Tech Talk | The utilities for net zero and how they will get there

The Utilities for Net Zero Alliance has identified focus areas and actions to deliver net zero beyond 2030 to 2050.

More and more, collaboration among peers is being realised as an effective approach to deliver on the challenges of the energy transition, whether that collaboration is around a technology or standard or simply a sharing of information.

Just last week, we reported the launch of a new North American alliance, the Total Grid Orchestration Alliance, aimed to develop new ‘orchestration’ approaches to systemwide coordination, situational awareness and risk management across the entire grid.

Another is the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance, which has marked its first anniversary with the announcement of a more than $116 billion annual investment in clean power generation and grid infrastructure in the coming years.

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How are the Alliance members, which includes 32 of the larger utilities and energy companies across the globe, going to invest these sums? For more detail, ‘Roadmap to 2030 and beyond’ and action plan released earlier in the year.

The roadmap sets out three key steps to accelerate the energy transition, starting with the stronger international collaboration the Alliance offers to identify the future energy system needs and challenges for 2030 and beyond to 2050.

Then to collectively contribute to meeting the 2030 targets, i.e. a tripling of renewable power and doubling of energy efficiency, the emphasis is on identifying and advocating recommendations to relieve challenges and bottlenecks and collectively executing the initiatives.

Finally, to reach net zero emissions, successful initiatives must be scaled beyond the Alliance.

The six focus areas identified are:
● The buildout of clean power and decarbonisation of thermal,
● The build-up of reliable and flexible grid infrastructure,
● A drive for widespread adoption of electrification,
● Improved energy efficiency,
● Promotion of technological innovation, and
● Sustainable execution of actions.

Within each of these areas are the needs to mobilise capital, de-risk the supply chain, build the needed capabilities and talent and facilitate policy and regulatory support.

Specific priorities identified for 2024-2025 are taking proactive measures to address the challenge of limited financial resources and initiating structured and regular dialogue with governments to streamline regulatory procedures for permitting and approval.

Building supply chains

The Alliance members’ committed investment of $116 billion includes about $56 billion in the grids, amounting to an approximate doubling over the 2023 level and in line with the global benchmark.

About $60 billion is planned for renewables, with the installed renewable capacity targeted for 2030 of 849GW, an increase of 2.6 times relative to 2023.

Such an enormous build-out will place extreme pressure on clean energy technology supply chains globally, including the material sourcing, production, transport and installation of the technologies, the Alliance comments.

As demand for the technologies increases significantly, the main challenges encountered when ensuring resilient supply chains are the availability of critical minerals and materials, the scaling up of manufacturing capacity and the development of a skilled workforce.

Moreover, with each of these comes the opportunity for new investment, new value chains and newly created skilled jobs.

The Alliance has identified an immediate priority to diversify sourcing to mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities.

As part of this focus the Alliance has partnered with the Green Grids Alliance and the Global Renewables Alliance to develop over 30 recommendations for policymakers to scale up global supply chains in the areas of power grids, wind energy, solar energy, hydropower and storage.

Among these are to harmonise standards of equipment across regions and jurisdictions creating a bigger market for common goods, promote free flow of supplies, establish forward-looking, integrated and long-term system planning including multi-project approvals and permitting, promote policy and regulatory business model innovation and maintain a healthy skills supply chain.

The Utilities for Net Zero Alliance is co-chaired by Jasim Husain Thabet, Group CEO of TAQA and Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE.

Jonathan Spencer Jones

Specialist writer
Smart Energy International

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