Electric Thames project

[00:00:00.220] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking New Energy, a podcast from LCP Delta. I'm Jon Slowe.

[00:00:09.030] - Sandra Trittin

And I'm Sandra Trittin. And together we are exploring how the energy transition is unfolding across Europe through conversations with guests from the leading edge of the transition.

[00:00:18.430] - Charmaine Coutinho

Hello again, and welcome to the new episode of Talking New Energy. I'm Charmaine Coutinho, your host for today. While Jon and Sandra are away doing something a little bit more interesting Well, possibly. Possibly not. Can't get more interesting than what we're going to talk about today, I don't think. Welcome, listeners. Today, we're going to talk about something a little bit different to our usual content. I'm going to set a little bit of context scene, but today we're talking about the energy transition when it comes to the marine sector, a lot of thought has been put into the energy transition, and a lot of progress has been made in many, many areas. So, low carbon generation, we've got electrified domestic appliances coming on, and people are through that pathway in that process, and lots of commercial and energy markets are developing around those to support that development of those sectors. But there are parts of the market that don't necessarily spring to mind when we think about the energy transition and decarbonisation, and they need that same thinking to really overcome some of the decarbonisation challenges. Sometimes the challenge is very, very unique. And so, today we're going to talk to some of the key partners in a project that LCP Delta has been involved with called Electric Thames, which is looking to the challenges and the opportunities decarbonising the marine sector.

[00:01:32.760] - Charmaine Coutinho

I'm very, very pleased to be welcoming three guests for our podcast today. Andy. Andy is from Marine Zero, who will give himself a bit of an introduction. Ben Turner from UK Power Networks and my colleague Phillip Twiddy from LCP Delta. Hello, everyone.

[00:01:50.510] - Phillip Twiddy

Hello.

[00:01:51.930] - Charmaine Coutinho

Hi. Okay. Andy, could you do a little bit of an introduction to yourself? A bit about your role and a bit about Marine Zero. I think it'll be new to most of our listeners, so it'd be good to get a bit of context.

[00:02:06.150] - Andy Hurley

Yeah, no problem at all. Thanks very much, Charmaine. I'm Andy Hurley, operations director with Marine Zero. I've had quite a long life in the maritime sector, so pretty much 40 years working on ships around the world, Deep Sea Master, and working in all sorts of other operational roles. But the last five years have been very different. I've been working in the clean maritime sector, which for some of your listeners, as you say, is probably quite a new one, and I'm working with a company called Marine Zero. Our focus really is on supporting organisations wishing to transition from diesel operation, primarily, to something a bit cleaner. It could be electric for batteries, or it could be hydrogen, or for larger vessels, a whole range of other solutions. And also looking at the ports and harbours and how they may go to a cleaner way of operating rather than running diesel generators, for example. And that could allow vessels to plug into shore supply. So, a whole range of things along that route, really. To really hold the hands of organisations who are moving into this new area because it's very new in the UK. There are very few people who have actually made that transition yet.

[00:03:18.340] - Andy Hurley

Our aim really is to try and help them along that path. And Electric Thames has really come around at the ideal time because the Port of London is one of the biggest ports in the UK, both geographically and in terms of traffic. The idea here, really, with Marine Zero is to support from a marine background, a maritime background, and look at what are the challenges in the first place from things like the regulatory side, and also look at what the opportunities are and what the operators require to enable them to operate effectively in the future. And so, our role is really to deal with that aspect of it.

[00:03:56.450] - Charmaine Coutinho

Lovely. Thank you very much. And we'll get into some of those things that you just likely touched on there. Ben Turner, welcome. Some of our listeners will know who UKPN, so UK Power Networks is, but perhaps you can introduce yourself, your role, maybe a little bit about UK Power Network and your interests and involvement in the Electric Tennis project.

[00:04:17.570] - Ben Turner

Yeah, thanks. Hi, I'm Ben Turner. I'm an innovation engineer with UK Power Networks. We're the distribution network operator for London and the South East. So, we're responsible for managing the network and keeping the lights on, basically. And we do a lot of work in innovation. How can we make our network more efficient, safer, and how can we help it prepare for the transition to net zero? And this project came about from the Ofgem strategic innovation fund, which is managed by Innovate UK, but delivered with money from energy consumers. And it's all about driving innovation in the electricity and gas It works. They've got a great tagline, which is looking to make the UK the Silicon Valley of energy. We're really invested in quite a lot of the projects.

