On Tuesday 26th September, members of BusinessLDN’s infrastructure group met with Steve Lomas, Managing Director of Banking and Investments and Emily Sidhu, Director of Banking and Investments at the UK Infrastructure Bank, kindly hosted by Turner and Townsend at their office at One New Change, St Pauls. This was the second meeting of the group with the Bank team, the first of which focussed on the Bank’s strategic plan published in June 2022, an update to which was published a couple of days prior to this September meeting, available here.
This meeting was an opportunity for BLDN members and also colleagues at Thames Estuary Growth Board and the Green Finance Institute to inform and advise the Bank team on key challenges associated with investing in London’s infrastructure sectors with a focus on Electric Vehicles (EV) charging infrastructure and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
Neil Madgwick, Head of Connections Service Delivery at UK Power Networks expertly set out the challenges facing EV infrastructure roll out within the wider context of low carbon technology proliferation. Energy networks (both transmission and distribution) are absolutely at the core of the climate transition; electricity demand will double by 2050 and UKPN’s work through their ED2 business plan to develop a smarter more agile and flexible electricity distribution system in collaboration with local partners will help meet this challenge whilst protecting consumers from the overbearing costs of investment.
Juliet Flamank from the Green Finance Institute also set out the GFI’s work on an innovative risk sharing product for EV Charging and the GFI’s Guide to Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, a market-leading resource to bridge the knowledge gap faced by stakeholders looking to finance charging infrastructure and unlock more private capital in the UK’s charging network.
Sacira Coric, Clean Energy and Decarbonisation, Global Programme Advisory Lead at Turner & Townsend, then provided an expert overview of the challenges and opportunities in CCS with the Bank explaining how it is working with partners to navigate cross chain risks associated with investing across both capture, and transport & storage markets. Encouragingly, progress is being made on the government mandated revenue models for CCS with a form of RAB or CfD model proposed to be employed.
The two sectors have their own distinct challenges and risks which the Bank has recognised in its strategic update by designing products tailored to increase the depth and availability of private capital and also to support the UK Government business models for the first 4 CCUS clusters.
Of course, all this investment activity sits within the context of looming mayoral and general elections taking place in 2024. BusinessLDN are currently delivering a series of sector specific round tables to inform election manifestos with the meeting on infrastructure and sustainability taking place on 12 December. We will also be holding a separate session with the National Infrastructure Commission on the publication of the Second National Infrastructure Assessment due in mid October, as well as a follow up with the UKIB in the new year when more deals and transactions have materialised.
All of this activity is aimed at ensuring we bring London’s business voice to the decision makers shaping the city’s long term infrastructure delivery, delivering on our mission to make London the best city in the world in which to do business and invest.
For more information on BusinessLDNs infrastructure programme or to find out about getting involved in the infrastructure group, please get in touch with John Kavanagh, Programme Director, Infrastructure: john.kavanagh@businessldn.co.uk / 07852 030 305