(REPOST: Clean Energy)
Speaking at last week’s Energy Storage and Connected Systems event, hosted by the Renewable Energy Association (REA), shadow minister for energy and climate change Alan Whitehead claimed current energy legislation was now “obsolete” in the face of the changes underway in the sector.
“We are at the moment discussing all of these matters in terms of the old energy market and not in terms of the new energy market…We do need a series [of] reforms and government legislation which actually allow us to get the best out of that emerging market and take the brakes off,” he said.
The treatment of energy storage was held up as an example, with Whitehead stating that the technology was unlike anything that had come before it.
He added: “[Storage] is essentially transportation through time rather than transportation through space. It’s not generation, it’s not supply; it is something [unique] and needs to be licenced as such and if we do that a lot of other arrangements that impede the development of storage will fall away.”
Playing a different role to generation
Currently the technology is legislatively classed as generation, with Ofgem proposing in November to amend the existing electricity generation licence to clarify the regulatory framework for storage.
While judging that the creation of a similar but separate licence for storage “would add unnecessary confusion” due to the characteristics shared by storage and existing generation, Ofgem has said it will adopt the Electricity Storage Network’s definition of the technology in legislation.