The electricity grid is the physical backbone of the low-carbon transition, yet in most industrialised economies it was designed for a fossil-fuelled, unidirectional, and centralised system. This paper examines how the electricity grid of Great Britain has become the object of a comprehensive reform programme and asks what generalisable lessons its experience offers for other countries pursuing deep decarbonisation. A qualitative policy-document analysis, triangulated with publicly available quantitative indicators, is adopted: policy documents, regulatory determinations, and network operator business plans issued between 2020 and 2026 are analysed and triangulated with published quantitative indicators, including connection queue volumes, transmission constraint costs, and planned capital expenditure. The evidence shows that the pre-reform “first come, first served” model produced a connection queue of over 700 GW of generation and storage and more than 120 GW of demand by 2025, while transmission constraint costs reached approximately £1.9 billion in 2024/25. In response, three mutually reinforcing reform strands have been introduced: a redesigned connections process (Target Model Option 4+, TMO4+) that combines readiness with strategic alignment; a step change in transmission investment under the Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) framework and the RIIO-T3 (Revenue = Incentives + Innovation + Outputs, transmission price control 2026–2031) price control; and a strengthened regulatory regime with enforceable delivery obligations. This policy synthesis concludes that reforming the grid is as much an institutional and regulatory task as a technical one, and that coordinated action across the system operator, the regulator, government and network companies is a necessary condition for delivering an affordable, secure and low-carbon electricity system.
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