UK Solar Summit day one: Financing the UK's energy transitionUK Solar Summit day one: Financing the UK's energy transition

The Solar Power Portal team is at the UK Solar Summit in London today (1 July) reporting live from the event. Our rolling coverage can be found here; check back throughout the day to stay up-to-date as the event goes on.

‘Have faith that you can be a ground-breaker’

“Have faith that you can be a ground-breaker, and have courage that it is a doable task,” said Rosalind Smith Maxwell, director at Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, who spoke on a panel this afternoon at Solar Media’s Clean Power 2030 Summits, on the topic of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs).

Smith Maxwell is well-positioned to discuss the process, considering the start of commercial operations at the Cleve Hill project earlier today, and suggested that hiring a good staff with experience in project delivery is an essential component of completing an NSIP.

“Having that dedicated on-site human resource, and understanding how important your people are, is what I’d share with everyone,” Smith Maxwell continued. “You need construction managers that can share the best relationships with counterparties; things will arrive early, things will arrive late, and you need people to manage that.”

Other panelists said that community engagement is often an obstacle for securing NSIP approval, considering the scope and scale of such projects.

“We convened a programme of engaging wider stakeholders,” said Elena Sarieva, head of planning, renewable energy, at Elements Green, which is working on the Great North Road solar project. “We attended most of the parish council meetings, we very much engaged on the ground, hired a local community liaison manager and that helped immeasurably in building this trust.

“We’ve focused on delivering projects that are of huge scale, and that’s what was driving us to create meaningful community benefits that actually respond to what is needed on the local grid.”

Meanwhile, Eve Browning, head of UK projects at Island Green Power, said that she had had both positive and negative experiences in community engagement projects. “Sometimes we struggle to get the engagement to begin with,” Browning said. “When you go to an in-person consultation event, a lot of time there aren’t really many concrete ideas. We don’t get much back that is particularly meaningful.”

Island Green Power advanced the 480MW West Burton solar project last month, and Browning said that her experiences with local community groups had been more positive.

“One thing we did at West Burton, which was unusual, was that we got approached by a nature group,” she continued, saying that the group would be able to do their own planting at the site. “It was quite a nice fit to say, actually, we will carve out two or three acres of this site, and this can be an ecological mitigation areas areas.”

UK races toward 2030 clean power goals amid hurdles

The UK’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, launched in December 2024, aims to reach 45-47GW of solar capacity by 2030. Developed in response to NESO’s CP30, it has accelerated momentum in the sector. However, Solar Energy UK is pushing for a 60GW target to “significantly lower electricity costs.” Challenges remain around planning, grid connections, and securing investment to meet the government’s clean energy goals. 

Tim Warham, renewable electricity senior policy advisor at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, said the new plan marks a dramatic acceleration. “When we started, our focus was very much on 2035 – now all of a sudden, clean power by 2030 is trying to deliver something within five years,” he noted. “That’s enormously ambitious but has provided a very strong focus.”