Fuse Energy wants Britain to stop waiting and start building

In a paper sent to the UK government, the London-based supplier calls for a sweeping overhaul of grid connections and planning rules. All of it, the company insists, without a single pound of public money.

The trouble with the West, Alan Chang, head of Fuse Energy, wrote on X this week, is how hard it has become to build. Remove that friction, he argues, and prosperity will follow. From its offices in Canary Wharf, the young company has now sent Whitehall a set of recommendations meant to speed up energy projects and bring bills down. It is also pressing for VAT on household electricity to be scrapped.

The document is short, a few pages at most, and makes no attempt at diplomatic language. Its premise is simple. Energy is expensive and growth sluggish because Britain cannot build quickly enough. The answer, in Fuse’s view, lies not in subsidies but in fewer obstacles.

The first target is the grid connection queue, where projects can languish for years before a single electron flows. Fuse would abolish it outright. Any scheme with consented land and a paid commitment fee would receive a firm connection date within 12 to 24 months. In return, it would accept being switched off, uncompensated, whenever the network is full. The curtailment rules and forecasts would be published, so that developers can weigh the risk before committing.

The company also proposes a market in firm power. Access rights for existing and future connections would be issued, auctioned and made freely tradable. One example makes the case. A steel mill can choose when it runs; a data centre cannot. The mill could sell its guaranteed access to the data centre and be paid for its flexibility. The same wires would serve both, and nobody would have to wait years for new capacity.

Breaking the monopoly

Bolder still, Fuse wants to loosen the network operators’ grip on construction. Where a connection is held up by a missing substation or line, a licensed private builder would have the option to deliver it to the operator’s own specifications and timetable. Those builders would receive the same legal powers the incumbents already enjoy, including the right to run lines over private land and, where essential, compulsory purchase. Large grid projects would go to competitive tender by default.

Accountability is the other half of the equation. Operators that miss a connection date would pay automatic compensation to the waiting customer. Connection offers would become legally binding, with liability for material errors and no right to revise terms once accepted.

The paper also demands radical transparency. Live telemetry, full network models and forecasts, every connection offer and its price, every upgrade programme with its cost, deadline and progress: all of it would be made public. The logic is commercial as much as democratic. Developers could build where capacity actually exists, and independent builders could quote against the incumbent on equal terms.

On planning, the tone is just as blunt. Where authorities fail to decide within the statutory period, projects would be approved by default, and application fees refunded for late decisions.

Above all, Fuse asks that consented gas plants no longer be refused or delayed on decarbonisation grounds. Its argument is that a low-cost grid cannot yet run on intermittent renewables and storage alone. It is a position likely to rile environmental campaigners, and one that sits awkwardly with the net zero rhetoric that has dominated British energy policy for a decade.

Batteries at home

The final strand concerns households directly. Plug-in solar panels became legal in August 2026, but plug-in batteries remain held up by a safety study, with rules not expected before 2028. Fuse urges ministers to extend the existing framework to battery-integrated devices and to draw on Germany’s experience rather than start from scratch.

Behind every proposal lies the same economic bet. The grid carries heavy fixed costs. Spread them across a far larger volume of electricity, Alan Chang argues, and the bill for the average consumer falls. More building, in other words, means cheaper power for everyone.

The idea has its appeal at a time when Britain is searching for growth. Whether a government wary of landowners, local objections and climate commitments will be persuaded remains to be seen.