Transport + Energy spoke to Naomi Nye from Drax Electric Vehicles to understand its plans to decarbonise transport.
Tell us about your business and how it sits within the transport and energy landscape…
Drax Electric Vehicles, part of the Drax Group, is working with UK organisations to decarbonise and to help them on their electrification journey. We work with organisations looking to transition away from ICE vehicles to electric, those looking to install charge points at their premises and for destination charging providers including hotels, supermarkets, airports, etc.
Drax has 50 years’ experience of generating power and are part of the UK’s national critical infrastructure. The Drax power station in Selby is Europe’s largest decarbonisation project having converted from coal to sustainable biomass to generate electricity.
What are your decarbonisation goals and targets both in the near term and by 2050?
At Drax, our ambition is to be carbon negative by 2030 by removing more carbon from the atmosphere than we produce (Scope 1 and 2), helping the UK achieve its net zero target. By then, Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) at Drax could deliver up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 removals a year. This would deliver over 15% of the carbon removals the UK requires to achieve net zero by 2050, according to figures provided by the Climate Change Committee in their 2019 Net Zero Report.
We work with large UK organisations as their net zero partner to help them reduce their Scope 1,2 and 3 emissions through a range of products and services, including renewable electricity as standard, EV charging solutions, asset optimisation and power purchase agreements.
One of the largest and most complex sectors to electrify to achieve net zero by 2050, is the transport sector. This is a sector that can’t just transition to electric overnight, and a lot of factors need to be taken into consideration, but with our energy and EV expertise, we’re looking to help make this possible.
In what ways have you collaborated with other sectors and businesses, across both the public and private sectors?
We work with a customer focussed mindset, to ensure we’re delivering what’s best for the customer and their organisation’s requirements and we’ll work with them to understand exactly what those requirements are.
We have partnerships and agreements with a number of organisations within the EV sector to ensure we deliver exactly what is right for the customer, including hardware providers and payment solutions, such as Alfen, Allstar, and Autel.
What is your biggest challenge as a company?
As a decarbonisation partner supporting customers on their journey, there are a number of misconceptions we work hard to help organisations better understand.
We’ve seen a number of unfounded myths within the mainstream media on a number of topics, including charging infrastructure availability, range anxiety, environmental concerns around production and scare stories around vehicles causing fires.
There’s also a wider education piece with organisations transitioning to an electric fleet, as this can differ greatly from operating ICE vehicles. We work with organisations on education in a number of areas including energy management – when and where’s the best time to charge, the right infrastructure and driver training.
What would you like to see from the UK Government?
We’ve been working with both the Labour and Conservative parties for a number of years on a range of matters and projects, including BECCS, and we look forward to clarification on our plans in Q1 2025.
There is still a lot of uncertainty around the ban on ICE vehicles and when this will come into effect. We welcome the recent announcement of a consultation on these two key areas, and hope this brings some clarity to both the industry and businesses looking to electrify.
How do you see the sector changing and progressing in the next 5, 10, 15 years?
There are a number of areas where change and progress will happen.
Firstly, legislation and regulation. With the ZEV mandate, more EVs will be on our roads and that means the supporting infrastructure will need to be installed to support this – with both public and private charging having a role to play. We’ve seen over the last couple of years the introduction and tightening of public chargepoint regulations regarding ease of payment, reporting, uptimes, etc. These could be tightened even further and adopted across private charging locations.
As we move towards the mass adoption phase of EVs, this will have implications on the energy required to charge the vehicles. We’ll see more of a focus on both the infrastructure and the vehicles being seen as an asset and utilising flexibility services to help balance the grid and make organisations additional revenue.
Services like V2G and V2X are continuing to be developed and will become mainstream, sooner rather than later. We’ve seen, over the last few years the range of EVs available significantly increase. The next stage of the electrification journey are those vehicles that have traditionally been difficult to electrify – eLCVs and eHGVs.
The transport sector is the UKs most polluting sector, so electrifying this is critical. However, there are a range of challenges to overcome in order to do so, and focus will need to be paid not only to the vehicles, but how they’ll be charged and an increase in the number of eHGV charging hubs. We’ve seen recently commitment from companies like Amazon and John Lewis to bring eHGV vehicles into their fleets and this shows the desire is there.
The news comes as Transport + Energy launches its Fleet Electrification Forum this year. Find out more information here.
Image of Naomi Nye courtesy of Drax Electric Vehicles
