DESNZ has issued a briefing note on the future of interconnectors, and how it sees the their adoption, growth and implementation.

Interconnectors area major tool to help balance international energy needs, and in the year to September 2025, Great Britian imported 43TWh of electricity, equivalent to 13 per cent of gross UK electricity supply. In the same period, the UK exported 12TWh of electricity, enabling the productive use of surplus renewable generation.

Great Britain currently has ten interconnectors, to Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, with operational capacity of 10.3GW.

An additional 1.4GW of interconnector capacity to Germany is under construction and a further 6.05GW of interconnection projects are in development following regulatory approval from Ofgem in 2024.

More are planned under the Great Britain’s Clean Energy Superpower Mission, and furthermore, whilst existing interconnectors are all ‘point‑to‑point’ links, future systems could support Offshore Hybrid Assets (OHAs), a form of interconnection that combines the interconnector with an offshore wind farm. OHAs can be either Multi-Purpose Interconnectors (MPIs), in which the connected offshore wind farm is in Great Britain’s waters or Non-Standard Interconnectors (NSIs), in which the offshore wind farm is in the connecting country’s waters.

Two NSIs already have initial regulatory approval from Ofgem, and Government. Ofgem and the National Energy System Operator (NESO) are also actively developing an innovative policy framework for MPIs. These types of assets are increasingly recognised as the future for North Sea energy infrastructure, as reflected in the shared ambition to deliver 100GW of ‘cooperation projects’ (such as OHAs) by 2050, set out in the Hamburg Declaration of Energy Ministers at the last North Sea Summit.

Beyond Great Britain’s domestic planning, delivering more complex assets, such as OHAs, with international partners will also require a more structured approach to cooperation. At the North Sea Summit in January 2026, the UK and neighbouring European countries committed to enhancing regional cooperation on planning, including through recurring, sea-basin-wide planning exercises.

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