SSEN Transmission and National Grid Electricity Transmission have marked the one-year anniversary since breaking ground on Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2), the country's largest-ever electricity transmission project.

The £4.3 billion project will carry 2GW of clean energy—enough to power up to 2 million homes—through the UK's longest 505km subsea HVDC cable running between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Drax in Yorkshire.

Over the past 12 months, the project has transitioned from design into visible construction progress at both ends:

• Peterhead Converter Station: Contractors BAM have completed the site's vast platform, and reinforced concrete foundations have been poured for the transformer buildings. Welfare facilities are in place to support the growing workforce, and earth mounds are nearing completion, ready for native landscaping. Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) preparatory work is underway for cable installation to begin at Sandford Bay in October 2025.

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• Offshore/Cable: Trial trenching has been completed at 261 locations on the southern section of the cable route. The construction of the Monna Lisa, the cable laying vessel that will install the cable, is complete. Offshore Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) surveying is underway in Peterhead, progressing southward and expected to be finished by the end of 2025, with no significant findings reported so far.

Fionán Doonan, EGL2's Project Director, stated: "A year on, we can already see the scale of that ambition taking shape, with foundations now in place at both converter station sites... EGL2 is about much more than building infrastructure – it's about building a cleaner, more secure energy system for the future, and it's inspiring to see that future becoming a reality."

The project has also embedded sustainability and community engagement. Plant equipment at the construction sites is powered in part using Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) to reduce emissions. Earlier this year, a £2 million Community Benefit Fund was launched in Peterhead to support local initiatives, with a similar fund planned for Yorkshire.

Looking ahead, the next 12 months will see steelwork rising from the ground at Peterhead and the build-out of the electrical connections that will tie EGL2 into the wider electricity grid, with cable laying scheduled for 2027 and 2028.