The customer is always right.. but does the transition require energy companies to take a more proactive role?

The responsibility that the corporate world should bear in steering demand toward the higher aims of the energy transition fell into focus at the Upstream Energy Transition Forum this week.

“In many ways the energy process is unstoppable,” said Per Arne Solend, head of M&A at Norway’s Equinor, who noted the dramatic advance of renewable source of energy in Texas, the state at the heart of the US oil industry.

“However, the speed of the energy transition depends very much on policy,” he added.

Shell’s head of strategy and energy transition Kelly de Azevedo Dent backed this view, stating that the supermajor’s efforts to be at the centre of the energy transition are focusing initially on its own operations and decarbonising in step with its customers, especially in transport and industry.

“It is the role of government to put the right signals in place to attract the right investment,” she said, pointing to policies aimed at stimulating infrastructure development.

However, Azevedo Dent was chided for this stance by Nina Skorupsca, former head of the UK’s Association for Renewable Energy & Clean Technology, who argued that the narrative of companies such as Shell has changed from one of setting the pace of transition to one of merely following customers at their own pace.

“These customers need to be helped!” Skorupsca declared.

The more proactive stance that Skorupsca advocated seemed to be demonstrated when Zoisa North-Bond, chief executive for the energy generation and energy business arms of UK utility Octopus Energy, detailed certain strategies that the company has adopted to incentivise customer practices.

These include Octupus ”Fan-Club”, which offers half-price electricity rates enjoyed by residents living close to onshore turbines whenever wind strength reaches a certain level. Another is offering discounts of up to 60% to core customers if they concentrate their own demand toward a given time frame of lower-cost energy.

“The idea is to create ideas and opportunities for the customer and not just look to them for the solution,” North-Bond said.

She also predicted a “massive uplift” in the leveraging of concepts of community ownership.

“We saw this in the numbers seeking a turbine in their area when they saw the benefits we could offer,” she said.

“We have also looked to change the whole way we plan for renewable energy, actually starting out with where the question of where our customers want it or where we can most quickly and most easily get grid connections.”

Following such an approach, North-Bond said she expected to see onshore wind projects in the UK, following the lifting of the de facto ban there.

“It is a case of matchmaking communities with energy generation and focusing on where people want it. If you choose the right place, the right size and get close to consumers onshore wind projects will happen in England,” she said.

In the earlier panel, Azevedo Dent said Shell, too, is at the centre of the energy transition, stating that investments such as the company’s green hydrogen project in Germany are less about current demand and more about de-risking new technologies and working through spikes in demand, and prices, for certain materials.

“We see ourselves at the high end of technology development for the energy transition,” she said.

Solend also dismissed suggestions that big oil companies have been backtracking on their energy transition commitments in business segments such as renewables.

Referring to challenges such as supply chain costs, permitting delays and grids as “issues that companies cannot control” he suggested that the actions of oil companies can be misinterpreted.

“When oil slows down its called backtracking, when renewable energy sector slows down, it’s not described in the same way… But we are tyring to invest through the whole cycle in the energy transition,” he said.”

“This is an all time high activity in renewable energy for us.”