How to Unlock the Green Economy
“Renewable energy is the foundation for everything we need to do to unlock net zero and drive a green economic recovery, and we can’t do that quickly enough”
says Lindsay McQuade, CEO of ScottishPower Renewables.
However, McQuade, a speaker at the upcoming Reuters Events’ Future of Renewables virtual conference (Dec 8–9), admits that while many building blocks are in place the UK at least needs to be more ambitious. “It will be crucial that the planning process is fit for purpose, and there are sufficient resources to drive the necessary pace of change,” she says.
A US view comes from Joshua Rogol, Chief Development Officer at Strata Solar. He would like governments “to turbocharge the transition of the grid to renewables by providing tax credits or other incentives for the development of storage.” They should also provide income streams for independent owner-operators of energy storage systems.”
Going further, Rogol says: “A ‘clean peak standard’ would be another helpful change by mandating that any new peaking capacity would have to come from storage coupled with renewables.”
Although Rogol is “thrilled to see the pressure on utilities that is coming from BlackRock and other leading investment firms,” he believes government still has a place to drive change. “We would like to see a move to a more competitive generation environment in states that currently have vertically integrated monopoly utilities. We also would like to see governments and utilities commissions insisting on a more rapid transition to clean power. Our lives literally may depend on it.”
On the issue of competition, Andreas Schierenbeck, the CEO of Germany’s Uniper, says:
“The important thing is to achieve the targets in a way that will not harm domestic industries in the long term.”
Going forward, there are challenges and opportunities but speakers joining the upcoming event broadly agree that regulatory reform of utilities, innovative low-cost financing models, a reliable investment framework, modernization of the power grid and lower costs for battery storage will be vital.
Join Reuters Events: Future of Renewables Virtual (Dec 8–10) to hear more from 60+ C-Level executives at organisations that are major forces in the energy fields, and manufacturers whose products are evolving in response to energy diversification.
For more information, please contact Project Director Rhys Watt at rhys.watt@thomsonreuters.com
