Small scale local distributed energy networks, community energy schemes and off-grid storage has a cruicial role to play in getting us to net zero but only if the government has a rethink on regulations.

That’s the opinion of leading energy analyst Peter King, Head of Energy and Utilities at Capgemini Invent.

He said for the behind the meter, community energy growth we need to see locally, the regulator and government as a whole will have to look at energy bureaucracy.

He said: “If you want to participate in the energy retail business in the UK at the moment, you have to sign up to thousands of pages of regulations. Even if you want to set up a small peer-to-peer energy network in your local town, you’ve signed up to massive amounts of regulation and that’s just not right.

“The government needs to move, the private sector also needs to come in and say we want to take that role. Then between the two of them, we can accelerate the pace of change.

“There will be lots of businesses out there who want to set up small scale battery, small scale EV and community energy projects and at the moment the legislation is very restrictive on that.

“There are some good reasons for that, as we don’t want cowboys running our energy network but, the whole rulebook applying to everybody needs to change.”

You can see his full interview on our sister site future Net Zero.