Wednesday 17 February 2021

Podcast: ‘Flexibility and low carbon energy are intrinsically linked’

Networks must evolve to allow electricity to be used and distributed in more flexible ways.

That's the suggestion from Ben Wallace, Head of Development for Urban Reserve at AMP Clean Energy, who spoke to future Net Zero Editor Jonny Bairstow about the critical role he expects flexible energy will play in supporting intermittent renewables and enabling the delivery of net zero.

He said: "Networks were just never designed with low carbon technologies in mind, they were never designed to have huge demand through electric vehicle (EV) charging, substations and cables have a capacity and they were really originally designed as a top-down system. Where we are struggling is to work out how do we evolve networks to allow us to be more flexible in the way we use electricity, in the way we distribute electricity.

"If we want more wind and more solar and more low carbon, we're going to need more flexibility to back it up - you can't really develop low carbon technologies without developing a flexible fleet of projects with them, they are intrinsically linked."

But are we on track to have enough localised flexible energy capacity to meet national decarbonisation goals? What is the state of play of the UK flexible energy market and what barriers does it face? And why has there been so much demand for flexibility this winter?

Find the answers to these questions and more by listening to the podcast.

You can also get in touch with Ben directly at ben.wallace@ampcleanenergy.com.