, and we are only a few weeks into this, I agree it's still only at the fringes of what's possible," Stark said Sept. 18 at the British Institute of Energy Economics' biannual policy conference in London. "But as we go through the gears ... I think it's becoming more possible, not less."

In a little over two months in office, the new government has moved to end the de facto ban on onshore wind development in England, approve nearly 2 GW of new solar capacity and, most recently, oversee a record auction of renewables contracts.

Yet Stark said the "most important step we've taken so far, [and] the one that probably got the least attention" is the move to commission the soon-to-be-independent National Energy System Operator (NESO) to provide advice on how the UK will decarbonize its power system by 2030.

NESO will oversee cross-sector planning across electricity and gas networks with key influence on the future development of hydrogen, renewable generation, battery energy storage, and carbon capture usage and storage.

It will be established out of the existing system operator, National Grid Electricity System Operator Ltd., which British utility National Grid PLC on Sept. 13 agreed to sell to the UK government for an enterprise value of £630 million.

Injecting 'momentum'

Stark cautioned that NESO's advice will not be able to be delivered under the existing policy regime, requiring policies on everything from renewables support to grid queue management to be ushered in via the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will enter Parliament in 2025.

"It's hard to overstate the importance of that legislation in giving credibility to the plan that we will receive from the NESO," Stark said.

By the end of this year, the government will publish what Stark described as an "action plan" on how NESO's vision can be achieved through policy.

"We are aiming in that publication to make key decisions, not to promise lots of consultations," Stark said.

The government also intends to announce shortly a series of key appointments to the Mission Control. The taskforce sits within the Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero, led by Secretary of State Ed Miliband.

Stark said that the 2030 clean power target is "a real commitment [and] not a stretch goal," and added that the effort is not chiefly about reducing power-sector emissions.

"It is about reinjecting pace, momentum into the energy transition in this country," Stark said, pointing to industrial and employment benefits for Britain, savings for consumers, and energy security.

"But I accept there is a very real prospect of falling short if we can't move at the ... lightning pace that we need to," Stark said.