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Our vision is to be at the heart of a clean, fair and affordable energy future. National Grid stands for more than profit. The company is committed to making a positive contribution to society, whether that’s helping the young people of today to become the energy problem-solvers of tomorrow, supporting customers to use energy more efficiently, or tackling climate change.
Our outputs for this priority will benefit current and future consumers by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing the natural environment and supporting communities.
During RIIO-T2 we will publish an annual Environmental Report, the first of which you can read here. We also published our RIIO-T2 Environmental Action Plan which can be read here. Finally, we are engaging with you through a series of webinars, the slide pack from the latest of which can be accessed here.
Alice Delahanty, NGET President, highlighted in the executive summary of the annual performance report that ‘We are really proud to have continued our support and partnering of COP26 this year, demonstrating our commitment to finding ways to deliver cleaner, greener energy through the decarbonisation of the energy system and supporting the goal of reaching Net Zero by 2050. More locally, through targeted repair and replacement, we have seen an almost 20% reduction in the amount of SF6 gas leaked from our assets against a target of a 33% reduction by 2026. This is ahead of the challenging target that has been set and delivered an incentive reward of £1.7m.
SF6 gas is a great insulator of electricity, but it is a damaging greenhouse gas. One of our commitments is to remove all SF6 from our network by 2050 and we’re already working with our supply chain to find SF6 free alternatives.
For the wider environmental scorecard, we outperformed targets in six of the seven measures. Another measure is Business Carbon Footprint (BCF). In year one, we outperformed target by 10%, through a mix of lower SF6 top-ups and lower business mileage
We have started to install electric vehicle charging points across our operational sites to align to our strategy of replacing our fleet with electric vehicles.
Each of our large construction projects has stakeholder engagement at its heart. For example, on the Hinkley-Seabank project we have carried out significant education engagement, supported 200 local cyclists through a community grant, planted over 1000 trees (of a target of 4700), and even won a social mobility award.
Our Visual Impact Provision (VIP) projects in Dorset and the Peak District are in delivery and are removing pylons in 2022/23, whilst future schemes Snowdonia and North Wessex projects continue their development. These will ultimately underground a total of 11.5 miles (18.2 kilometres) of overhead line from these National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. All VIP schemes are on target to deliver their agreed outputs in RIIO-T2.
A further way that we are showing care for the environment is in our forward looking plan to develop the electricity network. We are building the energy system of the future, adding over 4GW of boundary capacity in FY22 with a further 7GW expected in FY23. In addition to re-wiring south London, we have installed 53 T-pylons as part of the route connecting Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to the network. However, the complexity and scale of the infrastructure investments associated with our East Coast programme requires us to make a step change in how we work with developers, suppliers, environmental groups and local communities to find the best local and environmental solutions possible.
We are always working to improve our stakeholder engagement – this is why we place community relations, and its importance, at the heart of our projects and engage and communicate with stakeholders and communities throughout the lifecycle of our vital infrastructure schemes.
This engagement helps us to develop and deliver effective consultation strategies and achieve planning consent for our projects from Local Authorities, or the Planning Inspectorate if a Development Consent Order (DCO) is required. Our approach also helps to keep various stakeholder groups informed about the essential work we need to do to maintain and enhance our networks and, it can help to increase public awareness and acceptance of the infrastructure we need to put in place. Through the learnings and improvements from our engagements, we can also continue to focus on delivering on longer term service level developments for our customers, stakeholders, and consumers.