The UK’s Carbon Trust has brought together key energy companies in a collaboration aimed at addressing key issues preventing an effective transition to a low carbon energy system.
Centrica, Dong Energy, SSE, Scottish Power, Statoil and Wood Group have agreed to work together and establish the Energy Systems Innovation Platform (ESIP), which will receive funding from the Scottish Government and the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
The ESIP aims to enable partners to develop solutions to overcome barriers currently deterring investment in flexibility solutions such as energy storage. Solutions will be based on rigorous and transparent analysis and relate to issues such as regulation, lack of transparency in decision making and long-term business models necessary to encourage the right investments now to potentially save billions of pounds a year for consumers by 2030.
Together the partners represent almost 50 per cent of the electricity supply market in the UK and hold significant renewable energy and conventional generation portfolios.
“There is now general consensus that the UK energy markets needs to be revamped so we can embrace a flexible and more decentralised energy system,” said Andrew Lever, Director of Innovation at the Carbon Trust. “However the fragmented nature of the energy market is driving fragmented decision making and many investments are led by technology not market needs.
“There is an urgent need for an open forum where the wider industry can collaborate to solve common issues in order to capitalise on recent storage innovation.”
In 2016 the Carbon Trust led a study with industry and government partners that concluded that the UK could be saving up to £2.4 billion every year by 2030 if flexibility solutions such as energy storage were integrated into the UK electricity system to help balance the grid, improve the utilisation of renewable energy assets and reduce or defer the need for costly grid reinforcements.
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