Weekend press round-up: EDF plans Pod Point float

In our latest review of sector coverage across the national newspapers, EDF is said to be drawing up plans for a stock market flotation of EV charging infrastructure specialist, Pod Point. Meanwhile, scientists have hit back at claims carbon capture represents a risky approach to decarbonisation and the government is expected to crack down on oil and gas companies’ plans to cut emissions.

EDF ignites stock market spark with plan for Pod Point float

EDF, the French state-backed energy giant, is drawing up secret plans for a stock market flotation of one of Britain’s biggest providers of electric vehicle charging infrastructure amid soaring demand from motorists.

Sky News has learnt that EDF, which bought a controlling stake in Pod Point less than a year ago, has instructed investment bankers at Barclays to begin working on the timing and structure of a public listing.

City sources said this weekend that an initial public offering (IPO) could value Pod Point at many hundreds of millions of pounds, crystallising a big paper fortune for Erik Fairbairn, the company’s founder.

EDF’s plans are at an early stage, but underline the burgeoning interest in capitalising on the accelerating shift to electric cars, with the government now having established a 2030 target for banning the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, and 2035 for phasing out hybrids.

Sources said that EDF would be likely to retain a large stake in Pod Point after an IPO as it seeks to meet its target of becoming the leading energy company for electric mobility in the UK, France, Belgium and Italy.

Pod Point says it has powered more than 459 million miles of electric driving, and has a public network of nearly 4,000 charging bays.

Pod Point was backed by a group of venture capital funds and other early-stage investors prior to EDF announcing the takeover of the company last February.

As part of that transaction, Legal & General (L&G), the FTSE-100 insurance and pensions giant, retained a 23% stake in the technology company.

By drawing up plans to float, Pod Point will join an unprecedented queue of promising British tech companies which have set their sights on a London listing as investors embrace a wave of coronavirus winners.

In a statement, a Pod Point spokeswoman said: “We are of course very pleased that the market for electric vehicles has continued to grow so strongly over the course of a very challenging year.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on questions relating to investment as these enquiries are handled directly by our parent company EDF.”

EDF declined to comment on the possibility of an IPO.

Sky News

Electric car owners ‘could struggle to find public charging points’

Local councils are planning to install an average of just 35 electric car chargers each by 2025, raising concerns that drivers will struggle to find charging spots.

A total of 9,317 new charging points are due to be installed over the next four years on top of the 7,682 already installed in the UK, according to Freedom of Information requests filed by Centrica.

Out of 400 local councils contacted, 126 said they have no plans to install any new charging points by 2025. Councils with no plans to install any new chargers by 2025 include Bridgend, Fermanagh and Omagh, and Dumfries and Galloway council.

Southern councils are planning to install 2.5 times more electric car chargers than Northern councils, the research also found.

Westminster Council planned to install the largest proportion of chargers out of the councils contacted, with the organisation planning to build 500 chargers per 100,000 residents.

Kent and Stirling councils followed with plans to build 240 and 156 chargers per 100,000 residents respectively.

The Government announced in November that it would invest £500m in building tens of thousands of new charging points across the country, improvements which campaigners say will be urgently required if sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned from 2030, as the Government currently plans.

A Centrica survey of 2,000 UK adults found that 83pc believe it’s easier for people with a driveway to switch to electric cars as they don’t need to rely on finding on-street charging points.

Some 53pc of Brits surveyed who don’t have a driveway or off-street parking said they are not considering purchasing an electric car, raising concerns that a lack of chargers could thwart the Government’s ambitious 2030 target.

Former Ofgem head Dermot Nolan, who stepped down from the energy regulator last year, told The Telegraph in November that the needed improvements to the country’s grid could cost more than the allotted £2bn and raise energy bills.

“To be blunt, there’s going to be a lot more than £2bn involved over the next 10 years – a lot, lot more,” he said.

The Competition and Markets Authority is currently investigating the obstacles to installing electric car charging points across the country. Its head, Dr Andrea Coscelli, has warned that drivers could face “range anxiety” if the UK lacks enough chargers for the vehicles. Charging an electric car should become “as easy as getting petrol,” she added.

