The unstoppable march toward electrification: The Grid Series

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the world moves away from fossil fuels, the electricity grid will need to be able to handle a greater and greater load. In the second installment of Zero’s grid series, Akshat Rathi sits down with Scottish Power CEO Keith Anderson to talk about what that looks like in the UK. They discussed the promise of GB Energy, the challenges of hiring qualified engineers, and what the new Labour government can do to speed up the UK’s energy transition.

Explore further:

Past Grid Series episode with National Grid’s Sanjeet Sanghera about the challenges of updating the grid around the world
Past episode about the role of the UK’s Climate Change Committee in shaping net zero policy
Past episode with Vesta’s CEO Henrik Andersen about the wind industry’s hurdles

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Matthew Griffin, and Anna Mazarakis. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, the future of the grid.
0:05.0	Today we have part two of the grid series for Zero.
0:21.6	And if you caught last week's episode, you heard from Sanjit Sangera, a grid expert who used to work for Bloomberg NEF and recently moved to the National Grid.
0:30.0	When I picture the grids, I picture driving on a long road trip in Canada.
0:33.5	On the side of the highway, you'd see these power lines stringing across the countryside.
0:38.4	And I remember thinking, like, we can't possibly be connecting everything together with these wires.
0:43.7	That is exactly what we're doing.
0:46.2	The question of grid readiness is fundamental to the energy transition.
0:50.4	Why we need to update it, how we update it, and who is leading the way.
0:56.4	This week we talked to Keith Anderson, the CEO of Scottish Power, a utility here in the UK, facing these questions.
1:05.1	As the UK ushers in a new government, one which has pledged to create a new entity called GB Energy, that's supposed
1:12.8	to give the state a more hands-on approach to the energy transition, Keith has a few ideas
1:18.5	about how to get the UK back on track for meeting its climate goals. Keith, welcome to the show.
1:40.3	Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here.
1:45.0	Now, as the CEO of Scottish Power, you're responsible for supplying electricity to 4.6 million households around the UK.
1:52.8	And one of the things we are going to get into is what you want to see from the UK government.
1:58.6	But before we do that, I wanted to ask some broader questions
2:02.6	around the grid around utilities. If you look at someone in a role like yours, whether it's here
2:10.3	in the UK or in Indonesia or in Mexico or in Croatia, there is something different about being a CEO of a utility company in 2024.
2:22.0	This is a very different job from, say, 10 or 20 years ago.
2:27.2	How different is it?
2:28.8	A lot has changed over the last 5, 10 years in particular. And I think one of the biggest things
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.