Tuesday, December 3, 2024
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T+E Forum 2024: National Grid states decarbonisation of transport is “critical”

Outlining its decarbonisation plans, National Grid told the T+E Forum that transport was “core to our strategic priorities”.

Senior decarbonisation strategy manager Niki Kesharaju said that “currently we are still very fossil fuel dependant” and to drive forward decarbonisation of transport would “require customer engagement”.

Highlighting the challenges around electric vehicles, Kesharaju specifically pointed to the electrification of eHGVs and vans where it was “not quite so clear” what the path was going to be yet.

In addition, she explained how there was also the important case of maritime transport, and strategies for some of the harder to reach sectors of transport would “stretch well beyond 2050”.

She pointed out there was “real magic” in stakeholder engagement when it came to understanding what businesses needed to decarbonise, and it was important to forecast and track various scenarios to develop a “realistic view” of what the impact would be on networks.

Furthering the issues raised by Kesharaju, the head of transport decarbonisation at National Grid Electricity Distribution, Ben Cattermole, said that the company saw themselves as “enablers of the low carbon transition”.

He explained how some 60% of small demand EV connections were now “done in a matter of seconds” and it was only on larger scale schemes where there were challenges. Cattermole said: “In general, the network is there to deliver small scale demand connection.”

He continued that most customers were looking for a cheap, fast, low carbon connection, which delivered the power when needed. But stated that they all have a lot of different demands, including size, diversity, and capacity, as well as issues of flexibility requirements.

Cattermole added that National Grid had “made great progress” but there is “still some way to go” on facilitating the decarbonisation of transport.

Finally, he highlighted the work of Clearview Charge with trade body ChargeUK as a good example of collaboration to the Forum.

The report provides a view of the Distribution use of Service tariffs across all its licence areas for LV and HV assets connected (or looking to connect) to its network. It provides information that may be useful for connected customers who are wishing to take advantage of cheaper time bands, or for prospective developers to understand the potential impact of DUOS charges on projects in their portfolio.

“The information was all publicly available, but it was in an unweildy document. So this was an exercise in making information and data easily available to customers.”

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