Daily Telegraph

Treasury says it has ‘no plans’ to lower VAT on energy bills

The Treasury has said it has ‘no plans’ to lower VAT on energy bills, despite promises to scrap the tax after Brexit.

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove pledged to scrap the duty during the EU referendum campaign. They said the Government was barred from lowering the tax because of EU rules.

Writing in The Sun in 2016, Johnson said: ‘Fuel bills will be lower for everyone. As long as we are in the EU, we are not allowed to cut this tax.

‘When we vote Leave, we will be able to scrap this unfair and damaging tax. It isn’t right that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels impose taxes on the poorest and elected British politicians can do nothing.’

But the Treasury has pushed back on more recent calls to cut the duty.

MPs have suggested cutting VAT on a raft of items after Rishi Sunak cut the ‘tampon tax’ on sanitary products on January 1. Domestic energy bills have been subject to 5 per cent VAT since 1993.

Conservative MP Stephen McPartland said: ‘VAT is a tax on products that people choose to buy, rather than things they require, like household energy. It makes sense for domestic energy to be VAT-free, and it will help with the cost of living now that so many people are working from home.’

Jesse Norman, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: ‘Although the Government keeps all taxes under review, there are no plans to change the current VAT treatment of domestic energy.’

Mail on Sunday

Wylfa: New hybrid nuclear power plan for Anglesey

Small nuclear reactors and a wind farm could be built in north Wales under new plans from a UK energy firm.

Shearwater Energy said it could build the hybrid plant for “less than £8bn” and start generating carbon-neutral power by late 2027.

It said a site has been earmarked at Wylfa on Anglesey, separate to the stalled Wylfa Newydd nuclear plans.

Shearwater said it had signed an understanding with US power firm NuScale for the modular reactors.

Shearwater Energy’s director Simon Forster said his company started pulling together proposals after Japanese energy giant Hitachi pulled out of the Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant project in September.

The company said its hybrid model was a “flagship opportunity” for Wylfa and the UK power sector.

Mr Forster said the plans were “designed to provide decision-makers with alternatives and to ensure that the taxpayer and consumer gets the very best value for money” when the UK invests in zero-carbon power generation, something “the country is critically short of”.

Under the Shearwater bid, Wylfa would become home to 12 small modular reactors (SMR) initially capable of generating 924 Megawatt electric (MWe) – one million watts of electric capacity – alongside a 1,000 MW wind farm.

About 1,000 MW is enough to power about 300,000 homes.

In addition, the plant would produce three million kilograms of hydrogen gas for use in the UK transport sector.

The SMR reactors would be able to provide power on-demand, known as “dispatchable” power generation, allowing operators to deliver electricity at any time of the day or night.

Mr Forster said it would take “at least four years of detailed planning and design” before the plant could be built, and it was currently at phase one of the process “in order to demonstrate both viability and speed of installation”.

He said he envisaged the hybrid plant creating 300 permanent jobs at the site “for 60 years”.

“But there are many more jobs in the rest of the country, especially Scotland and Ireland, that will be created,” he said, especially if the SMR was being built in the UK, which was under investigation.

“The local content of our proposed project will be very high and will support a domestic supply chain of around 10,000 jobs,” he added.

The company said the project’s cost to build would be 40% less than a conventional nuclear plant.

Mr Forster said he was confident it could also deliver electricity at a price that “is very competitive with a gas-fired power station”.

BBC News

Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, scientists tell green critics

Engineers and geologists have strongly criticised green groups who last week claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes – for reducing fossil fuel emissions – are costly mistakes.

The scientists insisted that such schemes are vital weapons in the battle against global heating and warn that failure to set up ways to trap carbon dioxide and store it underground would make it almost impossible to hold net emissions to below zero by 2050.

“Carbon capture and storage is going to be the only effective way we have in the short term to prevent our steel industry, cement manufacture and many other processes from continuing to pour emissions into the atmosphere,” said Professor Stuart Haszeldine, of Edinburgh University.

