Weekend press round-up: How Europe is reacting to keep lights on and taps running

In a weekend press dominated by the impact of the coronavirus around the world we learn how Europe has kept the lights and taps on amid the worsening crisis and how Britain is responding.

How emergency planning has kept lights on and taps running

Last week, Spain’s largest energy company Iberdrola finalised a spreadsheet of more than 20 pages that is intended to prevent catastrophe and keep the lights on as coronavirus tests the country’s infrastructure.

The document, dispatched to the government, lists Iberdrola’s critical infrastructure in Spain: generators, substations, distribution networks and more. It provides a list of the personnel at each facility — and also what the minimum staffing level is at each location.

Such information is crucial for the Spanish government, which has taken on the responsibility of guaranteeing the supply of energy during the coronavirus crisis, assuming vast new temporary powers.

The Spanish army is also guarding nuclear power stations as well as carrying out a range of other tasks, such as disinfecting airports, train stations and hospitals.

Iberdrola and the government itself, like authorities elsewhere in Europe and beyond, say that such protocols are part of emergency measures that will guarantee vital infrastructure despite lockdowns and the possible ravages of coronavirus itself on essential staff.

Across Europe and North America, as governments promise billions and mobilise armies to help maintain an economy that is shutting down and a medical system at risk of being overwhelmed, infrastructure providers are being asked to step up.

In Italy, the European country hardest hit by the virus, industry has suffered severe disruptions, according to Confindustria, a trade body.

On Saturday, the government shut all non-essential businesses — going further than Spain or France so far — but even before that, in regions such as Lombardy, in the north of Italy and the centre of the outbreak, less than 50 per cent of industry was still operating.

However, essential services such as power, water and waste are still operating normally.

In France, which went into lockdown on Tuesday, finance minister Bruno Le Maire called upon workers in “essential sectors” such as waste, food supply and distribution to “go to their places of work” in order to guarantee “economic security”.

Under French law, workers have the right to withdraw their labour if they think their health is at risk. But Mr Le Maire has underlined that there must be a “serious and imminent danger”.

Not all workers have been able to keep showing up as coronavirus has spread but utility companies critical to society have responded with long-held plans to guarantee services, which they say can see them through the crisis, even if it lasts for months.

Groups across sectors are putting together crisis plans for the government, splitting their teams to limit infections, moving some staff to off-site bases, providing beefed-up safety equipment and cutting back on non-essential maintenance and repairs.

In the north of France, at the idle Flamanville nuclear plant, government-backed EDF was forced last week to put in place the more extreme version of its “pandemic plan” after coronavirus cases spiked in the area around the site.

In Germany, energy giants RWE and EON also have longstanding pandemic plans.

And in the US, the nuclear lobby said “everyone has activated their pandemic plans,” which have been maintained since 2006, while other industries call for “essential status” to avoid being shut by government and allow their employees to continue to travel.

Iberdrola has provided similar documentation to the file it sent the Spanish government in other countries where it is active: the UK, where it owns Scottish Power, the US, Mexico and Brazil.

In such cases, the purpose is to co-ordinate with governments to ensure there is enough staff to keep vital infrastructure working even where the coronavirus is spreading fast and a countrywide lockdown is in force.

“In each of these countries, we are essential for one purpose or another,” said José Ángel Marra, Iberdrola’s director of human resources, referring to the company’s worldwide mix of electricity generation and distribution assets.

Mr Marra emphasises that while 75 per cent of the staff in the company’s administrative offices are teleworking, that is not an option for workers in the field.

So far, Iberdrola has not suffered significant absences because of coronavirus.

Neither, except in Flamanville, has EDF with both companies expressing confidence they can maintain acceptable services throughout the epidemic — French demand for power has so far fallen 15 per cent and Spanish by 7-10 per cent as economic activity has suffered.

Suez, the French water and waste utility, which has implemented its own emergency plan, says it can “ensure key operations even if its workforce is reduced by 40 per cent”.

French unions, often at loggerheads with management, seem to be mostly on board: “We are in a public service and most of the workers here know that and accept that responsibility,” said Laurent Heredia, a representative for the left-leaning trade union CGT in EDF.

At Veolia, another big water and waste utility in France, Anne LeGuennec, who manages waste and recycling in France, said: “Yes, employees can stop working if they fear for their safety, but we aren’t seeing much of that yet.”

She says about 10 per cent of workers are currently absent and that the company could also continue to provide a service even if that rate dropped to 40 per cent. The group has, however, asked the government for more medical masks to protect increasingly worried employees.

Financial Times

Army of workers battling to keep Britain running 

Whether it’s supplying the nation with North Sea gas and chocolate biscuits or keeping the trains running, companies in key industries are scrambling to maintain supplies and services. While millions are now working from home, that is not an option for many workers in essential industries.

Offshore in the North Sea, where thousands live and work on confined platforms, operators are reducing staff to the minimum level required to try to enable social distancing and minimise the chance of coronavirus making it to the installations in the first place.