[00:05:12.920] - Charmaine Coutinho

Lovely. Thank you. We'll get on to Electrics at Thames in the context of the project. Phillip, a little bit from you and maybe LCP Delta's role within this project as well.

[00:05:24.320] - Phillip Twiddy

Thanks, Charmaine. Yes, I'm Phillipip Twiddy, and LCP Delta was one of the partners on the project. We project-managed the project. We did the energy modelling around the project. We also did a bit of a dual role with Andy and Marine Zero in some of the stakeholder engagement, which was absolutely fascinating for me. Don't come from a maritime background, so getting involved with some of the marine stakeholders was absolutely brilliant. Got to say, they were so invested in the clean energy transition. It was wonderful. My role on the project was as our project director, and my typical role for LCP Delta is leading our clean energy advisory, so support to investors in the energy transition.

[00:06:18.400] - Charmaine Coutinho

Lovely. Thank you. So, Electric Thames is really a project that's focusing on how you can decarbonise maritime stuff, so particularly in the Thames. So, for the listeners that are not familiar with the London River, it's a very busy river. Historically has had lots of vessels going up and down it, for want of a bit of phrase, right back for like 300, 400 years. And it's a big logistical highway, effectively, through the city. And decarbonising, the objective of that has been identified as a challenge, and something that people haven't really looked at. Andy, I'd like to come to you first. We're thinking a little bit more about this project. Can you talk us through what the key challenges for decarbonising the marine sector are and how this project was looking to help address or explore that?

[00:07:10.420] - Andy Hurley

Yeah, absolutely. Of course, again, Charmaine. I think just go back a little bit on what you were saying there in terms of the Thames itself. So, the Thames has really two very distinct sections to it. So, it has a central area, which is the area that we're concentrating on for this project, which is around the central London area from the Dartford cross crossing all the way up to pretty much as far as the commercial vessels go, which is around Richmond. And that, generally speaking, there are a few exceptions, but it's, generally speaking, the small and medium-sized commercial vessels. People who've been to London will be familiar with a lot of the gas ferries that go up and down the Thames, some of the cruise vessels that move around there. And also, people will see things like the tug and barges carrying aggregates around in the Thames. And that's the type of traffic that's typical for the central Thames area. Once we go below the Dartford Crossing, we end up in some of the larger vessels. So, these are the ones that are the large container vessels, the large passenger vessels, some of the big tankers and things of that nature.

[00:08:11.970] - Andy Hurley

And so, they're a completely different type of vessel to the ones that we've been focussing on for this project, which are those, as I said, the small and medium-sized vessels, primarily. So, in terms of the challenges that I faced, I'll focus primarily, I think, on that central area, just to keep a little bit cleaner and to help with the understanding of what we're looking at for this project. So, the challenge is really for the operators is that they've been working effectively for probably around 100 years or so, maybe a little bit longer in some cases, with diesel fuel, which is a really energy dense and efficient type of way of operating, but obviously has quite a few side effects, which we're trying to myth against now through transitions to a cleaner way of operating. What we've got to ensure when we're doing that is that the operational viability of these vessels remains constant, and in some cases, we can even improve that. What do we need to do to achieve that? In most cases, it's very difficult for an operator just to put a load of batteries on and expect to change, to transition from working the way they are now to exactly the same model, but with a different type of energy, because the energy density generally is quite a lot lower, and therefore, the ability to operate for the same number of hours or the same speed is going to prove challenging for many of those operators.

[00:09:33.290] - Andy Hurley

What we've got to do as part of Electric Thames is to understand what the operators require. That's why it was so great that Phillip, in particular, came around and spent some time with us, with the operators, to gain that understanding. Because unless we have that understanding of what they really are wanting to try and achieve, it's very difficult to give them a solution that they're going to actually buy into and want to work with. I think one of the things that's been fantastic from the early engagement with these operators Phillip touched on this, is that we've had pretty much 100% buy-in to what we're trying to achieve here. I don't know whether that's answered your question.

