What is the current legal landscape for renewable energy law in your jurisdiction?

So in the United Kingdom, I’ll split it into good and bad good. The context is very positive. The United Kingdom was the first country to have legally binding targets for renewable energy net 0 by 2050. That was done by Conservative government. We’ve now just elected a Labour government who is very pro renewable energy.

The policy and legislation landscape is also very clear. Legislation coming in last year, good thought out policies there as well or well known as being an innovative jurisdiction that’s safe to put money into. And I think finally it’s got a very, very well established industry. So those are the goods on the less goods on law planning permission consents. That remains a very difficult issue. But again, it was a very clear manifesto pledge by the government trying to fix that, EG how quickly can you actually get projects like this up and running? And the second major legal issue in the United Kingdom is how you get grid and connections quickly. That is actually partially a legal issue, but that is a real issue affecting things.

What three essential pieces of advice would you give to clients involved in renewable energy matters?

Ensure you have a grid connection, which was where I finished previously. Without a grid connection, you’re looking at maybe losing 5/10/15 years. Nobody will give you money unless you have a clear and good grid connection. That’s the first point.

The second point, be very clear on how you’re going to get money in from the project. Are you going to sell your money on the market? There’s a lot of risk there, but their rewards can be quite high. Secondly, do you want to sell it to someone who’s well known in the industry? They’ll buy power, they’ll be very sophisticated. There’ll be a good counterparty, but they won’t pay you as much money perhaps.

Or third, would you like to sell it to a corporate business, someone who wants to have a long term ESG strategy? You might get a really good price for that. The publicity around that might be fantastic. It might take a long time for that company to get the signing of the contract.

And the Third Point, and you might expect me to say this, but I feel quite strongly is get good advisors in early. Whenever a renewable energy project requires equity or debts, at that stage, the advisors of equity or debt will look at the project. And I have too many times in my career had to unwind good work done by someone but not done professionally. So get the advisors in, spend some money early. It will save you money in the long run.

What are the greatest threats and opportunities in renewable energy in the next 12 months?

With threats, the three points, the first one is supply chain remains a threat. And by supply chain we mean issues like inflation, we mean issues like availability, and we mean issues like currency risk, these sorts of things. So that’s sort of very important to try and get your supply chain locked down in clean English, buying turbines, buying cables, that kind of thing.

Secondly, there was a political move at the moment for ESG to look and feel to be slightly less important. That is beginning to touch the edges of some countries. I repeat, in the United Kingdom we’ve gone the other way. That is definitely becoming a feature amongst, for example, corporates.
You might want to buy power directly.

And the third threat is almost an ironic threat. Everyone knows that grid needs to go quicker, so grid keep trying to reform how they do connections. But of course that also creates its own short term uncertainty. Hopefully there’ll be a long term gain. That short term uncertainty can be a problem, but the opportunities are legion. I’ll start with the more political opportunities with the new government. Great British Energy is being formed, the National Wealth Fund is being formed, the United Kingdom Infrastructure Bank.
All three are pointing towards government getting alongside and investing in renewable projects. That should crowd in private investment because government give or take will probably take a slightly riskier risk profile to make it easier for equity and debt. So money should be more available.

Secondly, the opportunity is an offshore wind are very well known in this country. It’s world leading. But again, with the new government coming in, there’s going to be opportunities in local authorities, localised projects, England, Wales can have onshore wind farms which haven’t been the case since 2015, carbon capture and storage. That opportunities are genuinely everywhere.

And really the final area I’ll just mention is around something called corporate Ppas where you sell your power to corporate. Despite what I said earlier on ESG, it is still very much a feature of a lot of corporates that they meaningfully want to be buying renewable energy direct themselves to show that they can use their purchasing power to make a difference. This is a very good opportunity for me.

How do you ensure high client satisfaction levels are maintained by your practice?

A lot of people assume it’s about simply delivering the deal, the transaction itself, that that is at least 50% true. If you can’t mechanically do the deal, then you’re no good in giving the service. Maybe the better advisors actually give strategic advice.

People are also paying the fact that if we’re experts, we’ve done it before, we might have done it many times before. Maybe not the same circumstance or situation, but they need to see that value because that will help shape what you’re saying on delivery. So that’s the first point.

And I think the second point is you need a continuing dialogue with the client of what they want because it changes as the project goes along. So if you ask a client at the start, what’s most important to you, is it time, is it cost or is it risk? Most will actually say time. They want to do the deal quickly, the deal progresses, they begin to understand the deal better, the parameters better, what’s happening to their money. They might say that risk is more important to you. And then eventually towards the end, they might be running out of money. So cost becomes more important, but you need to keep that continued dialogue going. So strategic advice, keep the dialogue going.

What technological advancements are reshaping renewable energy, and how can clients benefit from them?

I’ll split this into two. The first area is generating more of the stuff FirstEnergy historically cannot be stored. And so the ability to store energy through batteries becoming more and more important. And so for example, if you want to create hydrogen from offshore wind, it can actually be quite hard to store the output from it. So one of the ways people do that is distorted batteries and then over time turn that into hydrogen. So the ability to get cheap big storage for batteries is becoming a critical area. And as we’re seeing in other areas, batteries are becoming cheaper, they can store more. That sort of advancement is going to be critical.

There’s also more, almost more basic engineering advances like in carbon capture and storage. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the UK and but it will require them at scale and it has not really been done at scale before. If we can get that working, that would be brilliant.

And then the third area to focus on is around offshore. Offshore floating platforms will reduce a lot of the construction risk on offshore wind farms. And also secondly, even in that context, you get incremental improvements like larger turbines, that kind of thing. And turning to my second point, it’s really about using less energy if possible. There’s a lot of advancements happening in localised grid areas where, for example, power is needed at point A, when actually there’s too much power being used at point B. So having the technology will smooth that out has become prevalent.

And finally, to finish on, as each of us should see with our washing machines and our cars, energy supplies are becoming much better and actually asking us and sending us signals of whether it would be a good idea to use less energy because of costs more. For example, you might be able to charge your EV or your hybrid vehicle cheaply overnight.