Atkins responds to UK Government's Energy Whitepaper

“The Energy White Paper (EWP) recognises the scale of the challenge to reach Net Zero by 2050 and putting the UK in the vanguard of the global effort to combat climate change. Our future energy system will be orders of magnitude more complex than in the past, encompassing high levels of decentralisation and intermittency. In a society ever more dependent on digitalisation, the UK will need twice as much electricity as today, with even higher standards of reliability.

As stated in a recent paper, Atkins believes an ‘Energy System Architect’ (ESA) is essential to apply risk-based systems engineering judgement and create a flexible strategy that allows for decentralisation as well as integration between local and national systems. We welcome the EWP’s commitment to a wide-ranging review of regulation (technical and economic), the suitability of current market arrangements, and the roles of the system operator and OFGEM.

A robust data and modelling foundation is needed as a basis for decision making and accountability. The EWP’s proposals to transform system modelling align very closely with the recommendations in our ESA proposal. We support the EWP’s commitments to digitalisation and would make this a key area for early collaboration between the ESA and OFGEM.

The next stage of decarbonising power generation will be much more difficult and will be an integral part of a comprehensive nationwide programme reaching into almost every home. In our whitepaper, Race to Net Zero, we set out how far off the pace the UK is with respect to building the required power system. Welcoming the push to develop further offshore wind and progressing with CCS projects, the importance of nuclear should not be under-stated or under-valued. The Financial Investment Decision on Sizewell C needs to be progressed as a matter of urgency.

There are many areas that still require policy development before real implementation progress can be made, and we must act with urgency to establish the guiding body to direct a future energy programme. Our Net Zero energy system is a huge engineering and programme management challenge - every month spent on policy deliberation is a month less implementation time. It’s time to get on with building and managing the programmatic risk now.”

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