[00:10:13.280] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, no, that's really interesting. Actually, I'm going to come back to your question for Phillip, because I'm really interested about who and what those operators are and doing. The point that you described, they're trying to go from using an energy dense fuel, which is very efficient from an energy perspective, and actually shifting that for a little bit like electrifying our homes and businesses. It's a change in the way they operate, the change in the way they use their vessels, changing their business models. It's quite a big shift for them to decarbonise and probably, I suppose, that's why Marine Zero exists, not many people to help us. Before we get to that bit, Ben, can you tell us a little bit about this project? So, it's a electrification of the Marine network, but from a network, so this isn't obviously an electricity networks perspective.

[00:10:59.490] - Ben Turner

Yeah, well, so at UK Power Networks, we're immensely supportive of new innovations, and I think a lot of that's demonstrated in the work we've done with EVs and bus garages. So, we really think we can bring some of our experience from that to the maritime sector. And if the maritime sector is going to decarbonise, electrification is looking like one of the best options for them to reduce their emissions. And the way we see it, if everyone tried to decarbonise through electrification in isolation, we're going to have different connexion requests all along the Thames, and maybe people might be asking for more electricity than they might need, or they might not realise that a connexion could be shared between themselves and another operator. So, having this top-down, whole system view of all of the operators and all of the different keys could be really beneficial. So, what's good for us is to support this roll out of new infrastructure. We want to take this grid side view of, okay, well, if you want to instal a new connexion, there's going to be network reinforcement, and that can come with embedded carbon emissions. So, if we can minimise the network reinforcement whilst also maintaining the status quo and how these boats operate, I think that's going to have a wider benefits.

[00:12:32.620] - Charmaine Coutinho

That's really interesting. So, trying to help them operate as normal, minimise the impacts on the network, but also just smooth that process to changing something which is probably quite fundamental. Actually, you're totally right, right? If you guys have looked at EVs and bus electrification and networks, which is the next transport mode for you guys to look at. So, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:12:55.650] - Phillip Twiddy

The other thing to think about there is, although it's Electric Thames, we also, when looking at all of the vessels travelling up and down the Thames in that region, there's two key fuels that will be appropriate. So, battery, electrification, but also hydrogen. The hydrogen also has an impact on or might also have an impact on the local distribution grid because we need to consider where that hydrogen might be produced, the amount of energy that might be needed for it. About, as I said, two-thirds of the vessels or so likely to be powered through battery electric and around a third by hydrogen. Both of those will have, hopefully, complementary effects. It's an interesting mix of the vessels and usage and the fuels that are going to be required.

[00:13:48.850] - Charmaine Coutinho

Phillip, Andy touched upon that you went to see some of the operators. Could you give us a bit of an example about what… Just bring it to life a little bit for our listeners of what an operator is and does.

[00:14:00.050] - Phillip Twiddy

Yeah, so I'll do my best, but this is where I'm probably struggling a little bit, coming from the electricity background. But from my perspective, I joined Andy for a number of those visits, either face-to-face or one-to-ones on Teams, et cetera. A couple that spring to mind. One was the Port of London Authority itself that operates a number of vessels. With Andy's lead, we were looking their types of vessels, how they operate, when they operate, their thoughts on potential for use of battery propulsion or hydrogen, et cetera, and working through their fleet of vessels to understand and to have a discussion about how they operate now, how they might operate in the future, how it could be made to work, et cetera, and what changes might be needed. I guess at this stage, there's a question about whether it's retrofit to existing vessels or whether it's replacement and new vessels, etc. The other one that springs to mind was I think it was Thames Clippers. The operator might allude me a little bit, but it was a completely different vessel type, and some of their vessels are already thinking and already transitioning to cleaner fuels. But again, a different type of vessel, different type of operation. As part of the project, it was about understanding those types of vessels, how they operate now.

[00:15:42.910] - Phillip Twiddy

That helped us to understand or do some of the energy system modelling. If you understand the vessels, how they're used, how they're likely to be used in the future, then we can start thinking about what's the right energy mix, what's the right charging mix, hydrogen mix, etc. What impacts does that have from an energy system perspective?

