Powering the Future

According to the United Nations, since the 1800s human activity has been the main driver of climate change, primarily through burning fossil fuels. To reduce the destructive impacts on people and the natural world we must decarbonise our global economy. A number of ORs are working in the renewables sector, at the forefront of the green energy revolution.

Energy Production

Renewable energy is power from natural sources that are renewed over a short timescale. Globally, the share of renewables in electricity generation is around 28%. The most well-known examples are solar, wind, hydropower, and geothermal, with emerging technologies harnessing marine and infrared energy. Hydropower is by far the largest contributor, producing one sixth of the world’s electricity in 2020.

We have seen a significant increase in renewable energy production over the last decade, but there continue to be key challenges. The up-front cost of installation is high per kilowatt, particularly for large projects such as dams; even cheaper sources such as solar and wind still have a higher installation cost than gas- or coal-fired plants. Renewable energy sources depend on weather, climate, and geographical location: they are, by nature, intermittent. Installations often require large amounts of space, and where an area is suitable, local objection is common on the grounds of damage to local ecosystems, land value, or scenery.

Power Storage & Infrastructure

A successful power grid must be efficient, sustainable, and keep costs down. The requirements for power across an energy grid fluctuate over time. ‘The Great British Kettle Surge’ is a famous example of this, where TV ad breaks dictate the timing of surges in the power grid.

With traditional fossil fuel power generation, changes in demand are matched in real-time by burning more or less fuel. Many renewables, on the other hand, are uncontrolled – variable with the levels or sun, wind, or waterflow. This intermittency is a key challenge in the use of renewable energy for three reasons: energy demand can not be matched by human intervention, existing power distribution lines were not built to handle energy produced during extreme climatic conditions, and current power storage technology is still in nascent stages of development. On a windy day, a stationary turbine indicates that potential energy is not required, and cannot be transferred or stored for when demand is high. Solving these issues is a critical step in transitioning to a green energy grid.

Finance and Governance

The danger that climate change poses to life around the world is now widely accepted, and actions to combat it are being introduced at regional, national and international levels. This requires finance and governance buy-in from governments, international bodies, and the private sector, as well as support from individuals at all levels. There has been progress, such as the Paris Climate Agreement and COP26, but there is still much to be done.

Those working in the industry highlight a lack of incentives and subsidies, and outof-date regulation, which hinder adoption of new technologies. In some regions there are also a lack of trained specialists in the workforce. Crucially, the fossil-fuel industry retains influence globally and can exert power through the economy and political lobbying. To maintain momentum, governments around the world will need to encourage transition to renewables by making sure that education, training, funding and policies keep pace with demand.

Consumers & Communities

One major challenge in the field of renewables is increasing public knowledge and awareness, so that reluctance to use them is overcome. This becomes easier as the technology improves, and the ‘green conversation’ becomes normalised. The fossil fuel industry employs over 12 million people worldwide, with around 80% of those in fossil fuel extraction, a figure which is predicted to fall dramatically by 2050. However, as many as 22 million jobs could exist in the renewables sector by the same date.

The future of renewables is not only about the large-scale production and adoption of green energy. Overhauling the traditional system will also be an opportunity to introduce small-scale change. Rural communities who have previously been unable to access power grids could benefit from local solar, wind, and hydropower projects; households generating power from private systems, such as rooftop solar panels, will be able to reduce their reliance on fluctuating markets, and even sell energy back to the grid.

“A growing coalition of countries is committing to net zero emissions by 2050, about half of emissions cuts must be in place by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5°C. Fossil fuel production must decline by roughly 6 per cent per year between 2020 and 2030.” – United Nations

Henry Reily-Collins (1997, E)

CEO of The Fish Friendly Hydropower Company Ltd and Owner of Hydropower Maintenance Ltd

When I started my business there were around 65 companies in the UK Hydropower industry. Now there are less than ten key players left - the government goalposts are continuously moving.

Hydropower is the most sustainable form of energy known to man, yet it can take four years on average to progress even a micro project through planning and EA licensing. We have managed to hold firm ground in the industry because we prioritise innovation at our core which has enabled us to readily adapt and pivot as necessary.

For example, we are currently involved with the development of one of the largest low-head hydroelectric developments in Europe; we’re converting the whole of the Victorian Manchester Ship Canal into a hydropower generation system with turbines that we have designed to sit into the spare, redundant canal locks between Manchester & Liverpool. It’s a huge engineering project of around £100m including all the tributary hydro projects.

