In its annual report for 2025, the company said a second interconnector was ‘the foundation of secure, affordable, low-carbon’ power for the island, which now draws almost 92% of its electricity from imports through a single existing link.
GEL said two possible routes for the new cable had been identified, and that early work – including route engineering and cable design – was under way. The project will require the approval of the States and a funding structure that the company said it had to agree this year with its shareholder, the States Trading Supervisory Board.
The company said funding the interconnector, and the further investment that will follow it, through state lending ‘would deliver the optimum outcome for the customer in terms of tariffs’, though it is looking at an approach combining both state and commercial borrowing. Securing that financing certainty, it said, was ‘imperative to allow investment decisions to be made’, and it was working closely with government to achieve it.
The push follows the States’ near-unanimous approval of the island’s electricity strategy in September 2023, which sets the direction for Guernsey’s energy future as electricity increasingly replaces petrol, diesel and heating oil in vehicles and homes.
A second cable is not the only major investment being planned. The report also referenced future spending on replacing the island’s ageing on-island generation and on grid-scale batteries to help manage a system that will rely more heavily on imported and intermittent renewable power.
Chairman Julian Critchlow, who took over last year, said the scale of change ahead should not be underestimated. The company was marking its 125th anniversary, he noted, but ‘the next 25 years will see more change than the previous 125 – and the decisions we take now on interconnection, investment and tariff reform will define the island’s energy future for a generation’.
He argued that electrification was the island’s route to greater energy independence and a more stable cost of living, insulating Guernsey from volatile global oil and gas prices.
‘Every litre of petrol and every tonne of fuel oil imported into Guernsey has its price set elsewhere,’ he said. ‘Electricity, drawn increasingly from low-carbon European grids, offers a more stable cost of living.’
The company said its most extensive customer research in a generation had confirmed three priorities – keeping energy costs as low as possible, maintaining a secure and reliable supply, and supporting decarbonisation.
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