Download our award-winning app and enjoy access to all exclusive features. Click here to access on Apple or Android.

“This isn’t a new concept. This isn’t a revolutionary, ground-breaking concept. It’s just something that is kind of a repackaging of a market that’s not doing what it’s supposed to.”

The United Kingdom has finally wrapped up a long-lasting review of its electricity market, opting to preserve the existing nationwide model instead of switching to a regional-based system.

Reforming the market is essential to meet climate targets, add more renewables into the system and, ultimately, allow the government to hit its clean power goal in 2030.

But it is still not entirely clear how the existing system will now be reformed. We know that moving to a so-called zonal system will not happen under this review, but there is still a lack of clarity on which policies will be adopted.

“We’re going to push all these levers, we’re going to try and move things around, and instead of actually fundamentally fixing the problem at the source, driving down bills, we are essentially playing Jenga. We are removing blocks from the bottom, repackaging them and putting them back on the top. All the while eroding the integrity of the system so that one thing could just knock it all over.”

Joining Sam on this episode of the Policy Dispatch is Sam Whitworth, energy market regulation adviser at British energy company Octopus.

Download our award-winning app and enjoy access to all exclusive features. Click here to access on Apple or Android.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Download our award-winning app and enjoy access to all exclusive features. Click here to access on Apple or Android

“We need to drive electrification in the EU. We are badly lagging behind China but we have done the hard work over the last 20 years to make really rapid electrification possible.”

Electrification offers a viable path towards decarbonisation. If processes can be switched up to run on electrons, then renewable power generation can be hooked up to a wide range of previously polluting industries and sectors.

Big leaps forward in terms of what can be electrified but also how much of the economy can be electrified have been made but more progress is needed. More clean power sources, more electricity network infrastructure and more investment are all, of course, crucial.

“Without question, electrification is the single lever that will deliver us the furthest along the lines for our 2040 targets. There’s no question.”

Joining Sam on this episode of the Policy Dispatch is Adrian Hiel, director of the Electrification Alliance, a group that advocates for electricity to play a crucial role in decarbonising Europe’s economy.

Adrian shares his view on why getting more cheap electrons into the European energy system is only a good thing, what needs to be done to turbocharge that process and why electrification might only be gradual at first, but ultimately will happen at pace.

Enjoy the show!

For more on electrification, check out:

• The Electrification Alliance
• The International Energy Agency’s 2025 report on electricity.

Download our award-winning app and enjoy access to all exclusive features. Click here to access on Apple or Android

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Download our award-winning app and enjoy access to all exclusive features. Click here to access on Apple or Android.

“I like to say that the German storage market doesn’t work because of policy but despite policy sometimes! Lars Stephan,” Senior Manager Policy and Market Development, Fluence.

Germany’s energy storage market has been up and running for a decade and is just now starting to really ignite and cross some exciting milestones.

More and more projects are starting to be announced, construction is beginning and the German grid is starting to feel the benefit of having power storage backup when it is really needed.

“So if we look at the project scale at the moment, we have about 2 to 2.7 GWh of utility-scale energy storage projects deployed in Germany. And we have about 6.6 GWh of projects under construction that will come online by January 2027.”

Lots of policy changes are under consideration that will impact this market. From removing grid fee exemptions and setting up capacity markets to offering inertia services revenues. If Germany gets it right, the sector could boom. If it gets it wrong…

“Like with inertia, energy storage can be part of the solution, but you need to let us be part of the solution, by defining some kind of market mechanism that provides a price signal for energy storage. So it knows what to do, what not to do, in order to support the grid.”

Joining Sam on this episode of the Policy Dispatch is Lars Stephan, head of policy and market development at energy storage software developer Fluence.

Enjoy the show!

For more on storage, check out:

• Rystad Energy’s global storage outlook;
• ‘Storage needs a loud revolution’, an audio oped by SolarPowerEurope;
• ‘Playing the long-duration storage game’, episode of The Jolt
• Stay tuned for a new in-depth article on storage as well!

Download our award-winning app and enjoy access to all exclusive features. Click here to access on Apple or Android.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.