SSEN Transmission publishes North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios Report
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has today published its North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios report which sets out a range of credible future energy scenarios for its north of Scotland transmission network.
As the transmission owner for the north of Scotland, SSEN is responsible for maintaining, operating and developing the north of Scotland transmission network, which over recent years has seen a transformational renewal following the significant growth in renewable energy across the region.
To help inform what network investments may be required to meet the future needs and expectations of its customers and wider society, SSEN needs to understand the potential future energy developments across its network.
Over the last 18 months, SSEN has undertaken extensive consultation with a broad range of stakeholders to develop a range of credible and evidence based North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios. This has focused on a range of areas such as onshore wind repowering, energy efficiency, growth of electric vehicles and new generation and storage. Informed by this consultation, SSEN has developed a range of future energy scenarios, the details of which have been published today in SSEN’s North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios report.
These are captured in three broad themes:
- Proactive Decarbonisation – the most ambitious range from a climate change perspective, this would see decarbonisation targets surpassed across a range of sectors. Crucially from a climate change perspective, this scenario would deliver a decarbonisation pathway for the north of Scotland in line with that required globally to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as the Paris Agreement aspires to and which the UK is actively pursuing efforts to achieve.
- Local Optimisation – whilst maintaining the broad ambition of the Proactive Decarbonisation scenario, the speed and scale of ambition shifts towards a greater role for local, small scale solutions, with greater emphasis placed on consumer affordability.
- Cost Limitation – the least ambitious of the range of scenarios, a stagnant economy leads to a greatly reduced ambition to tackle climate change with affordability instead the primary focus of priority for policy makers.
Although the GB System Operator, National Grid, carries out similar analysis on a GB wide basis, SSEN’s analysis will compliment that of National Grid, helping gain a more focused and tailored understanding of SSEN’s unique network region to inform future network developments.
Commenting on today’s publication Imran Mohammed, Senior Business Insight Analyst, said:
“Insight into expected energy trends and likely scenarios will be vital to help us continue to meet the future needs of our customers, stakeholders and wider society. From this insight, we have built a picture of the range of possible scenarios our network area could face based on feedback from our key stakeholders and their ambitions for the future.
“We would like to thank the wide range of stakeholders that have provided feedback at all stages of the consultation process to help us shape our scenario planning work stream. This engagement and feedback has been invaluable and we hope to continue working closely with all our stakeholders as we build on this scenario planning in the months and years ahead.”
The report has been academically reviewed by Professor George Wright of Strathclyde University who stated:
"The North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios add an important and distinct north-of-Scotland network area regional understanding to National Grid's national scenarios. The method adopted by Scottish & Southern Energy Networks' analysis is well-documented and includes extensive involvement of important stakeholder groupings, to aid identification and verification of key trends and important uncertainties about energy generation and demand in the years up to 2030. All this will allow SSEN Transmission to better anticipate the Scottish energy future."
A summary of SSEN’s North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios headline findings can be found on its website, along with a downloadable copy of the full report: https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/information-centre/industry-and-regulation/future-energy-scenarios/
A blog on the report publication from Aileen McLeod, Head of Networks Development, can also be found here.