Suzanne Sosna, director, Energy Transition, Scottish Enterprise spoke about the All Energy 2024 Conference and provided her key takeaways below.
On 15 and 16 May 2024, a record number of attendees from 80 countries gathered at Glasgow’s SEC for the All-Energy Exhibition and Conference, the UK’s largest low carbon energy and full supply chain event.
Key takeaways from All Energy 2024
The event offered an ideal setting for Scottish Enterprise (SE) to meet with companies of all sizes, in person, and discuss how best to accelerate the progress of the renewable energy sectors in both meeting our own energy needs and supplying other parts of the UK and overseas. The range of speakers and topics across the conference programme allowed the attendees to discuss, debate and agree how we will grow these critical sectors in the coming months and years, providing jobs and opportunities across all of Scotland.
1. Collaboration continues to play a key role across all sectors within the energy transition
There was widespread and unanimous agreement on the importance of collaboration at all levels. The right collaboration will accelerate projects, bring efficiencies and reduce costs, improve regulations and standards, ensure safety, and help supply chains invest in the right equipment and skills to bring contracts and jobs to Scotland.
For offshore wind, public-private sector joint working is needed to help get the conditions in place, so that projects can move to final investment decisions as smoothly as possible. For projects already in development, co-operation between developers can really help give confidence to the supply chain on the projects’ likely delivery timelines.
In terms of the decarbonisation of heat, speakers highlighted that Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) are bringing stakeholders together and providing opportunities for joint working. However, there is a need to work together to gain economies of scale and to tackle challenges including a skills gap, housing stock and changing consumer behaviour.
For green hydrogen, collaboration is needed to get production projects started with the off-take partners they need. To boost the sector, hydrogen producers, infrastructure operators, end-users, governments/regulators, the supply chain and investors all need to work together.
Commercial collaboration within off-take can help to promote crucial research and development, while within CCUS, the development of industrial clusters will help with public engagement, planning and consenting.
The rebranding of Hydrogen Scotland and the launch our SHINe platform took place at the event. These are two examples of how we’re facilitating collaboration across Scotland’s hydrogen innovation network and improving visibility across the sector.
2. The clean heat revolution continues to gather pace
As an example, energy from waste (EfW) provides power to half a million UK homes, with Glasgow’s Polmadie EfW facility already the city’s largest heat source. Scotland has the capacity to process over 1.4 million tonnes of waste per year at EfW sites, with another 1.1 million tonnes in the planning or construction phase. Currently being built, the Millerhill Scheme in Midlothian will supply over 4,000 homes with energy from waste, as well as create around 130 jobs during its construction. And with 60 existing EfW sites across the UK, 12 more are currently under construction, and a feasibility study and delivery vehicle are being finalised in Glasgow, there are huge opportunities for the Scottish supply chain in this sector.
The decarbonisation of heat via heat network zones can provide more energy efficiency to urban areas, for example, to the 50,000+ Edinburgh homes that need double or secondary glazing.
The opportunity also applies to more remote regions like the Highlands, where almost 12,000 homes require upgraded loft insulation and 53,000 have uninsulated walls. Local authority strategies have helped with the installation of 35,000+ heat pumps in 2023 (the highest in the UK).
Demand remains strong, however, cost, complexity and topic knowledge prove to be barriers for many households in making such a capital investment. An initiative from the Energy Saving Trust is helping to tackle this by way of an easy-to-search database of case studies for householders to refer to. Improving householders’ understanding of the changes needed and their willingness to accept these was also widely agreed to be a critical success factor.
3. Sessions discussing the grid, networks and storage drew a large crowd and proved to be a hot topic
While the proportion of renewables on the grid increases, there is a need for more storage at scale to help balance this. However, no new pumped hydro storage schemes (the cheapest form of large-scale storage), have been built in the UK in over 40 years.
This is set to change by way of boosting the existing 29 GWh of such storage with a pipeline of 135 GWh of projects, mostly in Scotland. One example includes SSE Renewables’ £100 million of provisional works at Coire Glas. The £2 billion+ project is expected to receive a final investment decision in 2025, while seven further projects are in the planning process. Balmacaan at Loch Ness is a 30GWh project with £2.5 billion of investment that could generate up to 600 construction jobs over several years.
4. There was a general sense of needing a faster pace – and for increased understanding
A theme, which came out of the plenary session and a number of other talks, was that while notable progress has been made across various sectors, we need to work more urgently and efficiently to respond to challenges – and to meet ambitions and targets. This applies to the whole energy transition pipeline.
An example of one sector’s ability to complement another is that of marine energy. When the question ‘Why are we pursuing a high-risk, unproven technology?’ was raised during our Marine Energy session ‘Where, when and why is the UK leading our ocean energy future?’, the predictability of tidal and the forecastable nature of wave was highlighted. Other points raised in response included the need for additional capacity, plentiful resource and marine energy’s cost-reducing impact as part of a diverse energy mix on the National Grid.
More support is needed to help further understanding around marine energy, as this is a key sector that can help to boost energy security by way of a more diverse energy mix – and one which presents an economic opportunity. We are continuing to work with companies and the supply chain on the growing pipeline of projects.
5. Knowledge, insight and support for businesses is vital to long-term success
It was hugely encouraging to see a steady stream of visitors to the Scotland Pavilion at this year’s event and the stand was as busy as I’ve ever seen it. This year, in particular, so many of the companies we spoke to really recognised the scale of the energy transition opportunity. They were interested in finding out more about the growth opportunities available to them – both now and in the future.
Attending events like All Energy provides a unique insight into the needs of our customers. It helps SE continue to develop the type of support that can help businesses capitalise on the transformational opportunities that are emerging in the energy transition.
Through all the discussions that took place at the show, one of the consistent themes was that the support provided by Scottish Enterprise – and our partners across the business support ecosystem – remains critically important if we are to fully realise this transformational opportunity for Scotland.
More specifically, we need to continue to ensure that our support is designed to meet the needs of companies at different stages of the energy transition journey – from those at the earlier stages who are still considering how their own capabilities and technology might be applied in the energy transition markets, to those already active in the markets with ambitions to develop new products or reach new international markets.
If you would like to find out more how we can help you on your energy transition journey, no matter which sector you’re in, get in touch to speak to one of our specialists or visit our website.
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