UK Grid Reform Could Ease EV Charging Bottlenecks

LONDON — The United Kingdom is betting that a newly created public grid developer can break the logjam holding back electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure — and US utilities, regulators, and charging companies are paying close attention to whether the model actually works.

October 2, 2025

Last week, the Labour government formally launched Great British Grid (GBG), a publicly owned company housed under the umbrella of Great British Energy. Its stated mission is straightforward: cut connection queues, blunt rising grid costs, and build the high-voltage transmission assets needed to support mass electrification across the country. Speaking at the Labour Party Conference, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the new body would "challenge the private sector operators, increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections."

The announcement came with wider reforms. The government plans to expand so-called self-build connections, letting developers and businesses construct their own grid tie-ins rather than waiting for incumbent network companies to act. Officials also want to accelerate competitive tendering for major transmission projects, opening the door for a wider set of organizations — including Great British Grid itself — to deliver new infrastructure.

According to the government, similar changes have worked elsewhere. Ireland's reforms reduced grid connection times by up to 11 months, a data point that UK policymakers clearly hope to repeat at home.

Freight sector: "a significant barrier"

For the UK's logistics and fleet operators, faster connections cannot come soon enough. Ben Fletcher, chief executive of trade body Logistics UK, said fully electrifying road freight would demand roughly 32 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity a year — the equivalent of about 40% of the power used by UK households. Add in the energy needed for distribution hubs, port shore power, and air freight, and the total requirement is much higher.

Fletcher said logistics companies are eager to move away from diesel, but the grid is simply not ready. Businesses applying for new connections are frequently quoted staggering sums and multi-year wait times, and the current network cannot serve the logistics sector while also meeting the needs of homes, schools, and hospitals. The launch of GBG, he noted, could offer "a useful alternative route" to delivering the capacity upgrade the sector desperately needs.

The real test, Fletcher added, is whether the new model can genuinely accelerate electrification, lower costs, and respond more quickly to commercial demand. "Getting this right will require recognizing that logistics is becoming a major electricity user, with substantial new demand at hubs, ports and airports and along the UK's key freight corridors," he said.

Charge point operators welcome move, urge wider scope

Charging infrastructure groups offered qualified praise. Shane Brennan, chief executive of ChargeUK, welcomed the government's focus on grid investment but called it too narrow. "Charging infrastructure operators are suffering from expensive, delayed grid access," he said. "We can't continue building a twenty-first-century transport energy system on nineteenth-century infrastructure."

Brennan said he hoped the announcement marks the start of a more radical approach. The risk, he argued, is that a structural change that might lower bills in ten years won't provide the investor confidence the country needs at a pivotal moment in the EV transition.

Vicky Edmonds, chief executive of EVA England, described grid investment as "welcome and important" for electric vehicles. Faster network upgrades should accelerate public charging rollout, support home and workplace charging, and remove some of the connection barriers holding back the transition.

But Edmonds warned that infrastructure alone will not close the gap between drivers who charge cheaply at home and those who rely on public networks. The divide is becoming harder to justify, she said, especially with VAT on household electricity now at zero while public charging remains subject to a 20% rate. "Government needs to match long-term infrastructure investment with action to bring down public charging costs and expand access to affordable charging, so that choosing electric is a realistic option for every driver," she said.

The new body will complement Britain's existing energy institutions rather than replace them. Ofgem remains the independent economic regulator for network companies, and the National Energy System Operator (Neso) continues to plan, operate, and coordinate the electricity system. The hope is that GBG fills the investment and delivery gaps that the current framework has not addressed.

Why the US is watching this experiment

The British plan has particular resonance on the other side of the Atlantic, where interconnection delays have become the single biggest obstacle to clean-energy deployment and public charging growth.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's latest interconnection queue study found that roughly 2,600 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity had been waiting for grid-connection approval at the end of 2024 — more than double the total installed generation capacity of the entire United States. Median wait times from queue entry to commercial operation stretch to about 94 months for projects developed by investor-owned utilities, and the backlog keeps lengthening.

FERC's Order No. 2023, issued in July 2023, was Washington's answer to the queue crisis. It replaced serial first-come, first-served processing with cluster studies, added readiness deposits to discourage speculative applicants, and opened the door to penalties for utilities that drag out reviews. The rule has reshaped interconnection procedures but does nothing to fund new lines or give any public entity a direct building role.

The UK model goes a step further. By allowing developers to build their own connections and letting GBG compete for transmission delivery, Britain is essentially creating a parallel track to utility-led grid expansion. That's a structural idea rarely seen in the US, where the incumbent utility almost always owns and controls the interconnection process. Self-build arrangements have mainly been confined to a narrow set of merchant transmission projects and FERC-jurisdictional negotiated-rate cases.

There are partial US analogues, to be sure. The Department of Energy's Grid Deployment Office has awarded grants through the Transmission Facilitation Program, funded capacity contracts, and advanced the National Transmission Planning study. The 2024 permitting-reform legislation tightened timelines for siting and environmental review. And the Treasury's final IRA rules widened access to 30% investment tax credits for standalone storage and transmission. Still, no federal body has been handed the kind of explicit build-and-compete mandate Burnham sketched out for Great British Grid.

Stakes for the charging market

The practical implications for EV charging are direct. Developers in the United States now routinely report that interconnection timing — not charger hardware or site acquisition — is the binding constraint on station deployment. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation has documented typical utility interconnection timelines of 12 to 24 months for public charging stations, with outlier cases running far longer. In some states, that slow pace left funds from the NEVI program unspent as federal deadlines approached.

Charging networks need predictable timelines, not just available capacity. Each month of delay translates into lost revenue, missed fleet contracts, and growing pressure on the networks that are already in service.

If Great British Grid compresses connection times, lowers costs, and opens faster delivery for travel corridors and logistics hubs, it will give US policymakers and state utility commissions a concrete reference model. If the experiment stumbles — on financing, governance, or resistance from entrenched incumbents — the lessons will be equally instructive.

For now, one thing is clear on both sides of the Atlantic: the grid is no longer a back-office utility concern. It is the front line of the clean-energy transition, and every meaningful climate goal depends on moving power connections faster than anyone managed in the past.