One small step…

The challenge of decarbonising energy demand

Last month, at the Leander Club, the oldest rowing club in the world, Simon Anderson, CEO of the Traxis Group and Miriam Atkin, Director of Energy at Gemserv, signed an agreement to set up, launch and run the Local Energy Markets Alliance Ltd (LEMA), the newest initiative in the fast-evolving market that is about decarbonising energy demand.

This is a massive challenge involving hundreds of millions of Low Carbon Technologies (LCTs), tens of millions of homes and millions of businesses. In preparation, local grid strengthening will affect hundreds of thousands of transformers, tens of thousands of sub stations and many miles of cabling. Then there is the challenge of data, data sharing, interoperability, and data security. Nor does this address consumer affordability – with LCTs being barely affordable, consumer adoption rates will remain low, and demand will be slow to be decarbonised…

Decomposition

This is a well-known technique for breaking down a complex problem or system into smaller parts that are more manageable and easier to understand. The smaller parts can then be examined and solved, or designed, individually, as they are simpler to work with. If a problem is not decomposed, it is much harder to solve. This is what Local Energy Systems are all about.

What is frustrating is that whilst the technology exists and has been demonstrated many times over, the business aspects have yet to be addressed and therefore the systems are not commercially viable.

The Local Energy Market Alliance

This is the challenge LEMA is set up to address: creating a commercially viable market for Local Energy Systems. A market is like a technical system – it needs several elements to be integrated and formed into a system. Alliance members working collaboratively will develop generic trading models, framework agreements, platform requirements, guidance materials etc. – all the parts of the jigsaw that govern the funding, building, operating, and maintaining of local energy systems to make them easier to replicate and hence more commercially viable.

Signing this MoU is a first small step behind which lies much preparation, debate and our first working meetings looking at a novel network commercial framework.

All across Europe momentum and interest is building: this one small step we expect will lead to the development of a very significant market.