The UK's electricity, gas, and heat networks must be fundamentally redesigned to handle a low-carbon energy system that works reliably across regions. The current infrastructure was built for a different era—one with predictable, one-way power flows from centralised fossil fuel plants. Now, electricity grids must manage fluctuating renewable sources like wind and solar, bi-directional power from rooftop solar panels, and long-distance transmission from offshore wind farms. Gas networks need to adapt to carry hydrogen or biomethane instead of natural gas. Heat networks, common in northern Europe, have barely any market share in the UK. The challenge is not just technical: planning and governance must also change, and solutions vary by region due to local geography, politics, and economics. If this research succeeds, it will accelerate the deployment of new network technologies at scale, making the UK’s energy system fit for Net Zero. That means fewer blackouts, lower costs from wasted energy, and a grid that can absorb more renewables without destabilising—a quiet but critical upgrade to the infrastructure that keeps homes warm, factories running, and hospitals powered.
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The global energy sector is facing considerable pressure arising from climate change, depletion of fossil fuels and geopolitical issues around the location of remaining fossil fuel reserves. Energy networks are vitally important enablers for the UK energy sector and therefore UK industry and society. Energy networks exist primarily to exploit and facilitate temporal and spatial diversity in energy production and use and to exploit economies of scale where they exist. The pursuit of Net Zero presents many complex interconnected challenges which reach beyond the UK and have huge relevance internationally. These challenges vary considerably from region to region due to historical, geographic, political, economic and cultural reasons. As technology and society changes so do these challenges, and therefore the planning, design and operation of energy networks needs to be revisited and optimised. Electricity systems are facing technical issues of bi-directional power flows, increasing long-distance power flows and a growing contribution from fluctuating and low inertia generation sources. Gas systems require significant innovation to remain relevant in a low carbon future. Heat networks have little energy demand market share, although they have been successfully installed in other northern European countries. Other energy vectors such as Hydrogen or bio-methane show great promise but as yet have no significant share of the market. Faced with these pressures, the modernisation of energy networks technology, processes and governance is a necessity if they are to be fit for the future. Good progress has been made in de-carbonisation in some areas but this has not been fast enough, widespread enough across vectors or sectors and not enough of the innovation is being deployed at scale. Effort is required to accelerate the development, scale up the deployment and increase the impact delivered.
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