Octopus CEO slams grid monopoly

Greg Jackson has hit out at the monopolistic nature of the UK electricity grid.

During the launch of a new report by the Britain Remade campaign, which was held at Octopus Energy’s central London office, the company’s chief executive described the grid as a source of “phenomenal frustration” for firms involved in renewable generation, interconnection and battery storage.

He said: “It’s a one rule, one size fits all that sits in between our customers and the product they want and there is literally nothing we can do.

“The thing that we would most love would be some form of contestability,” Jackson said, pointing to other countries where companies are allowed to build their own grid connections instead of having to wait for an offer from the transmission operator.

“As long as we have a monopoly provider, you can’t explore those other ways.”

Grid connection queue issues are also a “phenomenal constraint” for other types of development, such as data servers and housing, he said: “We pay billions of pounds a year to curtail when we throw clean energy away. We can at least give it to somebody but we are told it will take a decade or longer and it’s someone else’s fault.

“We need an overhaul of the physical connectability and we also need price signals. If you can’t build a data centre in Slough, at least build it in Dundee where there’s free power when it’s windy, yet we have this monopolist system that doesn’t allow those things.”

Ed Miliband told the launch, where he was also a keynote speaker, that decarbonising the energy system will fail if it is just left to the new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

The shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, who was a cabinet minister when Labour were last in power, said government can be “incredibly siloed”.

While expressing support for the recently established DESNZ, he said: “If this is a job for DESNZ it will fail.”

Miliband said it will also be important to sign up the other key five or six departments that will have  a strong role in taking forward net zero goals, including the Treasury and the levelling up department.

Responding to the report’s call for reforms of planning to accelerate the roll out of renewable energy infrastructure, he said that while it is important to engage with communities on their concerns, “having said all that, it does need to be built”.

Miliband called on environmental NGOs to become “builders not blockers”.

The ex-Labour leader’s appearance was ahead of a speech at the Green Alliance thinktank on Tuesday (28 March) when he said an incoming Labour government would ensure key regulators have a clear net-zero responsibility and local authorities equipped with a new duty to have a renewable energy strategy.