Renewable energy and climate change targets for 2020 will be missed unless the National Grid speeds up the rate at which new generators are connected, leading industry figures have said.

The grid is undergoing its biggest upgrade since the 1960s as part of a £14 billion investment project by 2012 and up to £13.5 billion more by 2020.

Unless it is made easier, however, for renewable energy generators, particularly wind farms, to connect to the grid, the investment will fail to enable Britain to meet its 2020 targets. Under an EU agreement earlier this year, Britain committed itself to increasing its reliance on renewable energy from about 2 per cent to 15 per cent. To reach the target, up to 40 per cent of electricity will have to come from renewable sources, which will require a big programme to build wind farms.

Delays in linking new generators to the grid are already forcing projects to be postponed, and developers are being told they may have to wait until 2018 before they can be connected.

Planning rules are being reformed, and should be in force next year to help reduce the time it takes to get consent for generators and grid extensions, but few within the renewables industry believe that they will enable the 2020 targets to be reached.

William Law, chairman of Lunar Energy, which is developing tidal generators, described the state of the grid as the single biggest problem facing the renewables industry.

The upgrade of the grid over the next decade is expected to take into account the rise of renewable generators, which are usually situated in unpopulated parts of the country or at sea, and are therefore far removed from the existing infrastructure.

Among the improvements that are being worked on are connections between the English and Scottish grids, so that electricity from rich sources of renewable energy can get to places such as London where it is most needed.Gordon Edge, of the British Wind Energy Association, said: “There needs to be a wholesale change in how the system is managed. We need strong political direction and guidance – someone knocking heads together to make sure deadlines aren’t missed.”

Renewable Energy Systems, based in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, has six wind farm projects that have been seriously delayed because it will take until at least 2016 before they can be connected to the grid. Richard Ford, its grid connections manager, was told that one of its wind farms proposed in Scotland could not be guaranteed a connection by 2018.

National Grid, which owns and manages the grid in England and Wales and oversees it in Scotland, is barred by the regulator, Ofgem, from investing in new transmission lines until developers with specific proposals and funding apply for connection.

Changing the remit of Ofgem, to allow National Grid to build the infrastructure before generators are built could halve the time it would take to get wind farms off the drawing board and into production. The idea has won support in the Lords, where an amendment to the Energy Bill, proposed by Lord Oxburgh, to widen the regulator’s role will be debated tomorrow.

Lord Jenkin of Roding said: “My main concern is to address the question of whether Ofgem should be taking account of social needs and climate change.”

Stewart Larque, of National Grid, singled out the planning system as the biggest barrier to rapid expansion but he agreed that the regulatory system needed to be changed. He said that there was an “unprecedented amount” of renewables planned that need to be linked to the grid.

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