Carolyn Kissane, Associate Dean of the graduate programs in Global Affairs and Global Security, Conflict and Cybercrime at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU co-hosts The Clean Energy Revolution podcast with Laura Young an award-winning climate activist, environmental scientist and ethical influencer.
This week's episode explores the connections challenge: how are we connecting more clean energy to the grid?
Connecting more clean energy projects to the electricity grid is one of the most critical challenges in driving the clean energy transition. Legacy ‘first come first served’ approaches, along with a rapid growth in the number of projects looking to connect, have led to stalled, or "zombie" projects waiting in the queue to be connected - so what’s being done to resolve this?
Laura discusses the rise in UK connection applications - and the plans to accommodate them - with Ruth Shaw, Customer and Stakeholder Experience Manager in Electricity Transmission at National Grid. Together they look at groundbreaking projects like Dogger Bank, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, and how these projects are providing the blueprint for a streamlined connections process.
Carolyn is joined by Sandy Grace, Vice President of US Policy and Regulatory Strategy at National Grid, to uncover how the US is tackling similar challenges. Innovative solutions like bi-directional flows and vehicle-to-grid technology are poised to revolutionise the grid. Sandy explains how they work and analyses the need for regulatory reforms to speed up connections to the grid.