Conversely, at the other innovative end of the scale, the PicoStream, our small, floating, portable, fish-friendly turbine, is under prototype testing. The product is aimed initially at the 11,000 mill owners in the UK, water treatment works, and other organisations such as the National Trust and Canals Rivers Trust. Following this will be developing nations, and we are exploring exciting options such as 3D printing manufacturing techniques to enable rapid global distribution. We’re currently fundraising for this technology as “The Fish Friendly Hydropower Company”, look us up on LinkedIn.

Hydropower has been around for thousands of years, and it’s here to stay. It’s crucial to apply modern expertise and knowledge to existing systems and keep them state-of-the-art. With hydropower running day and night, unlike other renewables, we can use this 24-hour energy to feed networks of hydrogen producing plants (which need both water and electricity) and likewise boost the network of EV charging points around the country. Efficient, distributed, micro generation using peer-topeer cryptographic energy distribution will be the solution of the future - and we’re working on it.

Seb Speight (1981, A)

Managing Director at AFP (previously MD at Ingenious Infrastructure)

AFP invests in business and projects that actively contribute to the transition to a low-carbon economy. As well as investing in large scale renewable energy generation projects, we are focusing on flexible energy storage, circular waste treatment, biogas and biofuels.

The current challenge that we face is creating the right environment to enable businesses to operate and investment to flow. This includes:

• creating educational pathways to ensure a well-skilled workforce

• stability of policy (including regulation and tax)

• consistent signals about the long-term direction of travel and targets

• ensuring (to the extent possible) frictionless international trade so that supply chains can be relied on.

Charlie Vey (2002, H)

Head of International Business Development at Lightsource bp

I work for a digital energy technology venture wholly owned by global solar developer Lightsource bp (which is a 50:50 joint venture with the oil major, bp). We are currently in the process of re-branding our venture as we spin out of Lightsource bp and scale a business which enables landlords and vehicle drivers to access energy and e-mobility which are both low cost and low-carbon. Our core product consists of energy management technology & finance solutions for businesses and consumers looking to adopt electric vehicles, electric vehicle chargers, and solar and battery systems.

Energy management technology – technology designed to monitor, control and optimise assets such as solar, batteries and electric vehicle chargers according to price signals, grid constraints, carbon intensity, etc. – will play a key role in the journey to net zero. This is because, as we increase penetration of renewables on the energy system, grid networks will need to contend with more ‘peaky’, intermittent, and seasonal energy generation. And as we electrify heat and transport – driven by the phasing out of internal combustion engine vehicles and gas boilers over the next decade – we will also need to contend with larger, more pronounced peaks in electricity demand. As these mega-trends converge, smart energy management will be required to support electricity grids built throughout the last century, which were never originally designed for bi-directional power flows, distributed sources of generation, or high-power consumption at the ‘grid edge’ emerging today.

Our ambition is to build a platform which enables customers to easily adopt low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles, solar and batteries. It’s designed to meet the surge in demand in electric vehicles and renewable technologies, and ensure they’re optimised to help consumers reduce their energy costs and carbon footprint. As we grow the number of customers adopting these technologies through our platform, we will, in parallel, be building a huge network of flexible energy assets in markets around the world which can be controlled and orchestrated using our technology to absorb low-cost, renewable generation, and shift demand whenever cheaper, greener power is less available – all while balancing the grid and helping keep the lights on. Today’s energy crisis has only accelerated the need to enhance energy security and build generation capacity which can deliver stable, low-carbon and low-cost energy to the economy; being smart with how we generate, store and consume electricity will play a key role in the decarbonised grid of the future.

In March 2016, Lightsource successfully completed and connected Europe’s largest floating solar farm, installing 6.3MW on the Queen Elizabeth II Reservoir, near London.

James Basden (1980, F)

Founder Director of Zenobe

We started Zenobe in 2017 based around two key themes. The first is to accelerate the uptake of renewable power by overcoming the challenges of intermittency and non-synchronous generation. The second is to improve air quality in towns and cities by enabling diesel fleet operators to go electric for no more cost than running their existing fleet. It is about making clean power accessible now.

Five years on and Zenobe is a world leader in the use of battery storage. We are the first in the world to win contracts to provide use of our grid scale batteries to address voltage, short circuit and inertia challenges. By 2026 we intend to operate over 1.6GW of storage in the UK with our batteries in Scotland alone saving c. 14 million tonnes of carbon over 15 years – the equivalent of permanently removing the emissions from all the cars in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We are now taking our expertise to Australia and the US. Our EV fleet business provides a complete end to end service for bus operators – everything from overcoming charging challenges to owning the vehicles to providing our proprietary software to optimise performance. We are the leader in our field and the largest owner and operator of EV buses in the UK, Australia and New Zealand with plans for the US.

