After zonal pricing's rejection, no working locational signal for siting demand or generation

The July 2025 REMA update rejected zonal pricing in favour of reformed national pricing, with locational efficiency now depending on TNUoS charging reform and NESO's Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, both incomplete. Nothing steers large flexible demand, AI data centres and electrolysers among it, towards generation-rich, transmission-constrained zones such as Scotland, and constraint payments keep growing. NESO's Gate 2 reforms fix the generation queue rather than demand siting.

Having chosen not to price location through the market, the UK must deliver it administratively or pay billions a year in constraint costs while losing footloose AI and industrial investment to countries that can offer cheap, sited power quickly.

Completed TNUoS demand and generation reform plus a demand-siting package: discounted network charges, planning fast-track and grid-connection priority for large flexible loads locating in the spatial plan's designated constrained zones.

// State-led: Instrument: Ofgem TNUoS charging decision plus government demand-siting package (fast-track planning, connection priority).

Constraint payments and lost AI investment mount, and the fix depends on incomplete reforms government already owns, keeping a new actor's marginal value moderate.