[00:16:01.970] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, that is a brilliant thing. There's a lot of analogies with the EV market here. I remember a few years ago, the main area of research we saw people looking into was fleets, so corporate fleets, and how fleet managers, so the people in charge of buying, procuring, running those vehicles, were looking at the transition to electric vehicles, so whether it was buses, trucks, vans, whatever, and the massive impact they had on the market in in terms of shifting their big buyers of electric vehicles, but then also from a corporate perspective, how to help them decarbonise. So, it's really a thing of looking at how actually the organisations are using the vehicles. But the systems modelling that you mentioned, that is interesting. Ben, can you give us a bit of a little assessment of the key learnings from the work you've done from a network perspective so far?

[00:16:55.550] - Ben Turner

Yeah, I think what's been really interesting for us is from the work Andy and Phillip have done with the vessel operators and the key owners was the operating profiles that the boats are running. We see that there's the spikes during the middle of the day when you can expect a lot of the boats to be in operation. And then overnight, a lot of them are moored and not in operation. So, there's a really good potential there for them to be plugged in but not charging overnight, which is something we can then draw comparisons to the bus garages that have very defined operating profiles where they're running all day, but then overnight, they could potentially be plugged into the grid if they were electric. And then, you can start to ask questions about them storing electricity and feeding it back into the grid, which is a really exciting prospect for this project.

[00:17:53.100] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, I think I remember when we were first talking about this project internally, someone mentioned the phrase V2G, but not meaning vehicle to it, but meaning vessel-to-grid, which I think made everyone laugh. I don't know. Anyway, does that idea of parked vessels at night feeding back into it doesn't exist? Is it very mature? Do you think it has a lot of potential?

[00:18:19.680] - Phillip Twiddy

It's probably good for you to talk about the maturity of it, and then I can talk about some of the potential, I think.

[00:18:25.640] - Andy Hurley

Yeah. I could just go back one step on that, shall we? Because I think perhaps so people understand what we did as part of the Electric Thames project. So, we contacted the vast majority of the operators who have vessels within the central Thames area and carried out a survey, mostly face-to-face, but we did get some through our electronic... The words got out of my head.

[00:18:57.300] - Phillip Twiddy

Like on face-to-face or Teams.

[00:19:00.660] - Andy Hurley

We did some of it, or quite a lot of it, through just face-to-face contact with them. And what that's enabled us to do is exactly what Ben has said, is to get a really good understanding of what their operating profiles were. So, when are they actually working, how much energy they're likely to use, when are they going to be more alongside. Actually, what was really fantastic from that was to identify that for some of the vessels that are going to have probably the biggest energy storage during the winter months, where the demand is probably higher, they have a profile which allows them to be more alongside and potentially use vessel-to-grid exactly as you've said there. And when we're looking at the size of energy storage that these vessels will have on, it's obviously significantly greater than EVs and significantly greater than eHEVs as well. So, we're looking at multi-megawatt hour energy storage on there. And so, the potential to use that is significant. There's a couple of reasons why that's important. It's really important from the energy grid point of view, but actually from the operator's point of view, it could be equally important because one of the hurdles which we haven't touched on yet is the cost of actually transitioning from diesel to battery storage or hydrogen, because the systems and the batteries are massively more expensive.

[00:20:19.720] - Andy Hurley

So, we're looking at multimillion pound battery units for these vessels, whereas probably multi-million pounds, a couple of million pounds or thereabouts would have probably bought them the vessel with the engines and everything else they needed. Now it's probably would struggle even to buy the batteries they require, to be honest, and the infrastructure in addition that needs to be supplied ashore. So there needs to be a way of actually balancing those costs to make it work for them in terms of the initial CapEx costs and the potential for vessel-to-grid. I'm sure Phillip, in particular, may well come back to some of the modelling that's been done there. But the potential there is quite significant to make it an attractive model for the operators to transition. And that's really important because there has to be a viable way of it working both operationally and as importantly for them financially.

[00:21:12.100] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, I mean, it's a good idea. We can start from the process of decarbonisation, but actually the the reality of commercial operators trying to transition something that is such a significant price tag to it is challenging. Yeah. So, Phillip, tell us a little bit about what the potential and the modelling work that as part of the project?

