The village where net zero won’t work – and why it’s not alone

Households are being blocked from making net zero upgrades to their homes due to lack of electricity supply, the energy watchdog has warned.

Residents of rural villages have been told by network operators there is not enough grid capacity to support electric upgrades, despite government plans which will require homes to install heat pumps and electric car charge points. 

The Government wants 600,000 heat pumps to be installed every year from 2028, while an estimated eight million electric vehicles (EVs) will be registered by 2030. This comes on top of a planned ban on heating oil from 2026. 

Roughly four million households in Britain are not connected to the gas grid and will have to switch to electric heating as part of the Government’s net zero drive.

But outdated infrastructure, which has led to weak spots in the national energy grid, have prompted fears rural communities and even entire villages, which mostly rely on heating oil, will be “left behind”. 

In one remote Norfolk village, visited by this newspaper, local residents said they were unable to make even the most basic upgrades to their homes due to a lack of supply. 

Residents of East Ruston revealed they had been unable to install more energy efficient heat pumps or replace older oil boilers with modern electric systems. 

Local homeowners told how power cuts were a common occurrence following minor “gales” and how energy providers have said their plans to upgrade properties were impossible, given the lack of power able to supply their homes. 

Ofgem, the regulator, said on Tuesday that the expansion of supply into rural areas was “a massive project over the next decade” as the industry frantically tries to remove bottlenecks and accelerate grid connections.

A spokesman said: “The big policy promises are empty words if communities can’t get connected to the grid wherever they live and when they need it – especially in the countryside.”

A source at the regulator added: “The current electricity grid has not got the capacity. The problem is easier to diagnose than the solution: to date, there is no financial incentive for the energy distributors to invest in rural grids.”

Sources at the Department for Energy and Net Zero said the Government was working closely with the network operators and Ofgem “to transform the network at the scale and pace needed”. 

Campaigners have warned that until improvements are made to local supply, rural households hoping to make green adjustments to their homes risk being told by their network operator that it is not possible.

Sarah Lee, of the Countryside Alliance, said: “We are concerned the rural network will not cope with demand and the Government’s ambitions for this roll-out of technology.

“I am aware of the Government looking at it but I fear, a bit like the broadband rollout, the ambitions will not match capacity in the network and once again rural areas will be left behind.”

Industry experts say a lack of grid supply is an issue “everywhere”, even in built up areas like West London, where large data centres have stretched local capacity to the point that developers face a potential ban on new housing projects. 

Ofgem said the “big issue” was rising waiting times for electricity grid connections due to a dramatic increase in demand, especially from large developments like data centres, energy storage, and electric vehicle hubs. Some areas in Britain faced connection dates as far away as 2035, the regulator added.

Mike Foster, of the Energy Utilities Alliance, a trade body, said: “I don’t think there’s a neighbourhood in the land that won’t require upgraded electricity infrastructure to cope with every household getting two electric cars and a heat pump.”

He added the network was not being upgraded quickly enough to meet the Government’s net zero targets.

“There is no planning,” he said. “Because this is designed to be customer-led, every electricity network across the country will be faced with the same challenges.”

After 2026, when replacing oil boilers like-for-like will be banned, households in rural areas could be left with no heating for weeks if their boiler breaks down.

Mr Foster said: “It takes 10 working days to install a heat pump. In the meantime they’ve got no heating – and if your network can’t cope with the upgrades what are you supposed to do? Go without heat?”

Ofgem and Britain’s network operators are spending billions to bolster the electricity grid to meet the increased strain of households switching to heat pumps and electric cars.

Energy Networks Association, the industry trade body for network operators, said it had received 69GW of new connection requests in 2022 alone. 

“That’s an entire grid’s worth of capacity in just one year,” a spokesman said. “We are taking immediate steps to speed things up.”

‘The cost would be astronomical – and then we’d just blow the transformer’

For 50 years, Graham Robeson OBE has run the Vicarage Gardens in East Ruston, Norfolk with his partner Alan Gray, using four oil boilers to power the buildings on his site. He remembers when the village was first connected to the electricity grid in the 1960s. It has not been upgraded since.

Robeson, 76, estimates he spends thousands of pounds a month on heating oil, but could never switch to electric alternatives due to the strain it would place on the grid. He says East Ruston’s 50-year-old infrastructure is so fragile that households experience power cuts “every time there’s a gale.”

“There’s no way we could replace our oil boilers. We’d just blow the main transformer,” he adds. 

Most houses in the area have enough capacity for 60 amps. Robeson and Gray, both 77, have double that, but even 120 amps would not support four heat pumps, even if they were suitable for greenhouses.

“When the temperature drops you need heat quite quickly. You could never do that with a heat pump,” Robeson says. 

The couple has nonetheless looked into ground source heat pumps, but say the cost of bore holes and maintenance would be “astronomical”.

“Obviously I’d like to have more efficient heating systems, but what am I supposed to do?,” Robeson adds. 

Government hot air leaves villagers cold

Michael Sims, 61, uses a wood burner and an oil boiler to heat the home he shares with his partner Polly Crudgington, 59. Sims, a Green Party voter, has contemplated a ground source heat pump, but the intermittent electricity supply in the area has put him off.

“Quite a lot of trees blow down in this area and take the power lines with them,” he says.

The couple is doubtful the Government’s net zero ambitions will reach them. “I think they’re just saying all this stuff because it sounds good,” Sims adds. 

Some houses in the area have been able to install solar panels, but others have been told by network providers they cannot make the switch from oil to electricity, despite the looming ban on oil boilers.

Joanna Heath, 69, who owns a commercial let in the area, tried to upgrade her property with an electric boiler and was prepared to pay the £20,000 required to make the switch, but was later told that the local electricity supply would not support it.

Heath says a neighbouring property had already installed an electric boiler, but lack of supply meant the heating unit never worked. 

“We’re going to have to replace it with another oil boiler, or storage heaters,” she adds.