New medical checks have been introduced for those travelling offshore, with temperature screening to be carried out on those going to Shell platforms soon. It is understood that operators including Shell, Total and Equinor have contracted a helicopter to remove suspected coronavirus cases from its offshore platforms.

Steve Phimister, upstream vice-president for Shell, said: “It’s a challenging time for the UK and our teams play a vital role in delivering energy to hospitals, homes and businesses. The health and wellbeing of the people who keep our operations going is always a priority but right now it’s critical.”

Onshore, key workers keeping Britain’s gas and power systems running also cannot work from home. It is understood there have been suspected coronavirus cases among employees at National Grid’s control rooms in Berkshire, where teams of specialist staff work around the clock to keep the lights on. A number are understood to be self-isolating at home. Fintan Slye, control room director, said that it had taken steps to “segregate our critical employees”.

British Gas’s 6,000 gas engineers remain out on the road dealing with heating and hot water problems and it has supplied them with PPE (personal protective equipment) for visiting customers who are self-isolating or have been diagnosed. The company said it was prioritising vulnerable customers.

“An elderly couple, 79 and 83, contacted us as they were isolating in a back room and were scared to go to the front door not knowing who was there,” a spokesman said.

“They were happy with a British Gas engineer coming into their home as they wanted some tech that may help them. Within 24 hours we are going in PPE to fit an outdoor camera so they, and their family who live miles away, can see who is at the door.”

Mark Sobczak is one of thousands of utilities workers helping keep the lights on during the coronavirus crisis.

He works for part of Scottish Power’s energy networks business supplying electricity to more than 1.5 million customers across Merseyside and north Wales. The company has activated a “pandemic protocol”, using a second control room on the Wirral. “We split our staff and are working in two separate locations to be prudent,” he explains.

Mr Sobczak, 47, who usually manages investment, has been given an emergency role responding to faults on the strategic network infrastructure.

Coming in to work while many are sheltering at home is “a bit weird”, he says, but adds: “I’ve worked in the utility sector for over 30 years and it’s something that I’m proud of. It’s something that’s ingrained in us as a utility worker that we are here to provide a service. Being human there’s always a bit of worry, but we have protocols in place, we wash our hands, the offices are cleansed regularly.”

Mr Sobczak’s wife, Tina, is also still going in to work — as a teaching assistant at a school. He adds: “They’ve got to keep going for essential workers like myself and health workers and all the other categories.”

The Times

Energy storage boom stall in Europe 

Europe’s energy storage boom stalled last year due to a slowdown in large-scale schemes designed to store clean electricity from major renewable energy projects, according to the European Association for Storage of Energy (Ease).

A new study by consultants Delta-EE for Ease found that the European market grew by a total of 1 gigawatts per hour in 2019, a significant slowdown compared with 2018, when the energy storage market exceeded expectations to grow by 1.47GWh.

The slowdown in 2019 has emerged amid rising concern that the outbreak of the coronavirus may stall the rollout of clean energy technologies in 2020, dealing a double blow to the clean energy industry.

The 2019 downturn was particularly marked for large-scale energy storage projects which connect directly to energy grids, and can help make better use of renewable energy by storing the clean electricity to use when wind and solar power is not available.

These large, utility-scale projects often require planning permission, government financial support or procurement tenders to move ahead. Meanwhile, the rollout of home battery kits, which relies far less on policy support, remained a fast-growing market.

Patrick Clerens, the Ease secretary general , said: “The message is clear: even if energy storage is a key enabler of the energy transition and clearly seen as a major tool to achieve the emissions targets linked to the Paris agreement, more support is needed.”

The report expects the EU’s clean energy package, which has legislated support for clean energy technologies, to be key to creating a framework for investing in energy storage.

Clerens said the package was “an important step” which should allow energy storage “to reach its full potential fast”.

Robin Adey-Johnson, the author of the Delta-EE report, added: “Storage remains a young market and the regulatory landscape is trying to catch up. So, year-on-year fluctuations in market growth are not unexpected. But we see strong underlying drivers and we expect further market expansion in the early 2020s as regulation stabilises and revenue streams mature.”

However, the global outbreak of the Covid-19 virus is likely to delay policies supporting clean energy technologies as well as hit the supply chain which could see the rate of battery installations fall by 4 per cent globally, according to a recent report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

The Guardian

Is hydrogen the solution to net-zero home heating? 

On 27 June 2019, the energy and clean growth minister Chris Skidmore signed papers that committed the UK to reduce carbon emissions to effectively nothing by 2050. If we are to stand any chance of meeting this target, known as “net zero”, there is one enormous challenge that we will have to tackle: home heating.

Warming our homes is responsible for between a quarter and a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than 10 times the amount of CO2 created by the aviation industry. Around 85 per cent of homes now use gas-fired central heating, and a large proportion of gas cooking still takes place. Greening this system is a huge challenge by any measure. But if recent reports are to be believed, there could be a simple and efficient way to do it: change from using natural gas to hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen is abundant in the natural world and according to its advocates could power the next generation of gas appliances cleanly and efficiently.

