The UK energy sector is debating GC0159, a proposal to introduce Competitively Appointed Transmission Owners (CATOs) for new electricity transmission infrastructure. The idea is straightforward: instead of regulated monopolies building and owning transmission assets, private companies would compete to deliver projects at fixed prices.

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The logic mirrors the Offshore Transmission Owner (OFTO) regime, which delivered cost savings of 19 to 23 per cent compared to regulated alternatives. Ministers and industry bodies see CATOs as a way to inject competition, reduce costs, and accelerate the buildout of transmission infrastructure.

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But there's a critical difference between OFTOs and CATOs. Under the OFTO model, the asset already exists when competitive tender takes place. You're bidding to own and operate a completed offshore cable. CATOs are different. Competitive appointment happens before the asset is built, on projects significantly more complex to route, consent, and deliver.

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The question is whether competitive procurement addresses the right problem.

The Scale of What Needs to Be Built

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National Grid estimates five times as much transmission infrastructure needs to be built in the next seven years as was constructed in the last three decades. Modelling shows every transmission network boundary needs reinforcing, with an average doubling of capability required between 2025 and 2035.

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Ministers estimate four times as much new electricity transmission network will be needed in the next six years as has been built since 1990.

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If delays persist, annual constraint costs rise from around £1.4 billion per year in 2023 to around £8 billion per year in the late 2020s. A one-year delay to three critical projects adds around £4 billion in additional constraint costs in 2030.

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The urgency is clear. The question is whether CATOs solve the bottleneck causing those delays.

Where the CATO Model Falls Short

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The CATO framework assumes you're handing over a well-scoped project to a competitive bidder. The route is defined. The constraints are understood. The technical problem is ready for procurement.

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But transmission projects don't fail during construction. They fail during planning.

From conception to finished construction, the current timeline is 14 years. The UK Government wants to halve this to 7 years. Of the existing process, two-thirds of this time is consumed by planning, permitting, and consents.

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Route assessment happens when hundreds of options need to be evaluated against dozens of evolving constraints. Environmental designations, landowner concerns, policy shifts, grid connection points. The assessment gets frozen at a point in time. Then the competitive procurement happens.

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But between that freeze and when construction begins, the constraints shift. Policy changes. Demand forecasts get updated. Grid connection points move because other projects have progressed or stalled. Landowners who were initially cooperative change their minds. Environmental designations get updated. Local planning authorities shift priorities.

A route looking optimal 18 months ago might now cut through land designated for development. A substation location assumed fixed has moved. By the time you're in construction, you're working with assumptions 2-3 years old.

CATOs Optimise for the Wrong Variable

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The CATO framework is deliberately structured to place significant early-stage design, consenting, and construction risk on the CATO. Bidders take informed positions on deliverability. The competitive pressure is supposed to drive efficiency.

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But if the route assessment was done with fragmented information and outdated assumptions, competitive procurement doesn't fix the underlying problem. You end up with a competitively procured project still facing consenting delays, stakeholder opposition, and route changes during delivery.

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The competitive bit happens after the hard problem. Figuring out which route is viable given all the constraints has supposedly been solved. But it hasn't been solved. It's been frozen based on incomplete information.

What the Sector Needs

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CATOs address capital efficiency. The real bottleneck is decision architecture.

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Transmission planning needs better tools for early-stage route assessment. Tools treating qualitative risk, policy volatility, and network-level expansion as engineering inputs, not soft factors considered separately. Tools allowing iteration to happen in days instead of months.

The problem isn't who owns the asset. The problem is by the time ownership is decided, the route assessment is based on assumptions outdated before construction begins.

How RunPilot Addresses This

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At RunPilot, we've built planning infrastructure for early-stage infrastructure decisions under uncertainty. Our platform allows transmission owners, consultancies, and utilities to evaluate hundreds of route options against dozens of evolving constraints in real time.

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We model stakeholder risk, consenting challenges, and policy volatility as engineering constraints, not afterthoughts. Route assessment happens collaboratively, with teams testing scenarios and iterating on assumptions as new information emerges.

The platform integrates with existing workflows, supports network-level expansion planning, and operates at the resolution infrastructure planning requires. Teams using RunPilot complete route assessments in days, not months.

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CATOs won't solve the planning bottleneck. Better decision support at the point where uncertainty is highest will.

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