High time we adopt low-carbon

Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottishpower, tells Ellie Evans we must take advantage of the current situation to reset the market to wean us off dirty fossil fuels and embrace a greener future

With UK households the hardest hit in Western Europe by the energy crisis, the time has come to move beyond fossil fuels.

Our dependence on gas to heat our homes, plus a system in which more volatile gas prices often end up setting the wholesale electricity price, has left us exposed.

Now is the time to approach this in a different way and make Scotland’s worldleading net zero targets a reality.

Wholesale energy prices are stabilising, although they will remain very high for a long time. October’s price hike still leaves many struggling, but the introduction of the Energy Price Guarantee has bought a little breathing room.

WE NEED TO ENSURE LASTING CHANGE

This opportunity must be used wisely, says Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottishpower – to boost energy efficiency, invest in our networks and ramp up greener sources of power generation.

He has welcomed the Treasury-led review to map out where we go from here, but warns: “It is clear that the UK cannot finance an open-ended, universal blank cheque for energy without a well-considered plan.

“This scheme is not an end solution, it is just buying time. And what we now have to do is look at structurally changing how this market works, and structurally changing what we want to do in the UK around the use of gas, and how we manage that going forward.”

The energy crisis shifted the focus to the short-term

“We need to take our time, through the review of the Energy Price Guarantee, to consider it all in the round. Everyone has a part to play”

for very understandable reasons: “What we’ve been through is a period of considering how we tackle what’s in front of our noses, and how we tackle what we need to solve today and tomorrow – which is quite natural and not a criticism – as opposed to worrying about the next 15 years of renewables deployment, or the next 15 years of investment in the grid system.

“What we’ve been worried about is how we stop customers getting into problems of debt, how we stop businesses going bankrupt, how we support the economy, how we find a way of controlling and managing these huge shifts in price.”

NOW IS THE TIME TO TAKE ACTION

The UK Government has announced the energy price guarantee will be extended from April, but the level of support will be scaled back, with bills for a typical household rising to £3,000.

According to Keith, taking action to help the country through the cost-of-living crisis we currently face should be considered vital, but without losing the momentum that has built up.

He explains: “One of the problems so far is that we have tried to answer the problems in a piecemeal way. We need to take our time, through the Treasury-led review of the Energy Price Guarantee, to consider it all in the round. Everyone has a part to play.”

The country isn’t faced with a choice between green energy or secure, affordable energy. Increasing our reliance on renewables will bring greater energy security and less dependence on the international energy market.