Following a new report on future energy provision by the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change (ECC) Committee, the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA) has voiced its full support for the report’s recommendation to boost the UK’s energy storage capacity and demand side response.
Entitled ‘the energy revolution and future challenges for UK energy and climate change policy’, the report makes a series of recommendations, including the need for the government to:
· redesign the energy Capacity Market—the subsidy scheme designed to minimise the risk of blackouts—to incentivise innovative energy storage and demand side response (DSR) technologies;
· move quickly to address other regulatory barriers faced by energy storage; and
· set out a high-level public commitment to making the UK a world-leader in storage, with a storage procurement target for 2020. (The last two energy capacity market auctions failed to deliver any energy storage.)
ECA director of business services Paul Reeve said: “We have now reached the stage where the UK energy challenge is far less about how to produce ‘low to no carbon’ electrical energy, and much more about how to distribute, store and use it.
“This authoritative report is aimed squarely at meeting these new challenges, and opportunities, and we greatly welcome the Committee’s recommendations.”
According to ECC committee chair Angus MacNeil MP: “The government must…encourage the energy market to embrace ‘smart’ technology solutions, such as energy storage and demand-side response. There is an incredible opportunity for the UK to become a world leader in these disruptive technologies. Yet our current energy security subsidies (still) favour dirty diesel generation over smart and clean tech solutions.”
The report also notes that “if current regulatory barriers to (energy) storage were removed, some £7bn per annum of savings to consumers could be achieved”.
The report will be the final activity from the ECC Committee, with its responsibilities set to be taken over by a new Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.