THE NORTHERN IRELAND
ENERGY TRANSITION

In June 2022 the NI Executive passed the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland). Like the climate change legislation introduced in other parts of the UK and Ireland, this act commits Northern Ireland to legally binding commitments on decarbonisation, including development of Climate Action Plans, Carbon Budgets, and the commitment to net zero emissions by 2050. It also set out a target for at least 80% of electricity in Northern Ireland to come from renewable sources by 2030.

Northern Ireland is well suited to utilise renewable energy resources such as wind and tidal and renewable gases like biomethane and hydrogen, but the renewable energy industry requires robust policy decisions and strategy to make this happen.

What are we doing to help?

Mutual Energy has set up an Energy Transition function that will focus on the following areas:

1. The ongoing energy policy debate

Mutual Energy acts as a thought leader within the Northern Ireland energy policy debate to promote the long-term interests of Northern Irish energy consumers on the pathway to net zero.

Working closely with government, regulators and other key industry stakeholders, our focus is on strategic upstream issues critical to the successful delivery of the energy transition in Northern Ireland, including:

security of supply,
large scale energy storage,
decarbonisation of dispatchable power generation,
cross border policy coordination,
system planning initiatives

2. Transitioning our existing assets

Our assets represent hundreds of millions of pounds worth of investment by NI consumers. It is therefore incumbent upon Mutual Energy to identify their role in helping to deliver the NI energy transition.

The Moyle interconnector provides substantial flexibility to the NI electricity system, facilitating the integration of renewable generation, while our gas transmission assets could help support the introduction and scale up of renewable gases Northern Ireland, such as biomethane and hydrogen.

3. Facilitating energy transition projects

As a gas transmission system operator and gas market operator for Northern Ireland it is important that we position the company to assist in the development of strategically important pathfinder projects that will help accelerate the energy transition here, as well as to support and facilitate other industry stakeholders to bring forward and develop commercial energy transition projects.

We recently partnered with the Maritime-Power-to-X project in which Mutual’s role seeks to develop a dedicated hydrogen pipeline to transport hydrogen for e-fuel production. More on the project can be found here.

4. Supporting the development of strategically important new energy infrastructure

Significant investment in new strategic energy infrastructure will be required to successfully transition Northern Ireland to zero carbon energy. Mutual Energy can play an important role in reducing the cost of that investment.

As a mutualised company, we can achieve a low cost of capital, especially for long-term strategic investments that may be less attractive to the private sector, due to their high upfront capital expenditure and long investment horizons.

Key areas of interest for Mutual Energy include

Hydrogen

Biomethane

Renewable gas interconnection

Electrical interconnection

Large-scale energy storage solutions

Offshore grid development

Geothermal energy

Carbon capture and storage solutions

Cross-border policy coordination

Development of appropriate market arrangements.

Our Team

The Energy Transition function is a small but growing strategic team within the business focusing on energy policy, as well as developing pathfinder and strategic infrastructure projects.

For further information on energy transition matters please contact Mark or a member of the team.