Carbon Trust Launches New Initiative, Gathers UK Energy Players

The Carbon Trust has launched a new collaborative initiative, the Energy Systems Innovation Platform (ESIP), to solve key issues currently preventing a more effective transition to a low cost and low carbon energy system.

The initiative brings together Centrica, DONG Energy, SSE, Scottish Power, Statoil and Wood Group Clean Energy, who collectively represent almost 50 percent of the electricity supply market in the UK and hold significant renewable energy and conventional generation portfolios. ESIP has also received initial support from the Scottish Government and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).

The collaboration will 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.

Through ESIP, each partner will take an impartial and technology neutral perspective on opportunities for energy storage to provide increasingly needed flexibility services to the UK’s electricity system.

Andrew Lever, Director of Innovation at the Carbon Trust, said: “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. 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. ESIP fills that gap.

“We now have a window of opportunity to foster new business models and put in place the regulatory mechanisms that will give investors the confidence to stop chasing market distortions and focus on the long term. The formation of ESIP is indicative that no one organisation can solve this issue alone and a collaborative approach is essential to deliver the biggest benefit to society as a whole.”