Great British Energy
UK publicly owned energy company.
Great British Energy took on a network-building Arm on 29 September 2026, when ministers announced GB Grid, a state-owned company inside it that may fund connections businesses build for themselves to escape a demand queue crowded with data centres.
Last refreshed: 18 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
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Great British Energy, also called GB Energy, is the UK's publicly owned energy company. It invests in and co-develops clean energy and storage projects and supports community energy schemes. Since 29 September 2026 it has also been the parent of GB Grid, the state network company announced that day.
The company was set up by the Great British Energy Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 15 May 2025. Its head office is at Marischal Square in Aberdeen, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero sponsors it. It has up to £8.3 billion to spend over the current Parliament, a sum it shares with Great British Energy Nuclear.
The grid Arm moves Great British Energy from paying for generation to paying for the wires that connect new demand. That puts it in the middle of Britain's connection backlog, where data-centre requests alone, at 73 GW to 80 GW by Ofgem figures in September 2026, exceeded The National peak demand of about 45 GW.
Network building enters the remit
Until late September 2026 Great British Energy was an investor in clean generation and storage. On 29 September the government said it would house GB Grid, a new state-owned company set up to compete with the existing network operators. Firms will be allowed to wire their own sites into the grid, and GB Grid may co-invest in those links. The parent pays GB Grid's start-up costs from money it already holds.
GB Grid is aimed at the queue of demand waiting for a connection. Citing Ofgem figures, City AM put data centres at no less than 80 GW of it; other Ofgem papers put them near 73 GW. The model extends to every business a right ministers gave AI Growth Zones in March, when those sites won permission to build their own high-voltage lines.
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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Updated 18 October 2026. Editorial standards.