How big a role does regulation play in this energy transition story and what can governments do to push it forward?
Tim Lord: I think regulation plays a huge role. When we think about the rules around EV purchases in the UK, when I was in government back in 2017 or 2018, the UK said it would ban the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. When you look at what happened with costs in the few years after that, it was moved forward to 2035 and then to 2030. So if you can make this stuff make economic and commercial sense and if you can make it a compelling consumer proposition, then it makes regulation much more straightforward.
Andrew Toher: I would bring it back to not trying to find that eureka solution that doesn’ t exist. Now we just need to figure out how to make the bulk of this work with the technologies that are there in front of us and encourage corporates to be prepared to revisit business cases – tech solutions that perhaps didn’ t make sense only 12 months ago start to come into focus.
Saleh ElHattab: One thing that’ s often missed when people talk about regulation is that the unsubsidised cost of solar and the unsubsidised cost of wind is more affordable than mixed gas. It’ s more affordable than coal, it’ s more affordable than all these things. But in the US we still have regulation that subsidises the fuel industries that make it competitive with them. And so for me, regulation is this funky word that often only applies to the world of sustainability. And so when we repeal it, it’ s bad, but if we actually repealed it all, I think economics would pan out and we’ d end up seeing a lot more renewables come online.
Abbie Badcock-Broe: It’ s really expensive to build HVDCtype cables, but we are expected from a resilience and safety perspective to always monitor them and always have a certain amount of electricity that goes through that, but it’ s not smart. By putting sensors on those cables, it means that we can then see what’ s happening through the change of weather, the change of time, the temperatures on them, and can flow more energy through without necessarily needing to build new cables. We’ ve done a few of those pilots ourselves, including in New York. sustainabilitymag. com 113