Delivering a Modern, Digitalised Energy System

Introduction

Digital technology has the potential to radically reshape the way we generate, trade, consume and manage energy. Over the past decade, the incorporation of information and communications technology into the energy system has started to emerge as a driver of change in the sector but the pace and scale of that change is likely to increase dramatically over the decades to come. This webinar brings together three speakers who have been studying these changes.

Dr Aidan Rhodes is the author of the latest briefing paper from the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College London, which investigates the key technologies that underpin the digitalisation of energy and examines their potential impacts. He is joined by Laura Sandys, Chair of the UK Government’s Energy Data Taskforce and Dr Jeffrey Hardy of the Grantham Insitute at Imperial College London, collaborators on the recent Reshaping Regulation and Redesigning Regulation reports.

The objective is to understand the effects new technologies will have on the current energy system, the new challenges they will pose, and the policies and regulatory measures that will assist in making them a success.

Speakers

Moderator:

Richard Green is Professor of Sustainable Energy Business at Imperial College Business School, researching the economics of electricity markets. He was previously a professor at the University of Birmingham and the University of Hull. He started his career at the University of Cambridge. He has been chairman of the British Institute of Energy Economics and an IAEE Council member.

Speakers:

Aidan Rhodes is a Research Fellow based at Imperial College London. He is currently Energy Policy Briefing Papers Fellow at the Energy Futures Lab, working on preparing a range of accessible briefing papers on topics of relevance to energy sector policymakers and stakeholders. Dr Rhodes is an expert on UK energy policy and innovation strategy, with a particular emphasis on smart systems and networks. He has presented widely at events both in the UK and internationally, is the author of several influential reports in the smart systems and heat sector, and has facilitated several information-sharing missions between the UK and Asia-Pacific nations including Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan.

Laura Sandys CBE is Chair of the BEIS/Ofgem Energy System Data Taskforce. She was appointed as a member of the Advisory Panel for the Government’s Cost of Energy Review, and is on the Council for Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage and was co-founder of POWERful Women – women in energy.

Jeffrey Hardy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. He leads a team in the UK Energy Revolution Research Consortium examining the policy and regulation of smart local energy systems. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Public Power Solutions and a member of the UK Power Networks Customer Engagement Group. Previously he was Head of Sustainable Energy Futures at the GB energy regulator, Ofgem and Head of Science for Work Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.