Across the energy sector, standardisation and coordination have become dominant themes in recent times. Here are three policy and regulatory announcements from the past month that play on those themes, and what they mean for clean energy innovation.

Energy Digitalisation Plan

The transition to Net Zero is as much about digital infrastructure – and the data that flows through it – as it is about physical infrastructure. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) has now published a Sector Digitalisation Plan – a list of priority actions and their owners across the energy governance landscape. The aim is to create a modern, flexible and resilient, electricity system as envisaged by the Energy Data Taskforce and Energy Digitalisation Taskforce.

The plan sets out to deliver many of the ideas first advocated by those taskforces including:

• data sharing to enable better understanding of how households use electricity and what low carbon technologies they have at their disposal;
• creating the digital infrastructure that enables sharing of this data while keeping it secure;
• developing the capability to use this data in the real-time operations of the electricity system such as in NESO’s control room.

These actions and their timing are set out in the figure below. NESO will track progress and update the plan annually.

Electricity Flexibility Market Rules

Elexon, who administers the Balancing and Settlement Code (BSC) in the UK, matching supply and demand alongside settling payments between generators and suppliers, has given a first taste of how it will approach its role as Flexibility Markets Facilitator, across two wide-ranging consultations. The first sets out its governance arrangements as the facilitator, and the second outlines the framework it will adopt. The latter covers:

• a common taxonomy of flexibility products;
• participation terms and conditions;
• technical elements such as metering and settlement;
• market design features such as different ways of “stacking” revenues across different markets and products.

The consultations run to 3 October.

Carbon Accounting Standardisation

Getting a clear picture of a product, facility or company’s greenhouse gas emissions can be a minefield of conflicting standards, methodologies and assumptions. This all weighs down on the businesses that have to navigate this minefield, and it introduces the risk of being undercut by businesses that are not held to the same standard.

So, a joint initiative by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to harmonise their standards for carbon accounting is hugely welcome. But it is also only part of an enduring solution. Much of the demand for emissions reporting comes from government schemes including the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, Climate Change Agreement, and the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting, which all carry bespoke reporting requirements.

To address this, we have been advocating that – as part of a wider reform of audit and corporate governance – the Financial Reporting Council (in its new form as Auditing, Reporting and Governance Authority) be given the responsibility for standardising carbon accounting and professionalising the carbon accounting sector. We’ll have more to say on this topic in the coming months.