A British energy giant has warned that planning delays and grid connection hold-ups could force it to move billions of pounds worth of investment overseas.
Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson warned business secretary Jeremy Hunt last week that the UK must overhaul its electricity grid if it wants to boost domestic investment.
Mr Jackson says his company is facing long delays to get its latest projects connected to the National Grid leaving waits of a decade to get them off the ground.
While the company waits Mr Jackson says his company is likely to take his business overseas.
He said there was billions of pounds worth of capital that he would like to deploy in the UK but explained infrastructure issue meant it was likely this would be spent abroad.
He told The Telegraph: “We have got access to billions of pounds of capital. We’d like to deploy that here in the UK but capital goes where it can be deployed.
“At the moment, it is easier to build a lot of infrastructure in France and Germany than here in the UK.”
Outside of Britain, Octopus Energy operates in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan, while in the UK it powers seven million UK households and is now valued at £6.2bn.
The company is at the forefront of Britain’s green energy revolution as it rolls out thousands of solar panels, wind farms and heat pumps.
But Mr Jackson said the UK’s bureaucratic electricity grid and planning permission delays were holding his company back.
He added in the Telegraph interview: “There’s a solar farm we want to build in County Durham and we won’t get a grid connection until 2037. That’s 13 years where that capital can’t be deployed.
“At the same time, we can deploy capital in other countries.”
Currently, National Grid operates a first-come, first-served system for connections, with each project assessed regardless of how far along it is.
Last Autumn, Ofgem and ESO, the UK’s Electricity System Operator, pledged to tackle long wait times for grid connections by removing unrealistic and speculative projects from the queue.
But further applications for connections have been made since the crackdown was announced and some developers have threatened legal action, bogging down the process.
The investment warning comes just days after Octopus’s energy arm posted its first-ever profit since its launch in 2015, meaning Mr Jackson will take the proper salary for his role after limiting himself to the minimum wage since the energy crisis.
