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Strategic Spatial Energy Plan | The Blueprint for a Clean Energy Britain
Since the early 2000s, the UK Government has subsidised the development of renewables on the national grid but has provided no direction on where these should be built. Following financial incentives, developers built huge wind farms off the coast of Scotland, Britain’s windiest region.
The problem is that demand for power in Scotland is limited, and the electricity generated must be distributed hundreds of miles south to demand centres in England.
Scotland’s high concentration of renewable energy is costing the grid more than £1 billion each year in curtailment costs. This happens when wind farms are told to shut down temporarily and are paid compensation because the grid can’t handle the excess power they’re generating.
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan is designed to prevent this from happening again by setting out a national blueprint for where new renewable energy and storage projects should be built to deliver affordable, low-carbon power.
Contents
- What is the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan?
- Goals of the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
- Zonal approach to the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
- How private developers will be incentivised to follow the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
- Effect of the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan on energy prices
What is the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan?
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) is Britain’s first national blueprint for how and where the country’s energy infrastructure should be developed to achieve net zero by 2050.
The SSEP will identify the optimal locations and sequencing for new generation, storage, and network investment, ensuring that grid expansion, industrial clusters, and local decarbonisation are aligned.
The first Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, due to be published in 2026, will cover the period from 2030 to 2050.
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan will guide regulatory decisions, network investment plans, and planning policy to encourage the cost-efficient development of renewables and energy storage.
Who is producing the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan?
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan is being produced by the National Energy System Operator (NESO). NESO plays a key role at the centre of Britain’s energy market, operating both the electricity and gas distribution networks.
NESO is an independent body working under the oversight of the Government Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and the energy regulator, Ofgem.
When will the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan be published?
NESO published the methodology for the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, in May 2025, explaining how the SSEP will be prepared.
The first Strategic Spatial Energy Plan is expected to be published in Q4 2026 and will then be updated every three years.
Goals of the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan aims to identify the optimal geographical locations for the future development of energy generation and storage facilities, as well as data centres and green hydrogen production.
The plan will guide proactive upgrades to the national grid to encourage private developers to build the planned facilities in designated areas, with the following wider goals:
Cost-efficient build out of network capacity
The SSEP will enable grid operators to plan upgrades to Britain’s power networks that anticipate likely future developments in each area.
Currently, grid upgrades are only planned once new connection requests are made, which means transmission improvements are carried out in a fragmented and inefficient way.
Using the SSEP, local grid upgrades can be carried out as a single project, providing sufficient capacity for decades to come.
Reducing the new connection time
By upgrading grid capacity ahead of new connection requests, operators can cut the time it takes for new renewable projects to get connected.
The UK Government will require local authorities (which approve new energy projects) to take the SSEP into account when assessing planning applications, thereby reducing both risk and delay in the process.
By shortening the timeline for new developments, the SSEP will make investing in electricity generation assets, such as UK wind farms, significantly more attractive. New developments will reach the point of feeding power into the grid and selling power on the wholesale electricity market much more quickly.
Reducing constraint costs
By providing additional power transmission capacity in areas where a future clean energy grid will operate, the need to curtail wind farms will be reduced, lowering overall energy costs.
Currently, on windy days in Scotland, the grid operator NESO must instruct wind farms to disconnect from the grid because the transmission system does not have sufficient capacity to distribute the power they produce to demand centres in the south of England.
In these situations, NESO must compensate wind farm operators for their lost income. These payments, known as constraint costs, are ultimately passed on to homes and business electricity bills through BSUoS charges.
Zonal approach to the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan divides Great Britain into 17 economic land zones. A zone in the SSEP is a geographical area that has both generation capacity and demand.
The zones used in the plan have been selected according to existing critical electricity transmission network boundaries on the national grid.
The chosen zones also broadly reflect how NESO, the grid operator, manages bids and offers to balance the grid by paying for additional generation or curtailment within specific zones.
Technologies considered in the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan will consider the geographical placement of three types of technologies connected to the grid: power generators, demand-side facilities, and interconnectors.
Power generators
The plan primarily considers the optimal placement of newly constructed, large-scale generators.
