We recognise that the views and input of our customers, employees, partners and communities is key to delivering affordable, secure and clean energy. We follow our corporate approach to stakeholder engagement, as detailed in our Annual Report and Accounts.

Stakeholder engagement is an essential part of our materiality assessment process. It shapes how we understand our role as a responsible business and influences our strategic business planning. Each of our stakeholders provides insights into their concerns, expectations and priorities. By understanding these issues, we can identify the most material topics to focus on and prioritise our actions accordingly.  

We engage with stakeholders in a variety of ways that are tailored and appropriate to their needs. This includes:

• collaborating to establish goals and objectives
• partnering with organisations to achieve our goals
• engaging in the development of responsible business practices
• communicating with customers and communities

Learn more about who our stakeholders are and the work that we’re doing with them in the stakeholder section of our Annual Report and Accounts.

Political Lobbying

We maintain clear guiding principles and an integrated management approach with Board accountability and oversight for lobbying and engagement with elected leaders. Definitions of lobbying vary across the UK, US and EU, but our engagement with governments, elected representatives and officials is always conducted in a way that is appropriate for the jurisdiction in which the interaction takes place. All our lobbying and engagement is conducted in line with the principles and targets set out within our Responsible Business Charter.

Read more about our lobbying and political engagement on our Corporate political engagement page.

Trade Association Review

National Grid is a member of various trade associations across the UK, US and EU, where we strive to share our knowledge, expertise, best practices and insights to inform the work of respective bodies.

As part of our commitment to transparency, we have conducted a review of relevant organisations and assessed their alignment with climate related policy positions and commitments. Full details on our findings, as well as our process for managing partial alignment moving forward, are included in the document below:

Read our full Trade Association Review.

Dependencies  

There are policy and regulatory dependencies that we’ll need in the future, in order to make investments to support the decarbonisation of the energy sector and reduce our own emissions. Involving our stakeholders is crucial to delivering against these dependencies. For example, working with our policymakers and regulators is essential to deliver required planning and permitting in the US and UK. We will also need to work with customers to promote affordability and our communities to develop skills for jobs in the clean energy economy.

Find out more about dependencies in this video with our UK Sustainability Manager, Steve Thompson and New England Environmental Sustainability Director, Michael DeNoia.