Alistair Phillips-Davies: Powering change

SSE’s chief executive writes for Utility Week about the company’s new campaign, We Power Change, which aims to shine a light on the SSE employees at the heart of building a better world of energy for tomorrow.

When COP26 opens in Glasgow this November, the UK will take centre stage in the fight against climate change.

The world leaders who’ll descend on the city will take their places for a unique opportunity to work together in order to a avert climate disaster.

SSE is sponsoring this critical event but as a principal partner to the UK government, we’re already playing more than a supporting role.

It is easy to talk about how world leading assets like Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will be the largest in the world and generate low-carbon electricity for millions across the UK, will deliver net zero.

But it’s the thousands of people behind them that will drive progress towards our goals.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to shine a light on what our people are doing to bring low-carbon electricity to homes and businesses across the country, creating a brighter future for us all.

Our new brand campaign – We Power Change – launched today [22 April], serves to demonstrate that.

We know that change is required and every single colleague across our business is doing just that – powering change.

Change in the ways in which millions of people live their lives and impact the environment.

By facilitating a green recovery with billions of pounds in investment in low carbon assets, like Dogger Bank and the supporting infrastructure, we’re helping preserve our world for generations to come.

But it’s the people who at work in our power-stations, on our wind-farms and maintain the electricity transmission and distribution networks across the country that are at the heart of the action.

Take Jasmine Allen (pictured in image above), a young apprentice from Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind Farm, who has starred in the new campaign, for instance.

She and other apprentices have a bright future ahead of them. They couldn’t be setting out on their working lives in energy at a more crucial time, joining an industry at a critical moment in the low-carbon transition, setting their careers up to play a pivotal role in delivering a net zero future.

But it’s not just those in the fledgling stages of their careers, we can all help to power the change the world so desperately needs.

COP26 will be an opportunity for our colleagues to show the world what we’re doing and encourage others, from around the world, to commit to bold action.

Whether it’s building the world’s largest offshore wind farm at Dogger Bank, developing new low-carbon technology like carbon capture and storage and hydrogen, making the huge upgrades in network infrastructure required to support a low-carbon energy system, or supplying customers with 100 per cent renewable electricity, I couldn’t be prouder of what my colleagues are doing every day to make net zero a reality.

But we want to do more and – with greater ambition and commitment from world leaders at COP26 – we will.