The table below lists the types of power generators considered in the SSEP, including those currently being built and the likely future developments to be considered within the 25-year timeline of the plan.
| Generator | Examples already in development / proposed | Future developments considered |
|---|---|---|
| Onshore wind | Many wind farms are in the planning stages across England, Scotland, and Wales. | Future clusters expected to be encouraged in high-demand zones. |
| Offshore wind | Numerous projects, most notably, the Dogger Bank Wind Farms | Floating offshore wind in deeper waters; expanded seabed leasing in new zones; integrated offshore hubs. |
| Solar PV (Utility-scale) | Several large solar farms are planned in England. | Future clusters expected to be encouraged in high-demand zones. |
| Battery storage | Many battery projects are being proposed or are under construction. | Large-scale battery arrays and gigabatteries to be co-located in the same zones as large-scale renewables. |
| Long-duration energy storage | Proposed projects include Coire Glas pumped hydro storage in Scotland. | Further pumped storage and potential new technologies such as flow batteries and compressed air storage. |
| Gas power stations with carbon capture | Various projects are under development. | Expected to be encouraged in industrial areas, providing on-demand low-carbon power. |
| Biomass/bioenergy with carbon capture | Small-scale pilot projects only. | Large plants to be co-located with biomass supply and CO₂ storage facilities. |
| Hydrogen-to-power | Early pilot projects. | Expected to be co-located with green hydrogen production facilities. |
| Nuclear | Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C under construction. | Three Rolls Royce modular nuclear reactors expected to be constructed in high-demand zones. |
Demand-side infrastructure
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan will also consider the location of new facilities that can provide demand-side response to enhance grid flexibility.
These facilities use huge amounts of electricity but are flexible in how much power they require. Here are the types of demand-side infrastructure that will be considered in the SSEP:
- Data centres – Large server facilities used for cloud services and AI that consume substantial quantities of power.
- Green hydrogen production – Facilities that use electrolysis to convert water into hydrogen gas, which can be used as a zero-carbon alternative to natural gas for generating electricity.
In a planned future grid, these facilities will be built in the same zones as large-scale renewable generators. On windy days, when power generation is plentiful, these facilities can use the excess power, and when availability is limited, they can reduce their power consumption.
The plan will also consider the rise of vehicle-to-grid systems, which can dynamically respond to the requirements of the grid. However, the SSEP will not map the locations of individual chargers but will model their impact within each zone on the future grid.
Interconnectors
Interconnectors are high-capacity undersea cables that can both import and export electricity to and from neighbouring countries.
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan will consider the landing points of newly constructed international interconnectors that will connect to the high-voltage national grid.
The plan will ensure these interconnectors are built in line with the grid’s current or planned capacity, ensuring that large volumes of renewable energy can be exported on windy days and that power can be imported into demand centres when required.
How private developers will be incentivised to follow the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan will provide a blueprint for where renewables and battery storage facilities should be located.
The government does not plan to build publicly owned facilities directly. Instead, the plan will encourage private investment in the right places by offering:
- Prioritised grid connections and faster consenting – Developers will find it easier and quicker to connect to the grid in the zones identified by the SSEP.
- Targeted renewable subsidies – The auction process for the Contracts for Difference scheme will likely be amended to prioritise development in the zones identified by the SSEP.
- Planning policy alignment – The SSEP will inform national planning policy, meaning that new projects following the SSEP will experience a faster and smoother planning consent process.
- Public co-investment – The publicly owned Great British Energy will likely participate in co-investments for key new developments that adhere to the SSEP.
Effect of the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan on energy prices
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan takes a top-down approach designed to keep costs low when connecting new sources of low carbon energy to the grid.
It specifically aims to reduce two network-related components of domestic and business electricity rates:
- TNUoS charges – The cost of using the high-voltage national grid, currently around £5.3 billion per year, but forecast to increase to £13.6 billion by 2030.
- BSUoS charges – The cost of balancing the grid, including curtailment costs, is currently £2.5 billion per year but expected to reach £8 billion per year by 2030.
Each of these components is paid for by domestic and business energy suppliers and incorporated into the tariffs offered to customers.
Both components are expected to rise significantly over the next few years due to the increasing contribution of intermittent renewable energy in Scotland, which requires longer-distance power transmission and more balancing activity compared with the gas power stations they are replacing.
The SSEP aims to limit increases in these costs by encouraging the development of new generators, energy storage, and demand response in areas that reduce the need to expand the existing power infrastructure.
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Regional and locational plans of the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan is the nationwide component of the UK’s wider Coordinated Energy Planning Framework, which will provide national, regional, and local planning for energy infrastructure.
Under this coordinated framework, once the SSEP is finalised, it will feed into more granular plans:
- Regional Energy Strategic Plans (RESPs) – Regional delivery strategies that translate the SSEP into specific actions and investments. These plans will be coordinated by distribution network operators, who manage regional low-voltage power grids
- Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs) – Detailed plans led by local authorities that show how buildings, transport, and local generation will decarbonise within local areas.
Under the Coordinated Energy Planning Framework, these three layers of planning will work together to create a joined-up, iterative planning system that can efficiently deliver the Government’s net zero targets.
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