Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 19TH - 25TH JULY 2019 | 7 Interview T he recent government commitment to introduce legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emis- sions in the UK to net zero by 2050 marks a semi- nal moment for green policy. As environmental concerns continue to dominate the political agenda, the momen- tum behind renewable and sustainable energy only looks set to increase. This latest pledge paves the way for the UK to strengthen its medium-term emissions targets and intro- duce a ra• of new policies to engineer a step change in the pace of decarbonisation. And perhaps as importantly, it sends the clearest signal yet to businesses and inves- tors that meaningful strategies to address climate change over the next three decades are now non-negotiable. Toddington Harper, chief executive of sustainable energy company Gridserve, is cautiously optimistic about the implications on the renewable energy sector of the announcement, although on the day we speak, the sun is shining, which gives Harper more cause than most to feel upbeat, given Gridserve's mission to develop, build and operate solar energy and energy storage solutions for critical power infrastructure. You could say that solar energy is in his blood. A 17-year veteran of the sustainable energy industry, Harper grew up in the Middle East where his father ran a solar energy and battery business, and where he witnessed first-hand the commercial benefits of using renewable energy to replace diesel generators. Fair to say, the solar industry has undergone a massive transition since Harper first cut his teeth. More recently the end of feed-in tariffs (FIT) changed the dynamics of the sector and prompted many solar businesses to exit the market (the government has since announced an alternative scheme, the Smart Export Guarantee). Regardless, the falling cost of solar and energy stor- age technology have provided the underlying business case for Gridserve's operations, Harper says. "Over the course of around five years, costs have reduced by more than 80 per cent, to the extent that solar energy is now a low-cost form of energy. So even though the FIT had gone, I was pretty sure I could make energy cheaper than other sources. There had to be a business case somewhere." That business case hinged on mak- ing energy more useful. "Because the cost of lithium ion batteries had fallen so much, we'd reached that point in history where we could combine the two." Gridserve's 30-plus staff have been responsible for the development, construction, and operation of more than a gigawatt of solar energy and energy storage solutions, including connecting over 100 utility-scale sustainable energy projects to the UK grid in the past five years. Ongoing advancements in solar technology continue to increase the efficiency of panels at a time when their cost has pretty much reached rock bottom, Harper says. The combination of bifacial panels – transparent with cells etched on both sides – and solar trackers that re- orientate to follow the sun, offers significant energy gen- eration benefits over their traditional static photovoltaic panels, which generate the most energy at midday when there's also the greatest compression of prices as eve- ryone else feeds into the grid. "It means you get much more even generation throughout the day, and it reduces the risk of price volatility," Harper explains. With most solar farms earning their income through

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