Utility Week

The Month in Review The Month in Review 25GW offshore wind in ScotWind round January saw Crown Estate Scotland announce the results of its ScotWind offshore wind leasing round, awarding options agreements to 17 projects with a combined capacity of 24.8GW. They include 10 floating offshore wind projects with a total capacity of 14.6GW. ScotWind is the first Scottish offshore wind leasing round in over a decade and the first since the management of offshore wind rights were devolved to Scotland. Crown Estate Scotland received 74 applications for the up to 8,600 sq km of seabed available in the leasing round and has offered options agreements to 17 pro- jects covering just over 7,000 sq km. The successful applicants will pay just under £700 million in options fees to the Scottish government to reserve rights to the seabed. Simon Hodge, chief executive of Crown Estate Scotland, described the results as "a fantastic vote of confidence in Scotland's ability to transform our energy sector". Crown Estate Scotland said if any project does not progress to signing a full agreement, the next highest scoring appli- cation will instead be offered an option. For full details of all the winning bids, visit: https://utilityweek.co.uk/scotwind- awards-seabed-rights-to-24-8gw-of-off- shore-wind/ £3.9m Latest amount dispersed to 20 charities by the Energy Saving Trust, which collects funds from energy companies in breach of Ofgem rules. 21% Increase in smart meter installations in 2021 compared with the previous year. Bevan: we're going to need a bigger stick James Bevan, chief executive of the Envi- ronment Agency (EA), has proposed a new model for environmental regulation in Eng- land and Wales following the UK's departure from the EU that involves a "bigger stick" and could cost the taxpayer less. Speaking as part of a Westminster Forum on water regulation, Bevan said his approach was an updated version of Teddy Roosevelt's famous aphorism: "Speak sošly and carry a big stick; you will go far." He suggested future regulation needs to: "Think differently, speak sošly, and carry an even bigger stick; you will go even further." Bevan said legislators and regulators need to create a model with higher stand- ards that is flexible to adapt to the changing climate. He highlighted that much of the UK's leg- islation comes from the EU but is now "quite old. Some of it wasn't designed for a coun- try like the UK and much of it is pretty pre- scriptive". He said environmental goals can be achieved with "fewer, simpler and better regulations." Speaking sošly meant working with, rather than against, operators by collaborat- ing, innovating and problem-solving, Bevan explained. He said if operators failed to comply, the agency would be "far firmer", hence the "bigger stick", but as a first step would engage in dialogue and assume good intent on the part of operators. Bevan called for using the carrot as default before resorting to the stick of enforcement. Both Bevan and EA chair Emma Howard Boyd have called for higher fines for envi- ronmental breaches, which Bevan reiterated in his speech as a way to "concentrate the minds" of boardrooms and executive teams. Much existing regulation does work, said Bevan, and this should be kept while changes are made to less effective parts of legislation. "The first thing that's worked is regula- tion itself. Whether we are talking air qual- ity, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions or waste, one thing we know is that robust regulation delivers better outcomes for peo- ple and nature." Speaking at the same event, Gladys Sta- cey, chair of the newly formed Office for Environmental Protection, said the newly formed body will not rely on financial fines for enforcement action and will instead seek to leverage its authority and reputational penalties to alter behaviour. 99% of bathing waters in England have passed water quality standards, according to the Environment Agency. Taskforce calls for new digitalisation delivery body The Energy Digitalisation Taskforce has called for the creation of an independent delivery body to drive the digitalisation agenda forward in a way that delivers in the public interest. The taskforce, commissioned by govern- ment, Ofgem, and Innovate UK, last month issued six recommendations to help develop the modern and decarbonised digital energy system that will be necessary to unlock whole system flexibility. The recommendations focus on achieving two key principles: building customer trust and ensuring whole system interoperability. Taskforce chair Laura Sandys, speaking to Utility Week, said trust for both domestic and business consumers would be built by giving consumers control and through simplification of the whole customer journey. This would be achieved by streamlining the asset registration process and creating a sim- ple customer consent dashboard that allows customers to easily give or remove consent for the use of their data. The taskforce's recommendations to achieve whole system interoperability include the creation of a "digital spine" to maximise resilience in a distributed system and ensure customer money is spent efficiently. This spine would involve the implementa- tion of a basic and thin shared infrastructure across all assets in the energy system to enable critical operational data, financial reconciliation and price signals to flow across actors in the energy system as seamlessly as possible. This digital spine would be considered a public interest digital asset as no commercial company has a vested interest in its creation. The taskforce is also calling for the crea- tion of a time-limited delivery body to design, deliver and procure public interest assets such as a digital spine. It would then allocate these assets to differ- ent parts of the system. To find out more, see Dr Richard Dobson's comment on p27

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