Energy firm sets out £10.6bn plan to boost electricity infrastructure
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An energy firm has set out a £10.6 billion five-year plan that it says will lower household energy bills and help the country meet its green energy targets. SP Energy Networks, which is a subsidiary of ScottishPower, is submitting plans to energy regulator Ofgem for the period April 2026 to March 2031, in which it is pledging to spend £10.6 billion on new and upgraded transmission infrastructure in central and southern Scotland.
This will include, the firm said, 12 new transmission substations, 450km of upgraded existing circuits, 87km of upgraded overhead lines and 35km of underground cables, all of which it said will help increase the country’s power transmission capacity.
The plan also includes a programme of investment to make the network more resilient, maintain existing assets, connect up to 19 gigawatts of new green power to the grid and reduce “constraint costs” – leading, the firm said, to annual savings of £167 per household each year by 2030.
The power firm, which operates a network of more than 110,000km of power cables around the UK, also announced plans to double its transmission workforce, with some 1,400 new directly employed jobs and 11,000 further jobs supported around the country. The company added it had already announced £5.4 billion worth of supply chain contracts with 19 firms, 17 of which it described as UK and Irish, in what it said was “one of the largest construction pushes under way in the UK”.
