Enlit Europe told that ‘competitiveness and sustainability go hand in hand’
Image: Enlit
Maintaining European competitiveness amid the energy transition was a hot talking point at Enlit Europe’s opening keynote and energy sector leaders agreed that innovation is one of the most important tools at Europe’s disposal.
Gwenaelle Avice Huet, executive vice president of Europe Operations at Schneider Electric, opened the keynote by stating: “We were all talking about sustainability and now we are all talking about competitiveness. The energy transition is good for competitiveness. Competitiveness and sustainability go hand in hand.”
To establish this competitiveness, innovation, coupled with skills development and a strategy to turn ambition into action are needed to drive digitalisation, grid resilience, and empower customers.
“Innovation is critical but we need to accelerate,” she said. “We need a start-up ecosystem. We need to meet the collective challenge together.”
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However, Huet stated that we need to ensure we are operating from a realistic perspective. Referring to the record amount of renewable generation in Europe in the year so far, she asked if we are indeed doing enough.
Huet suggests there is more work to do. “We have ambitions and commitments, we need everything to succeed.”
Inspired by China
Of course, you can’t have a panel discussion about European competitiveness without talking about the competition. In this case, China.
And that is what Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group did, highlighting that what China is doing should make Western legislators and stakeholders nervous.
“China is getting ready for a great electric future… we should do the same.”
Jackson explained that the ambitious projects in Europe pale in comparison to the ambitious projects in China and they can go even bigger because they are spending so much on R&D. According to Jackson, companies spend 7-11% of total revenue on R&D.
Huet agreed, stating that companies need to invest in R&D with a long-term perspective. “We need to think of the long term and understand it’s good for the short term.”
Paolo Gallo, CEO and general manager of Italgas, suggested innovation will be critical to getting the digital grid future-ready to ensure the clean power we generate can be used effectively, adding that this has been a successful mission for Italgas’ gas grid in the past 8 years.
“We are immersed in a huge transformation of the system and if we don’t put on the table innovation and utilisation of technology, we wouldn’t be able to comply with the new requirements of network grids,” added Ana Lafuente, Networks Global director at Iberdrola.
Potential hurdles to innovation
Jackson stated: “We can be inspired by and motivated by that change [in China] to see what is possible in Europe,” however, he added that there are roadblocks to overcome, such as regulation on the consumer side.
“We need governments now to enable innovation on the consumer end for the energy consumer of the future… bizarrely it’s held up by the bureaucracy.”
This sentiment was echoed by Gianni Vittorio Armani, head of Enel Grids and Innovability at Enel, who added: “Bureaucracy is not our main competitive advantage in Europe.”
Armani referred specifically to permissions and permitting as key roadblocks to investment, innovation and infrastructure expansion.
A common message of the discussion was that Europe is on the verge of a significant opportunity to produce its low-cost energy, but the rules need to favour investment and innovation.
Duarte Bello, CEO of Europe at EDP Group, believes that for innovation to make a difference, we need to ensure stakeholders accept the innovation being developed. “The challenge of building new things [is] we need social acceptance.”
And social acceptance needs to be coupled with a harmonised regulatory landscape. Said Bello: “We need to have easy access and limit the barriers to ensure the innovation can kick in faster today.”
