With Ofgem’s expectations for the first transitional or ‘t-RESP’ published this week, Regen is supporting local authorities to prepare for this critical new part of local energy planning.
This year will be an instrumental one for local net zero planning, with Regional Energy Strategic Plans (RESPs) representing a key counter-point to the government’s ‘top-down’ strategic planning approach to its Clean Power Mission.
With the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan setting out what generation technologies we need where and the National Energy System Operator (NESO) producing a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan and Centralised Strategic Network Plan, the RESP adds a much-needed ‘bottom-up’ element to the mix.
This week Ofgem sent a letter to NESO that sets out its expectations and timescales for the so-called ‘t-RESP’, or transitional RESP. We are also expecting information on the full RESP policy framework in the next few weeks.
Regen has long argued that we need clear plans at both national and regional level. We, therefore, welcomed the RESP when first touted by Ofgem in 2023 and we are engaged in several projects to support its implementation.
RESPs will aim to align regional democratic actors, such as local authorities and combined or strategic authorities, with energy networks, filling a significant local and regional energy governance gap and creating opportunities for local areas to get the energy infrastructure to support their net zero ambitions.
Of course, constructive conversations between local areas and energy networks are already happening across the UK, particularly through the Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) process. Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) are proactively supporting local areas to plan for and engage in their energy future – it will be vital that we build on this good practice.
It will be a few years before RESPs are fully operational and so this year will all be about the t-RESP. Acronyms aside, we absolutely support this iterative approach. We need to get going to support the upcoming spending plans for electricity networks (ED3) but effective processes to capture ‘bottom-up’ planning need to evolve and improve over time. Hence t-RESP.
We now know that Ofgem expects to see a first draft of the t-RESP by September and final versions by January 2026. This means it will be critical for local areas to be feeding into these strategic plans over the next few months. As part of our role supporting Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme, we have produced a guide for local authorities to get ready for RESP. In this, we highlight four key areas that they should be working on now to feed in effectively to the t-RESP.
Building institutional knowledge
Understanding the energy system is essential for local authorities to engage effectively with the RESP and existing DNO processes. The energy system is complex, involving multiple actors at both local and national levels. Local authorities need to build knowledge about how these processes work, where gaps or opportunities exist, and the wider impacts of energy infrastructure on local development. Our case study of Dorset Council’s ‘Grid Enquiry’ shows how one local authority went about this.
Developing governance structures
Effective governance structures will be crucial for local authorities to contribute meaningfully to the RESP processes, both feeding into and receiving information from it.
The RESP framework proposes Strategic Boards for each area, comprising networks and key local actors. These boards will facilitate transparency, heighten visibility of regional priorities, and provide oversight. The exact nature of democratic representation is TBC but, given the size of the areas, in England these might favour the new strategic authority level as proposed in the Devolution White Paper. Whatever the level of the board, a structure for governance will need to feed up and down from each local authority area.
How this governance can work most effectively is a question we are continuing to explore this year in our involvement in PRIDE, an innovation project working with West Midlands Combined Authority and National Grid using the LAEP+ tool.
Collecting and presenting data
Getting the data right will be critical for 2025 and the first iteration of the t-RESP. Presenting information from local authority plans and activities is going to be essential for representing local needs and aspirations. Net zero action plans, LAEPs or LHEES will be key, but data and information relevant to energy infrastructure needs will need to be gathered from across local government, including Local Plans, Local Growth Plans, industrial and regional strategies, transport plans and heat network plans.
Last week we launched Enable, Embed, Enact, which discusses how net zero planning needs to be better tailored to the different roles that local authorities will be taking in delivering local net zero. This interim report builds on our 2023 report, Planning for decarbonisation at a local level and is a result of work with Innovate UK and Carbon Trust through the Net Zero Living programme. We have used case studies from the programme to explore how local authorities have been taking forward their plans as well as making recommendations for how planning needs to evolve – including the consistency with which inputs and outputs are captured for energy stakeholders.
The t-RESP will focus on the strategic and specific, rather than the long term and aspirational. As a result, local authorities will need information on what is happening, where and when – as well as how projects are progressing – to allow NESO and energy networks to assess timescales and the future demands for their infrastructure.
Although we know that data and information will be critical for RESP, what still needs to be refined is what format that’s in – and, critically, to whom that information goes and how it’s reflected in energy investment decisions. In the near term, information will be collated via individual DNO processes such as Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) and so local authorities should be clear on how they engage with, and feed in information to, these current processes as well as the first steps in developing ED3 plans. Regen led the development of DFES and is now working with NESO to help it understand how to integrate this process with the t-RESP.
In the future, this local information could be fed in to all relevant actors through one – ideally agile, easy and transparent – process. It is also important that the information does not just feed into various complex models, but supports strategic two-way conversations about local and regional infrastructure needs and how to achieve net zero objectives, rather than a binary computer answer one way or another.
Championing wider local aspirations
This is the area of the RESP that currently lacks clarity. Namely, whether and how industries and sectors locally feed into the RESP directly or whether there is also a role for local authorities to represent not just their aspirations, but those of their local communities and businesses. Different models for this raise different issues with confidentiality, resource and double counting. But we are recommending that local authorities start by considering their role in gathering and sharing these wider insights and aspirations in the RESP and ED3 processes and, going forward, look to develop processes for ongoing stakeholder engagement and collaboration at regional and sub-regional levels.
For more information on this area of our work, contact Poppy Maltby.