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National Grid awarded £2m for environmental ‘leadership’

Ofgem has awarded National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) £2 million for its “leadership” attitude to the environment and for encouraging the growth of low carbon energy.

The regulator awarded the transmission operator £2 million of a possible £6 million for achieving between 70 -79 per cent of the criteria for the Environmental Discretionary Reward (EDR) scheme incentive, making it a ‘leadership’ company.

The incentive is included as part of the RIIO-T1 price control.

Ofgem said: “A leadership company will look beyond conventional approaches, take a whole system perspective, and collaborate with a range of stakeholders to implement new thinking.

“The panel concluded NGET had demonstrated this.”

Ofgem decided not to award Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission (SHE-T) or Scottish Power Transmission (SPT) a financial award.

The regulator said SHE-T had “improved overall” but was judged to have placed “too much emphasis was being placed on what might be described as business as usual activities.”

Ofgem said SPT had “not demonstrated the improvement that may have been expected”, slipping from ‘proactive’ to ‘engaged’.

Ofgem said: “We consider that all three companies have scope to make further progress in meeting the EDR scheme’s aims and providing evidence that links well to the EDR criteria.

“We hope that the reward this year will motivate them to achieve more and demonstrate this successfully in their applications.”

Half of this year’s unallocated funds will roll over to next year, increasing the maximum reward for 2015-16 to £6 million.