Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | MARCH 2021 | 39 Operational Excellence Among the contributors to Utility Week's new report is Rob McDonald, managing director transmission at SSEN. Here he talks to Utility Week about the investment challenge ahead as he leads his organisation on its ambitious path to net zero. Interview You've got to take the public with you SSEN Transmission managing director Rob McDonald is the first to apologise for the statistical blast, but large numbers are the only way to contextualise the scale of the challenge the network is stepping up to as it goes toe-to-toe with climate change and embraces a leading role in creating a more sustainable future for Scotland, and the UK. In the T1 period, through connecting renewable electricity across Scotland, the business grew the value of its regulated asset base from £700 million to £3 billion. In RIIO-T2, it is forecasting further growth to £5 billion. Furthermore, under National Grid's Future Energy Scenarios, its 8GW of connected renewable capacity today will reach 14GW by the end of the RIIO-T2 period, and 22GW by 2030. If delivering the massive capital investment programme required to underpin this growth weren't enough, SSEN has spiced it up, adding another layer of challenge by signing up to the rigorous United Nations Global Compact Science Based Targets. These targets set science-based require- ments for operations and investments to meet stretching environmental specifications. "It's a pathway to cutting carbon emissions consistent with the 1.5 degree warming scenario," explains McDonald. "We are the only network company in the world [out of around 330 signatories] to achieve that accreditation. It's really tough. We're reporting against this in our business plan, which will see us reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by fully a third by 2030," he adds. The accreditation is important for SSEN on a number of levels, but not least because it is helping the company maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the communities its serves as it rolls out a vast capital programme which will inevitably have an impact on land- scape and localities. It's critical to maintain a position in which customers can have faith that the network's actions are driven by carbon arguments, rather than corporate ambition or self-interest, McDonald emphasises. This means a lot of things in practice. Some are simple, like ensuring that, wherever possible, investment is overlayed on to existing sites or routes – "we try to avoid virgin territory wherever possible", McDonald states. But also, when new ground does have to be broken, SSEN has made firm commitments to deliver- ing biodiversity net gain. But even with the strong commitments SSEN has made to delivering a "good" energy transition (one that avoids adverse social or environmental consequences), McDonald is clear that more needs to be done across the ecosystem of industry stake- holders to make sure that inefficiencies and inequalities are not allowed to snowball in the race for net zero. Greater coordination is needed, he argues, to ensure renewable generation is connected in a cost-effective and sustainable way and not in the current transaction-by-trans- action style. "This is about getting all the key stakeholders together – developers, government (in Westminster and Holyrood), local authorities, Ofgem and other key stakeholders," he says. "We need to pull together a strategic plan for the transmission system. We've delivered to date in terms of addressing net zero, but we need to move at pace. To do it at pace, I believe, we need a more coordinated view going forward." in association with

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