‘Electrification Is Unstoppable’: A Utility CEO on Building a Better Grid
“It’s wonderful having an iPhone, and no point in having an iPhone if you don’t have a charger,” Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson says on this week’s Zero.
A Scottish Power sign at the entrance to the Dun Law Wind Farm in Scotland. Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson says “everything is about electrification” now.
Photographer: Lorna Mackay/Bloomberg
One of the many speed bumps on the road to net zero has to do with grid readiness. As the world moves away from fossil fuels, the electricity grid will need to be able to handle a greater load, which means expanding and updating existing grids across the globe.
In the first installment of Zero’s three-part series on grids, Sanjeet Sanghera — a former BloombergNEF grid expert who is now head of strategic futures at National Grid ESO — explained why the challenging of updating the grid looks different in different parts of the world. “In Europe, they’re building systems, and up until recently the US was still building projects,” he said. “That’s part of why they’ve ended up in this kind of piecemeal grid system in the US, whereas the European continental grid system is this behemoth system that’s very meshed together.”