Thursday 8 February 2018
Electric vehicles (EVs) are to overtake traditional combustion engines in terms of price and performance within a decade.
That's according to Benoit Laclau, Global Power & Utilities Leader at EY, who spoke to ELN earlier this week about important stages in the energy sector becoming more decarbonised, digitised and decentralised.
He said the first significant shift would arrive as a result of decentralised power production being used in combination with energy storage, most commonly in the form of domestic solar and batteries.
He added this will become competitive with centralised energy from the grid in the next few years, before being followed by EVs and traditional vehicles reaching a stage of parity between 2025 and 2029.
The third tipping point will occur in the late-2030s and early-2040s as the cost of decentralised generation falls below that of energy transmission, making it cheaper in every case.
Mr Laclau said: "If you're an energy retailer today or an energy company today, you're seeing a number of threats coming from a number of other industries that are wanting to come and eat your cake.
"At the same time, you've got opportunities to actually protect yourself and potentially invest in a different model, so instead of investing maybe in centralised assets like they maybe have done for the last 100 years, investing in owning the batteries, investing in owning the solar panels, investing in models that guarantee a relationship with the customer will remain viable for many years to come."