Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 31ST AUGUST - 6TH SEPTEMBER 2018 | 9 Interview W hen I come to meet Will Gardiner, the new chief executive of Drax Group, the UK is in midst of a heatwave. Shops have been emptied of fans and all Brits can talk about is the weather (some things never change). The air-conditioned office in central London provides some welcome relief from the sweltering sun, as does a glass of water offered by press officer Julian. Like Gardiner, the office is new. Everything looks and smells pristine. As he leads me into a meeting room, Julian struggles to confirm our presence on a tablet-like digital calendar fixed to the outside wall. He is still learn- ing how it works, he explains. Gardiner enters a few minutes later with hand out- stretched. He is laid back and affable, and speaks with a so, soothing baritone voice that defies the usual British stereotype of Americans as loud and brash. He is eager to talk and before I can get my first question out we are already deep in discussion. He tells me he had many motivations for joining Drax as chief financial officer in 2015 and then taking up the role of chief executive at the beginning of this year. But mainly he was attracted by the chance to do his part to help tackle climate change. "Our purpose, which is changing the way energy is generated, supplied and used for a better future, is one of the core reasons why I am here," he says. "One of the things I was very inspired by, for example, was Claire Perry challenging the Committee on Climate Change to figure out how we could get to a zero carbon position by 2050," he adds. "For me, that's central to the way I think about things." He was also excited to enter an industry that has gone from relative stability to fast and accelerating change in a short space of time. As a smaller player (compared to the big six), he believes Drax has "a real opportunity to do things differently". Before coming to Drax, Gardiner worked in telecom- munications, technology and finance, most recently for the semi-conductor business CSR. Although sectors such as these have oen been praised for their high levels of innovation compared to the energy sector and held up as examples to follow, he believes this is no longer the case. In his previous roles, he witnessed several "seismic" shis that shook up the markets in which he operated, including the arrival of smart phones and the advent of affordable broadband. But he says the mobile phone business, for example, has reached a new normal follow- ing the successful rollout of 4G and is now "pretty static". By contrast, Gardiner believes the transformation tak- ing place in the energy industry is still in its infancy and will last for decades: "You have all of these changes com- ing at the same time, and huge opportunities." He is less enthralled with the regulatory aspects of his work, especially in the face of inertia from decision mak- ers. "Where you have lots of different stakeholders with lots of different views and you need to make changes that have to go through regulators or government, it is much more challenging," he says. Inertia is not a charge that can be easily levelled against Drax. Since 2013 the company has converted four of the six units at its massive 3.9GW power station in Yorkshire to run on biomass. Three receive Renewables Obligation Certificates (Rocs) for their output, while the other is subsidised through a contract for difference (CfD). Drax had originally hoped to secure another CfD for the latest unit to be converted but the government declared that it was ineligible. The company went to court over that decision but ultimately lost. They nevertheless went ahead with the switch aer the government decided that a new cap on the number of Rocs that more recent biomass conversions could receive should be applied across the whole of a power station rather than to individual units. Without this last minute change, Gardiner says the conversion would not have been economically viable. "Fundamentally, it's a better answer for the system because it doesn't cost the country or the consumer of power anything more," he adds. "It actually means we can run more when the system needs us." Drax switched the unit off in June to undertake the conversion and following its completion turned it back in August. Gardiner says biomass has a vital role to play in the decarbonisation of the power sector. The latest Digest of UK Energy Statistics from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy shows renewables made up 29.3 per cent of the genera- tion mix in 2017. Bioenergy accounted for 32.1 per cent of renewable generation – more than either onshore or offshore wind – and of this 63 per cent came from plant biomass. When ministers boast about the growth of low-carbon generation in the UK, biomass is one of the main pillars supporting this claim. Not everyone is happy for biomass to share the same limelight with wind and solar. Chatham House, for example, claimed in a report published in 2017 that far from being low carbon, biomass is in fact worse in terms of emissions than either gas or coal. The report said that while the carbon dioxide released

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