Making a significant difference means gaining scale in what is a capital-intensive business. We have raised over £500m into Zenobe so far and are raising a further £2bn to support our growth plans to 2025. Zenobe is accelerating the building of clean infrastructure, enabling the UK and elsewhere to have secure and more affordable power and transport. If you are interested in joining our journey, please get in touch as we need talented people who are motivated by making a change for the better.

(Above left): Zenobe’s Capenhurst project, near Liverpool, will be the first battery in the world to absorb reactive power direct from a transmission network. Over 15 years, this project will save over 1 million tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. (Above right): Zenobe owns and manages an extensive fleet of EV vehicles.

Rupert Harrow (1980, A) and Julian Pertwee (1977, F)

Founders and Directors of Footprint Zero

The objective of our business is to help organisations to reduce their carbon footprint by harnessing the power of the sun. We utilise property and resources predominantly already in-situ, for instance, we have recently installed solar on the roof of the Imperial War Museum. Solar installations are a viable option for organisations on a small as well as a large scale – it is not only those that have the space for substantial solar farms. However, dated lease laws need to be amended to facilitate the installation of solar on many buildings, so that tenant companies are not affected by changes to, for instance, their insurance.

The UK has 250,000 hectares of south facing commercial roof space. If covered in solar PV this would provide more than the country’s entire power needs, yet today only 5% has solar installed. Footprint Zero’s objective is to address this deficit and to install solar on our commercial buildings, monetise an asset landlords and tenants already have, while delivering Government net zero targets and producing cheaper renewable energy for use UK wide.

Dramatic energy price inflation affects us all, with bills doubling and more in many instances. Compound the unpredictability of our energy supply caused by the war in Ukraine and solar leaps out as a vital part of the country’s energy mix.

This is set to last long into the future, meaning that the industry of today and tomorrow is renewables. Be it hydrogen, wind, solar, tidal, or waste to energy, recycling, or energy storage, the opportunities are vast, diverse, and vital. We are seeing an immense amount of financial and intellectual energy being devoted to the climate-driven challenges we all face, and this will result in interesting careers where fortunes will be made, and companies of the future are now being born.

William Dryer (2002, A)

Co-founder of Buffalo Energy Ltd

There are few countries where renewable energy does not already provide a key source of secure energy supply. Sub-Saharan Africa is the clearest example of this. In Zambia for example, 80% of the population, or 14 million people have no access to electricity. No lighting, refrigeration, mobile phones, banking services, or computers. Industry growth is limited, and consumers become reliant on expensive and environmentally damaging fossil fuelled generators.

I set up Buffalo Energy to address this. We are a project development company, meaning we originate, finance, and de-risk investment opportunities across the spectrum of renewable energy technologies in Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. Our core business is focussed on a 200MW wind project in Eastern Zambia, a 50MW solar project in Western Zambia and various commercial and industrial projects such as our most recently commissioned solar and battery storage project for an elephant orphanage and conservation centre in Zambia.

Sovereign debt default and well-publicised corruption can, however, derail even the most resilient of projects, and yet I have learnt these challenges also provide the fuel for innovative and exciting new business models; in February 2023 we will start construction on not only the first ever private energy project in Zambia, but also the first project in Southern Africa which will sell electricity across national borders to public and private customers, within a common market called the Southern African Power Pool. The ability to match our energy supply with financially reliable consumers across a diverse range of markets and customers is an exciting new development for the region, and should provide a template for future renewable projects in Southern Africa

The future is looking increasingly positive for the region and indeed the company. Liberalisation of regional energy markets is accelerating rapidly, and these policy changes, when combined with innovative business models and falling technology costs, are creating the conditions for substantially improved energy access and economic growth.

We are also seeing increasing interest from the market in hydrogen projects, either in a generation or transport capacity. This is an exciting development, particularly as these projects require significant electricity supply - while it’s possible to see a future transition to hydrogen dominated generation, it’s clear to us that there will still be a major role for longer established technologies such as wind, solar and hydroelectric generation sources.

◀ 30kW plus battery storage system on behalf of Game Rangers International (elephant orphanage) (PTF Buffalo 2) Buffalo Energies 200MW wind project – meteorological mast and solar system