Interview with Chris Buckland, Global Technical Director at Lightsource BP
It was a pleasure to interview Minister Andrew Bowie, Co-Chair of the UK’s Solar Taskforce and the Minster for Nuclear and Renewable Energy, ahead of their participation at Solar&StorageLive London on the 29-30 of April this year!
Solar&StorageXtra is the new publishing part of the Solar and Storage Live event series where we will be interviewing our esteemed speakers, exhibitors, sponsors and attendees to get their live reactions to the event and the important discussions within the industry.
Minister Bowie joined Solar&StorageXtra to discuss the success of the UK’s Solar Taskforce, the challenges to deploying solar technologies in the UK and the importance of collaboration when achieving the UK’s 70GW solar target.
Whilst the deployment of renewable technologies, especially solar, is consistently on the rise in the UK, there are challenges that can hinder faster deployment. Minister Bowie highlighted some of the key challenges facing the deployment of renewable technologies and the solutions in place to combat them:
The UK’s capacity on the grid, and grid connections in general, is one issue the UK is facing when deploying renewable technologies. The lower the grid capacity, the slower renewable projects can connect to the electricity grid. Minister Bowie explained that the government have put in place reforms to accelerate the construction of network infrastructure and to reform the connection process which will ease and speed up innovative connections to the grid. The skills gap must be assessed to speed up the deployment of renewable projects in the UK. It is essential the right and enough people are being trained to correctly deploy these new and innovative technologies.
Investment, planning and consenting are all being reviewed in order to increase the deployment of solar in the UK. Minister Bowie explained that the UK is ranked 4th in the world for low carbon investment in 2023 behind China, the US, and Germany, the UK government want to improve this and establish the country as a ‘genuine hub for green, clean, technological investment.’ Initiatives for planning and consenting have also been assessed to speed up deployment.
“We should be shouting it from the rooftop just how World leading the UK is when it comes to cutting our carbon emissions, creating new jobs, developing new technologies, driving to net zero and a more secure energy landscape!”
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To enquire about interviews, submit news and press releases please contact our Editor, Regan Slaymaker, regan.slaymaker@terrapinn.com. For sponsorship and exhibition enquires please contact Tom Moon, tom.moon@terrapinn.com.