“The attraction of hydrogen is that for a lot of consumers, they wouldn’t notice any difference. Customers would continue to use a boiler to heat their homes in a similar manner to natural gas,” says Robert Sansom of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s energy policy panel. He is the lead author on a study conducted by the institute called Transitioning to Hydrogen.

Together with colleagues, Sansom assessed the engineering risks and uncertainties associated with swapping our gas network to hydrogen. Their conclusion is that there is no reason why repurposing the gas network to hydrogen cannot be achieved.

That’s not to say it would be easy, though. Technological and practical hurdles exist because there is no blueprint for such a conversion: there is nowhere in the world that supplies pure hydrogen to homes and businesses. The UK would have to pioneer everything.

Interest in hydrogen as a way to heat homes began in 2016 with a report called H21. It was conducted by Northern Gas Networks, the gas distributor for the north of England, and looked at whether it was technically possible and economically viable to convert Leeds to 100 per cent hydrogen instead of natural gas.

“They went into a lot of detail, from the hydrogen production plants right the way down to people’s homes,” says Sansom.

The report drew a parallel to the way the gas industry converted from town gas to natural gas in the 1960s and 70s. Town gas was a combination of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane. It was mostly produced from the distillation of coal and oil and had been used for the first 150 years of the UK’s gas industry. With the discovery of natural gas in the North Sea, which is predominantly methane, the UK undertook a nationwide programme to convert 40m appliances over a decade.

Whole streets would be converted at a time. Engineers would inspect the gas appliances, and then convert them. Simultaneously, the town gas was disconnected and the pipelines were purged with an inert gas. Finally, the natural gas was pumped into the system and the engineers would make sure each appliance worked correctly before moving to the next street along.

Some manufacturers are now so convinced that a similar thing can happen with hydrogen that they have already begun to develop new household appliances. In February, Worcester Bosch unveiled the prototype of its hydrogen-ready boiler. It would run first on natural gas and then, after a servicing visit, hydrogen.

Also working in hydrogen’s favour is that for the past 20 years, the gas industry has been systematically replacing the metal pipes in its “iron mains” network with yellow polyethylene ones. Around 90 per cent of the pipes will have been replaced by 2030. This is good news for hydrogen because the gas reacts with the old metal pipes, making them brittle. But the polyethylene is safe.

“Effectively we started a programme of hydrogen-proofing our gas network without knowing we were doing it,” says Sansom, who found himself becoming more and more impressed by the concept. “From a personal point of view, I was very much on the fence when I kicked off with this work. But I found myself slipping down on the hydrogen side in terms of its viability as a low carbon alternative to natural gas,” he says.

The Guardian

Aberdeen, the Granite City, cracking under crude oil price strain 

In the Granite City, they are used to swings in the oil price — but nothing could prepare them for the bloodbath of recent times. On one day last week, it fell 24 per cent to a level last seen in 2002, sinking to $20.37 a barrel.

In Aberdeen, the home of the UK’s oil and gas industry, workers have been sent home or put on short-term working, and companies that exploit the North Sea basin have cut spending.

Ross Dornan, head of market intelligence at Oil & Gas UK, the trade body, said with North Sea oil producers requiring a break-even price of about $40, the companies were haemorrhaging cash.

“Whenever there’s a shock it brings uncertainty to the city, but this situation is so different,” he said. “There’s only so long you can put people on standby, because there are cash implications.”

The tussle between Russia and Saudi Arabia has left the market flooded with oil just as demand is cratering because of Covid-19, and a global recession is looming.

Opec has failed to reach consensus on production cuts and has continued to soak the market with supply to squeeze out America’s low-cost shale producers. The industry was already wrestling with the challenges of cutting carbon emissions and the cost of investing in renewables while maintaining dividends.

Shares in BP ended last week 52 per cent lower than a month ago, while Royal Dutch Shell shed 46 per cent. Oil services companies were also ravaged, with shares in Wood Group crashing 64 per cent in a month.

Oil was given a fillip on Thursday when Donald Trump hinted that he might intervene in the price war, pushing the Saudis to cut production and threatening sanctions on Russia. America plans to buy up to 30 million barrels of crude for its emergency stockpile and Texas is said to be looking at cutting output.

But with thousands of jets parked at airports, cruise ships berthed, cities locked down and industrial users such as car factories at a halt, there is nowhere for that excess oil to go.

Brian Gilvary, finance director of BP, said: “If we continue to see demand-side destruction with excess supply coming into the market, Brent oil prices will continue their decline and could get into the teens for a short time.”

Some think 2 per cent of global oil demand could be destroyed.

With 270,000 jobs relying on oil in the UK, chancellor Rishi Sunak’s measures to support employment and salaries cannot come a moment too soon. But many fear they will not be enough to prevent more pain in Aberdeen and elsewhere.

The Times

Utility Week’s weekend press round-up is a curation of articles in the national newspapers relating to the energy and water sector. The views expressed are not those of Utility Week or Faversham House