Understanding Regional Energy Strategic Plans and their impact on decarbonisation goals

At the beginning of the month, Ofgem announced that the National Energy System Operator (NESO) would develop Regional Energy Strategic Plans (RESPs) for Scotland, Wales, and nine regions across England.

The plans build on the regulator’s proposals from last year, but the design of the RESPs remains somewhat unknown.

They will replace the current mode of system planning, whereby energy infrastructure companies, distribution network operators (DNOs) and gas networks make investment plans to a five year cycle.

This worked in a steady-state system, but with the acceleration to net zero well underway, regions and localities want to make big changes, fast.

Explaining all of this to Solar Power Portal, Poppy Maltby of non-profit energy transition technology and markets consultancy Regen described the private sector as “a guardian of all that.” This leaves “a missing piece in the governance model at the moment.” Maltby said.

She continued: “There’s a lack of governance between a private company, who may or may not have the right incentives, and the democracy and ambition of the local area, and the increasing importance that energy networks are going to be playing”.

Further, as gas use changes in line with decarbonisation efforts, decisions will have to be made about decommissioning, or at least prioritising investment away from that network.

“You need that governance in the middle”, Maltby says. RESPs will come in to provide a wider objective statement about regional aspiration and investment, which private companies can reflect in their business plans.

RESPs will provide a regional blueprint for how energy needs will change, what that means for infrastructural needs, and indicating critical areas for strategic investment.

“When private companies come up with a five year business plan to say how much investment is needed, they’re going to have to refer to the rest regional energy strategic plan and go, yes, it is consistent with this broader ambition of the region that is being built up by local democratic actors”, Maltby says.

NESO will develop these plans every three years, updating local data annually, to be signed off by an RESP board for each area.

Planning in this way offers a process that indicates an area’s openness to renewables.

Regional aspiration will be a driving force behind both how the local authority might approach planning, and on how the network will invest strategically or anticipatorily in that area.

The RESPs will form one part of the future planning being overseen by NESO, coming alongside the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan and Centralised Strategic Network Plan. The aspiration is that the RESP will be bottom-up, representing the wants and needs of localities within wider future planning.

Because the local planning system is a key mechanism for bringing forward clean energy projects, there is a significant link between energy planning and spatial planning.

As such, RESPs would put a locally-informed process at the heart of decisions about what energy infrastructure is built and what the energy system of the future looks like.

At the moment, Maltby explains, an area might have an aspiration like becoming the solar capital of the UK or hosting lots of energy storage development, but there is no way to force the investment needed into energy infrastructure to support that.

For developers, successful RESPs might turn old methods upside down: rather than developing generation where there is capacity, it will be about where capacity should be improved to support necessary development in that area.

RESPs and REMA

Maltby suggests that if all of NESO’s future planning works, and RESPs are successfully implemented, then the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) won’t be needed: “it solves the same problem in a different way”.

REMA, like RESPs, would split the UK into zones. However, taking this market-led approach is more agnostic, meaning new energy projects are concentrated around existing strong network areas. Investment would follow the market, not the other way around.

Maltby says that the RESPs, however, would be part of a strategic approach and be based on where investment is needed and why.

“If you’ve got areas of deprivation or industrial decline”, RESPs look at what works politically and socially for an area. Ultimately, strategic planning, over a market-led approach, is more beneficial to the UK, she adds.

The next steps

Ofgem has stated that it will be consulting on license changes and accompanying guidance to underpin the roles of NESO and network companies in developing the RESPs and integrating them into the network planning process.

The full RESP methodology is due to be published in November, which could lay out how developers can get involved in the planning. Maltby also highlighted that local areas have “consistently” raised that local authorities lack the capacity and knowledge to engage effectively with these processes.

A consultation on first drafts of transitional RESPS (t-RESPs) will run in September, with publication due in January 2026. These will set the groundwork for RESPs, supporting the upcoming publication of electricity networks’ spending plans (ED3).

Maltby expresses the importance of local communities getting involved over the next few months to help shape the bottom-up approach. Regions should be forming t-RESPs now, but there is no real format for them to do that at the moment.

Because they aren’t being asked for it, “only so many are going to come over and give it”. As a result, Maltby says, there is a chance the t-RESPs “fall a bit flat”.

“That’s a shame, because the t-RESP as an idea is the right one, but whether anything helpful will come of them remains to be seen.”

Regen is currently running outreach to get as much local involvement as possible in the t-RESPs, publishing a ‘guide to getting ready for RESPs’ on how to prepare institutionally for the change that the new process could bring.