Danica Greetham, KMI’s Senior Research Fellow went to the House of Lords on the 11th December 2018 on the invitation of Environmental Defense Fund Europe, to participate at the roundtable on the electrification of transport and the electricity sector. The meeting was chaired by Baroness Worthington and attended by representatives of several of the big 6 energy distribution network operator, new suppliers Ecotricity, Octopus Energy, Nissan, Tesla, Energy Saving Trust, Centrica, Element Energy, e-Mobility, UK Car Park Management among others.

The aim was to identify any barriers to a much faster uptake of electric vehicles that can be tackled by the Government, and inform policies, as well as to recommend areas for prioritised investment.  It was noted that while in the UK currently  demand for electric vehicles is greater than supply, current tax on electric vehicles as company cars and lack of aggresive investment strategy for batteries means that the  most of motor industry uses this demand to sell more petrol and diesel cars. One way to counter that would be to mandate that a certain percentage of total sales for any manufacturer has to be electric.

Several recommendations for future policies were given: related to reinforcement network needs, one of a particular interest for KMi is that the managed charging should be opt-out (instead of opt-in) allowing for smart algorithms to be used to reduce peak loads. A tax credit on energy bundles (an electric vehicle with renewables, time of use tariffs and vehicle to grid technology) for small and medium enterprises was proposed by Dr Greetham as an incentive that would help accelerate the uptake of EVs.  This meeting just confirmed that the need for smart algorithms for efficient energy management is growing and this is an area to watch.