“If we are to have any hope of keeping global temperature [increases] down below 2 degrees C then we desperately need to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide.”

Several CCS development programmes have been launched over the past 20 years but have been cancelled as governments have vacillated over funding.

However, Boris Johnson – as part of his commitment to fight climate change – has pledged £1bn of public funds to help develop four major CCS schemes in Britain by 2030 as part of his plan for a “green industrial revolution”.

The aim is to make the UK a “world leader” in the technology and create thousands of jobs. But campaigners at Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland said last week that a reliance on CCS was not a reliable way to decarbonise the energy system, and published a paper last Monday from the Tyndall Manchester climate change research centre that they said proved that CCS has a “history of over-promising and under-delivering”.

Both groups claimed CCS would not make “a meaningful contribution to 2030 climate targets” despite the investment, and instead urged the construction of more renewable energy plants to be given priority.

But the claims were last week dismissed by engineers and geologists. “These claims are quite unfair,” said Michael Stephenson, director of science and technology at the British Geological Survey.

“The science behind carbon capture and storage is extremely good. It offers us a genuine solution to some of the problems we face in trying to tackle global warming.”

At present, most successes in reducing UK carbon emissions have come from the power industry where renewable energy sources have taken over electricity generation from coal, gas and oil plants.

However, some industries – such as steel and cement industries – emit vast amounts of carbon dioxide on top of those produced by generating the power they consume.

It will be much more difficult to bring down carbon emissions from these plants even though these industries are vital to the UK’s economic strength.

This point was stressed by Haszeldine. “When CCS was first touted, it was seen as a way of cleaning up electricity generated by fossil fuels, in particular those burning coal. But now it is clear it can play a key role in cleaning up other industries.

“We just need to push ahead with its development so that Britain can find ways of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The longer we delay then the worst things are going to be and claims that CCS will not work do not help.”

The Observer

No ‘net zero’ pledge, no right to drill for North Sea explorers

Oil and gas producers who refuse to commit to reducing their carbon emissions to “net zero” will be excluded from North Sea drilling licences, the new Business Secretary has signalled.

Kwasi Kwarteng said a “quid pro quo” with the sector meant it would only get government support if it took “decarbonisation very seriously indeed”.

Oil and gas producers in the UK have been under growing pressure to cut their methane and carbon dioxide emissions, which accounted for 4pc of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2018.

The Government wants to slash emissions to net zero by 2050 and said in last month’s energy white paper that North Sea licensing needed to be “compatible with our climate change ambitions”.

Mr Kwarteng’s comments, made during a government review into North Sea licensing, are the starkest indication yet of action likely to be taken against the sector towards that goal.

Speaking to the Westminster Energy Forum before his promotion this month from energy minister, Mr Kwarteng was asked whether he saw “licensing for new exploration and production to be contingent upon [net] zero commitments by operators”.

He replied: “Absolutely. All the conversations I’ve had with Energy UK and the Oil and Gas Authority, I talk about quid pro quo; something for something. That quid pro quo means that government support is only going to be there if they take decarbonisation very seriously indeed.”

The sector generally recognises it needs to reduce emissions. Oil and Gas UK, the trade body, has agreed a goal for the basin to reach net zero by 2050.

But running oil and gas rigs on renewable energy can be complex, while flaring is still regularly used. Producers are also reeling from the impact of the pandemic, which has slashed oil demand, as well as grappling with wider questions over their future as the UK and other countries try and cut their reliance on fossil fuels.

The Government is working with the sector on a “transition deal” to help it develop hydrogen, carbon capture and cut its greenhouse gases.

Daily Telegraph

Covid: People working from home ‘face £45 monthly energy bill rise’

A study showing home workers may pay £45 a month in extra energy costs makes “grim reading”, campaigners have said.

A Nottingham Trent University team said those in England’s 600,000 uninsulated properties faced the biggest rise.

The team said those already facing fuel poverty could be pushed into greater financial difficulty.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition said millions of households were suffering and the research underlined the need for more energy debt relief.

