National Grid

National Grid submitted a £35 billion business plan to Ofgem for 2026-2031, the largest transmission grid overhaul in generations. This is not incremental improvement—it's ecosystem engineering on a national scale. The plan includes 700km of high-voltage subsea cables, new grid parks that allow three renewable projects to connect at a single point, and the Eastern Green Link 2 costing £4.3 billion alone. These are the arteries of a new energy metabolism.

The biological parallel is mycorrhizal networks. Fungi connect tree roots across forests, moving nutrients from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. National Grid performs the same function electrically: connecting 3GW of clean energy in 2024, with 12GW connected over five years. The Dogger Bank offshore wind farm (two phases of 1.2GW each) sends power hundreds of miles inland through upgraded substations. Without this distribution network, renewable energy would strand where it's generated.

The £60 billion five-year capital commitment (92% for green investment aligned to EU Taxonomy) represents resource allocation on an organism preparing for phase transition. The grid that evolved for centralized coal and gas generation must now handle distributed, intermittent renewables. This requires redundancy—multiple pathways so that wind lulls in one region don't crash the system—and real-time coordination across thousands of generation sources.

The Great Grid Upgrade creates 130,000 new jobs, demonstrating how infrastructure investment has multiplier effects. Each substation, cable, and converter station requires engineers, construction workers, and ongoing maintenance. This is niche construction: the grid doesn't just transmit power, it creates economic niches that didn't exist before. The Electricity Transmission Partnership mobilizes £8 billion for substation infrastructure, accelerating delivery through specialized partnerships rather than trying to build everything internally.