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The UK energy transition faces a critical bottleneck: a planning system crippled by risk aversion and procedural overload. In this episode, we explore the reality behind infrastructure delivery, from the 47 recommendations of the UK Prime Minister’s nuclear regulatory task force to the exploding demand for data centers.

In this episode, Mustafa Latif-Aramesh (Partner and Parliamentary Agent at TLT ) joins Ed to examine how overlapping regulation and institutional duplication push developers toward compliance theatre rather than meaningful environmental protection, epitomised by Hinkley Point C’s infamous £700 million “fish disco.” The conversation explores what it would take to move the UK from a process-obsessed planning regime to one that rewards outcomes, accelerates delivery, and underpins the next wave of digital and energy infrastructure.

Key topics covered:

• Why the UK’s infrastructure planning system prioritises administrative process over real environmental outcomes.
• How spending £700 million to protect a fraction of a salmon population reveals a breakdown in regulatory proportionality.
• Whether a single Nuclear Regulatory Commission could cut duplicative red tape and unlock faster decommissioning and new nuclear build.
• Is the Planning Inspectorate equipped to handle 500 proposed data centres alongside the wider energy transition?
• Can co-locating Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) with data centres address the sector’s “five nines” reliability challenge?

About our guest

Mustafa Latif-Aramesh is a Partner at the law firm TLT, where he specialises in infrastructure planning across the entire energy spectrum from transmission lines and battery storage to wind, solar, and nuclear. He recently served on the Prime Minister’s Nuclear Regulatory Task Force, a specialist group established to diagnose why building nuclear capacity in Britain takes so long and to identify solutions for expediting delivery

Working alongside industry leaders and economists, Mustafa helped author a report containing 47 recommendations designed to eliminate regulatory duplication and shift the system’s focus from administrative process to tangible outcomes. Beyond nuclear, he advises on the planning challenges facing the UK's rapidly expanding data center pipeline, advocating for a system that balances environmental standards with the need for critical infrastructure. You can follow his analysis on TLT’s infrastructure planning blog.

Connect with Mustafa on Linkedin here.

About Modo Energy

Modo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage understand the market — and make the most out of their assets.

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