The researchers studied energy use last winter and combined it with previous work on energy efficiency.

They found increased time spent at home in lockdown could push heating bills in a poorly-insulated detached house up by £28 a month – compared with a rise of just £1.31 for the best-performing.

Prof Amin Al-Habaibeh led a team which concluded: “Those who do not normally travel long distances to work – and therefore save on travel in lockdown – could find working from home over winter will cause much more of a strain on their budget as they will be consuming more energy.

“There is clearly a risk highlighted here that households which already suffer from energy poverty could experience a worse financial situation during a winter lockdown.”

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition said figures showed 3.7 million households in England were in fuel poverty before the pandemic with a recent estimate saying another 600,000 were now behind with their bills.

Simon Francis, the group’s co-ordinator, said: “Millions of people are already way behind on their fuel bills, meaning the latest findings make for grim reading.

“The additional concern is that, according to experts, fuel poverty can make respiratory illnesses worse – meaning conditions such as Covid may be exacerbated by cold, damp homes.”

However, the study also found households with good insulation and which normally used two cars could actually save up to £80 a month.

Prof Al-Habaibeh said the £45 figure was based on the largest extra monthly gas heating costs of £28 and an across-the-board average of an extra £17 for electricity.

Energy regulator Ofgem said it was working with “government, Citizens Advice and energy suppliers to ensure consumers are protected during lockdown”, with new measures including extending emergency credit to prepayment customers and ensuring suppliers support repayment plans for customers in difficulty.

An earlier suspension of debt recovery was ended in the summer, but the watchdog said: “Debt management activities must be done in a fair and reasonable way at all times.”

BBC News

Why a British pioneer in solar energy chose to produce in Germany

In an industrial park just outside Berlin, a British business is about to go into production with a new type of solar panel it says could revolutionise green energy.

Oxford PV is already being talked of as the Tesla of solar energy, with its pioneering new technology that can make solar panels almost twice as efficient as those currently on sale.

But when it came time to put those ideas into commercial production, this trailblazing British business chose to set up its first factory in Germany, not the UK.

Frank Averdung, Oxford PV’s chief executive, says the decision had nothing to do with Brexit.

“We couldn’t find a suitable site in the UK,” he explains. “When we approached the regional development agencies in the UK for help we didn’t hear anything back for months. We approached the agencies for Wales and the north of England, but when we didn’t hear back we started looking elsewhere.

“We approached the development agency here in Germany five days before Christmas. Two days after Christmas they came back to us with five potential sites.”

The result is that a product designed and developed in Oxford will be produced in the EU, by a German-registered company.

“I think the British agencies just didn’t take us seriously enough,” says Mr Averdung. “They thought we were too small.”

That was back in 2015, when Oxford PV was looking for £500,000 funding to start developing a production site.

The picture is different now: the company raised £65m in a funding round last year, attracting major investors from the renewable energy sector. The EU’s European Investment Bank granted it €15m (£12.8m) financing in 2017 — money Mr Averdung says Oxford PV hasn’t had to draw on yet.

The company ended up buying a former Bosch solar panel factory in Brandenburg an der Havel, an east German city of crumbling former communist apartment blocks an hour from central Berlin.

Oxford PV has just finished stripping out the old production lines it kept for testing and development, and has just received most of its new equipment.

The new machines are still in their protective wrappings, but by the middle of next year Mr Averdung says the production line will be up and running.

There was more to the choice of Germany than the lack of enthusiasm from British development agencies, he says.

“There is a larger pool of engineers qualified for this sort of work here in Germany,” he says. “What the UK has is a world-class science scene that attracts the right kind of minds to research and develop a product like ours. But it’s not so strong in this type of engineering.”

Mr Averdung, who is German himself, says he never imagined he would be back in his home country when he took up the role of chief executive at Oxford PV.

“I was looking forward to being in the UK, and I’m still there half the time,” he says. “It wasn’t ever a case of me wanting to move the business here. We looked in the US before we decided on Germany, and we found some good sites, but we decided travel times between the US and Oxford were too long.”

Daily Telegraph

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.