Electricity North West is bringing forward more than £20 million of investment to provide immediate support for projects which will drive a green recovery from Covid-19.

The investment is part of Ofgem’s Green Recovery scheme, launched to kick start the recovery by speeding up the delivery of shovel-ready projects.

Electricity North West first announced it had identified a number of possible projects in February, when it launched a public consultation to help it prioritise £15m of investments across the region.

Following that consultation, however, the business, which is responsible for maintaining the north west’s electricity network, has now brought forward a further £5m in investment so that it can deliver a total of 11 projects, all geared to helping the region hit its net zero carbon targets.

The consultation highlighted a demand for electric vehicle charging points at motorway services with Electricity North West proposing to create a £1 million fund to support EV charging hubs along major A-roads across the region. 

The network operator is also set to reinforce the network in some areas to improve the capacity as the projects identified will all support the transition to lower carbon technologies across the region.

And it will invest in tourist areas such as Windemere to provide EV charging facilities in tourist carparks, increasing network capacity and replacing one of the existing diesel ferries with an electric ferry.

Peter Emery, CEO of Electricity North West, said: “The race is on for the UK to hit its environmental targets and to succeed, we need to act now. 

“The disruption caused by Covid-19 also requires an immediate response and we are determined to make the environment the focus by building back better. 

“By bringing forward some of these projects, we will power up the green recovery and help lead the north west towards net zero.”

The full list of projects shortlisted is as follows: 

1. Strategic reinforcement of the network in the North Carlisle area
2. Strategic reinforcement of the network in the Lancaster/Forton area
3. Strategic reinforcement of the network in the Heywood/Birch area
4. Pre-Sense low-voltage network monitoring programme
5. Enablement works to support electric heating in Greater Manchester
6. Network reinforcements for EV charging hubs and on-street parking across the north west
7. Service unlooping to support low carbon technologies across the north west
8. Strategic reinforcement in the Windermere lakeside area
9. Strategic reinforcement in the Carlisle/Morton area
10. Monitoring of high density low-carbon technologies in the Godley Green Garden Village area, Greater Manchester
11. Strategic reinforcements around the Mayfield regeneration project in central Manchester

The public consultation was run as part of a national exercise to ensure that communities across the UK were involved in deciding which shovel-ready projects to focus investment to drive the green recovery, which is part of the government’s 10-point plan to make the UK net zero carbon by 2050.  

For further information, please visit www.enwl.co.uk/greenrecovery