“Today’s announcement for a new regulatory focus on sustainability is a major step forward in the race towards Britain’s Net Zero target. By providing greater certainty, the duty will help deliver access to Britain’s world-leading, innovative energy network infrastructure for more renewable energy projects, more clean transport and new types of low carbon heating. It will help ensure that our country takes the smartest, most innovative and fairest approach to delivering decarbonisation.”
Notes to editor
Key facts about Britain’s energy network companies:
- Local electricity generation: Over 30GW of largely renewable electricity generation is now connected to Britain’s local electricity grids, generating a quarter of Britain’s electricity
- Connecting renewables: Renewables’ share of UK electricity generation reached more than 33% in 2018, up 3.8 percentage points from 29.2% in 2017
- Reliability: An average customer would have a power cut less than every two years which will last for 35 minutes. Gas network customers experience an unplanned interruption to their supply once every 140 years
- Value for money: Network companies are responsible for operating and maintaining 1 million km of electricity cables and 272,000km of gas pipelines across the UK at a cost of around 35p per day
- Vulnerable customers: Distribution networks now provide extra support and care to over seven million vulnerable customers on their Priority Services Registers. So far in RIIO-GD1, gas distribution networks have helped 64,100 households with their fuel bills under the Fuel Poor Extension Scheme
- Customer satisfaction: Regular satisfaction surveys conducted by Ofgem with a range of customers show consistent satisfaction of more than 87% in the services provided by network companies, putting networks above any energy supply company, higher than many high-street retailers and amongst the very best performers in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index
- Safety: Safety has improved considerably since privatisation. Total Recordable Incident Rate for electricity network staff shows a tenfold improvement since 1990
- Jobs: Directly employing 36,000 people, the energy networks have a vital role in supporting UK plc.
About us
Energy Networks Association (ENA) is the industry body representing the energy networks. Our members include every major electricity network operator in the UK. The electricity networks are at the heart of the energy transition. They directly employ more than 26,000 people in the UK, including 1,500 apprentices. They are spending and investing £33bn in our electricity grids over the coming years, to ensure safe, reliable and secure energy supplies for the millions of homes and businesses reliant on power every day.
Press contacts
You can contact ENA's press office by emailing press@energynetworks.org. For urgent or out-of-hours enquiries from journalists, please call 0204 599 7691.