Powering the north of Scotland towards a net zero future

Our Senior Insights Analyst, Imran Mohammed, explains how our latest North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios analysis is helping to unlock the full economic potential of the north of Scotland’s low carbon future.

As the owner of the transmission network in the north of Scotland, it’s our job to ensure that strategic grid investment takes place at the right time and the right place to support the UK and Scotland’s legally binding net zero targets. To help us build a picture of what our network may need to look like to support this ambition in the years ahead, and as the energy system rapidly decarbonises, we’ve published our latest North of Scotland Future Energy Scenarios for 2022.

By building on National Grid ESO’s Future Energy Scenario’s for GB, we’ve set out our view of a range of potential generation and demand scenarios in our network area from now out to 2050, taking a “whole system” approach. Our detailed scenarios, developed from our understanding of local stakeholder and energy users’ needs, provide deep insight to potential generation and demand in the north of Scotland, complementing the ESO’s national macro-analysis.

We already know that the north of Scotland will play an outsized role in the transition to net zero – impressively contributing roughly 10% of the action required to support the UK’s emissions reduction targets, despite only representing 5% of the population. The realisation of this statistic brings benefits; not just for the climate but for economic opportunity and community wealth to some of the most rural and remote places in Scotland.

To help unlock this huge potential, we’re delivering a Network for Net Zero, using our scenario work to directly feed into our future network planning. As we delve into the findings a couple of key points stand out in particular:

• By 2030, the north of Scotland will need 24-31GW of clean, green renewable capacity to put us on the right trajectory for net zero by 2050. For context, we currently have almost 7GW of renewable generation connected to our network in the north of Scotland. This figure highlights the increasing urgency for strategic and coordinated investment in supporting grid infrastructure to power this huge economic opportunity.

• Peak electricity demand is expected to increase up to 64-87% by 2050 as electrification of transport and heat grows to support net zero targets. This year’s analysis shows that the need for electricity is increasing significantly to support our collective decarbonisation efforts. And this demonstrates the continued importance of taking a whole system approach to our business strategy, working closely with stakeholders and our colleagues in SSEN Distribution to increase capacity and explore innovative network solutions to decarbonise the way we live and travel. You can read more about our whole system workstream here.

• By 2050, offshore wind will become the dominant source of electricity generation in the north of Scotland in the scenarios that support a net zero pathway, ranging between 22GW and 23GW. This tells us that the delivery of future ScotWind projects will play the most vital role in helping the north of Scotland to meet its decarbonisation targets, and will contribute significantly to the UK’s 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 target.

• In every scenario outcome the East and North East of Scotland will provide the biggest contribution to low carbon electricity generation, followed closely by the Highlands. We’re already a net exporter of clean, green energy in the north of Scotland and our analysis shows the potential to grow this export over the coming decades, particularly in the North East of Scotland, and Scottish Highlands, as the power system decarbonises, offshore wind capacity grows and new low carbon technologies come to the fore. To support this revolution, it’s clear that greater investment in the transmission network will be required - at scale and pace - to unlock the economic fortuities that this scale of investment can bring to these regions.

While great progress has been made in decarbonising the electricity system, our analysis demonstrates that there’s still much to do to power the change that’s needed to unlock a net zero future, and timescales to achieve it are incredibly tight.

While our scenario analysis, looking out to 2050, may not be certain; in the context of climate change, and mounting system balancing costs for GB bill payers (£371.6m in January alone) the cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing. We need to accelerate investment now or we may miss our opportunity to act against climate change altogether.

As a transmission owner our past performance, and future investment plans show that we’re shovel ready to meet this challenge. We hope that by publishing this paper we can encourage further urgency and momentum on this common goal as we work with our stakeholders to deliver a Network for Net Zero.

To read the paper in full, and share your views please visit: https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/information-centre/north-of-scotland-future-energy-scenarios-nosfes/