NESO has released its Ten Year Outlook 2026. It is built from known projects, existing policy and current trends, which makes it the closest thing NESO publishes to a forecast.

NESO has cut 13 GW of wind out of 2030 vs last years 10 year outlook in the Future Energy Scenarios (FES 2025), 7.2 GW offshore and 6.0 GW onshore. Meanwhile, solar buildout has increased to 68 GW by 2036. Despite the increase in solar buildout, batteries are the only Clean Power 2030 target the outlook meets.

NESO's view of battery duration also stands out. It sees Great Britain building batteries at an average of 1.6 hours from 2029 onwards. Over the last two years the country actually built at 2.06 hours, and 90% of everything commissioned since the start of 2025 has been two hours or longer.

Modo Energy's short-term outlook broadly agrees with NESO to 2029, with new batteries averaging around two-hour duration. However, from 2030, NESO assumes new batteries will average 1.5 hours in duration, while our forecast moves to closer to six hours.

Here are five key points from the Ten Year Outlook 2026.

1. Offshore wind loses 7 GW in 2030 vs FES 2025

Offshore wind has seen the biggest revision from FES 2025. Last year's outlook had 40.8 GW at the end of 2030 and 61.0 GW three years after that. This year's outlook has 33.6 GW in 2030 and an ambitious 65 GW by 2036.

This year's outlook reflects a more deliverable 2030 pipeline of 33 GW offshore wind compared to 40 GW in the FES 2025. However, from 2030 onwards, NESO see a consistent buildout of between 4 and 6 GW of offshore wind each year.

This is a punchy assumption given GB connected 1.3 GW in 2025. Modo Energy forecasts offshore wind buildout to average 3.2 GW each year from 2030, hitting 48 GW by 2036.

2. Most technologies are forecast to miss CP30 targets

The battery fleet is forecast to reach 24.6 GW in 2030. This sits within the 23-27GW CP 2030 range. Notably, it is the only CP30 target which is hit within the 10 year outlook.