\n<\/p>\n
A French utility has agreed to buy the owner of the electricity cables and power lines across London, the south-east and the east of England in a deal worth \u00a310.5bn.<\/p>\n
Paris-headquartered Engie said on Wednesday that it had struck a deal to buy UK Power Networks (UKPN) in a \u201cmajor milestone\u201d for the company\u2019s ambition to become the \u201cbest energy transition utility\u201d.<\/p>\n
Engie will buy the electricity network operator, which operates about 192,000km of power lines serving 8.5 million customers across London and southern and eastern England, from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate founded by billionaire business magnate Li Ka-shing, which has owned UKPN for the past 15 years.<\/p>\n
The chief executive of Engie, Catherine MacGregor, said: \u201cThe acquisition of UK Power Networks marks a major milestone in the implementation of our strategic priorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy reinforcing our position in electricity networks, it confirms our ambition to become the best energy transition utility and will support our growth momentum while improving our risk profile.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deal has emerged almost a year after the UK\u2019s competition watchdog cleared Spain\u2019s Iberdrola to buy an 88% stake in Electricity North West (ENW), through its UK subsidiary Scottish Power, in a deal that valued the network at \u00a35bn. ENW, which served almost 5 million people in the north-west of England, has been rebranded SP Electricity North West.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s electricity distribution network companies, which operate the electricity lines and infrastructure across six geographical monopolies, are about halfway through a plan to invest more than \u00a322bn in upgrading and expanding their networks by 2028 under the five-year programme approved by the industry regulator.<\/p>\n
The investments, which are paid back via energy bills, are considered crucial if Britain hopes to connect enough new low-carbon generation, batteries and electric vehicle charge points to help meet the UK\u2019s goal of reducing its use of fossil fuels in favour of green electricity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A French utility has agreed to buy the owner of the electricity cables and power lines across London, the south-east and the east of England in a deal worth \u00a310.5bn. Paris-headquartered Engie said on Wednesday that it had struck a deal to buy UK Power Networks (UKPN) in a \u201cmajor milestone\u201d for the company\u2019s ambition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[23343,2179,696,23342,3824,278,1664,85,13753],"class_list":{"0":"post-45259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-10-5bn","9":"tag-buy","10":"tag-deal","11":"tag-engie","12":"tag-frances","13":"tag-networks","14":"tag-power","15":"tag-strikes","16":"tag-utilities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}