The UK’s National Grid has announced that it will be fast-tracking 10GW of battery storage projects across England and Wales in an attempt to ease grid capacity expansion bottlenecks. The agreement will see 19 “shovel-ready” projects have their timelines accelerated by up to 5 years relative to the current agreement by removing the need for non-essential engineering works prior to the connection phase. This comes on top of an announcement last month of an extra 10 GW of generation capacity from low-carbon sources as the country aims to increase its domestic generation capacity as it tries to move away from energy imports. Grid connection in the UK, as well as in much of Western Europe because of the maturity of…