[00:21:31.420] - Phillip Twiddy

Yeah. From the work that we did on the engagement, understanding the vessels and the vessel types and the operations, et cetera, and potential for either battery or hydrogen, we then looked at the total energy demands and when that demand is needed and what might be the excess storage. We also looked at the complementarity between the vessel operations or marine operations and the land-based operations. As Andy alluded to or Ben alluded to, it's really quite complementary, both in terms of times of day and times of year. We see on land, the peak is in the evening time, for instance, and that's when some of the vessels will be coming to the end of their working day, could be moored up and could be made available to help with that land-based peak in demand through vessel-to-grid. We also saw that there's a seasonal effect as well. The energy demand in the winter is greater than it is in the summer, and that's when there's likely to be more vessels not operating that are likely to be battery powered and therefore could also be used for vessel-to-grid and helping to provide that land-based demand.

[00:22:53.790] - Phillip Twiddy

What that means is that when we modelled this, about half of the cost of fuel, electricity, could be offset through vessel-to-grid operations, either through time of day charging or through operating in some of the flexibility markets. We took a fairly simple view of that, and we didn't look to operate or take value from all of the available markets, but it's a huge potential saving in fuel costs. What that means is, as Andy said, you might be able look at how to offset some of that capital costs through the OpEx. Looking at the next stage of the project, which we hope to get confirmation on fairly soon, we'll start to look at how you could build up a business model that will help that transition through offsetting some of the very high capital costs.

[00:23:54.060] - Charmaine Coutinho

That is really interesting, right? So, 50% potential for returns is a nice little statistic. It does lead me on to my next question, which is really around this first stage has been like an innovation project. So, lots of exploration, looking at those operator profiles and what is right at the moment. And so, we're hoping to apply for funding for the second and third stage. And you touched on building potentially a business model or business case for operating it in. Is that right?

[00:24:31.380] - Phillip Twiddy

Yeah, that's right. It's probably worth Ben, if you talk a little bit about next stages and what we hope to hear, et cetera, and then I can talk a little bit around what we're trying to do in terms of business model and try to help the investment come into the marine sector.

[00:24:49.430] - Ben Turner

Yeah, sure. So, as I mentioned before, this project has come around from the OfGem strategic Innovation Fund, which is a funding mechanism that is split up into three phases: discovery, alpha, and beta. Discovery, which is what we've just done. It's like a feasibility study. And then alpha, which is what we're waiting to hear for, is like a proof of concept. I think at the end of that, what we want is a decarbonisation plan for the Thames. And then you get into beta, which is a large-scale demonstration. This is where things get really exciting. I think at this point we'd be looking to actually get some electric keys running and actually have some electric vessels running. And we'd really widen the scope of the partners that we'd want to involve at this point. We're excited to, if we're successful in the next phase, we're excited to invite EV Energy to bring their experience of flexibility markets and delivering EV commercial frameworks, that thing. And we're also really, really glad to have the Port of London Authority on board as a partner. A lot of this project has been built around their decarbonisation plan. Andy has been in constant contact with them. So, having their insight throughout the next phase of the project is going to be really interesting.

[00:26:16.850] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, I mean, for the Port London Authority is a really interesting organisation. So, way back when, looking at decarbonisation, I was always really interested in the last 10, 15 years, how frequently they would come up as being very proactive and forward-looking when it comes to looking at how they decarbonise or, not electrify, but from a renewable energy supply perspective. So, that's great. Sounds like they're a really valuable partner on this. Yeah, I mean, it sounds really fascinating. I've got this image of, I'm from London originally, for those of you familiar with London, you have this central way which is surrounded by all these iconic buildings and theatres and restaurants. There's a real sense that you can probably capture people's imaginations by something so big and impactful as a… It's a big test project, so I could see how that would be very exciting. Phillip, did you want to add something else before we go forward to our crystal ball?

[00:27:08.460] - Phillip Twiddy

Yes. Next stage, we need to refine some of our modelling. We took some quite broad assumptions the next stage. With Andy, he'll be conducting more engagement with some of the operators, understanding in more detail, answering the questions that I mentioned earlier. Is this about retrofit? Will the whole designs for the current fleet support battery electrification, or is it going to be too much battery for the current vessels, et cetera? So, understanding that, doing more work on the understanding the operating patterns, et cetera. But one of the things that's really going to lead into for us will be thinking about that business model. If you think about all of the different partners here, you'll somebody who owns and operates the vessels, the batteries, which are a huge capital investment, the key infrastructure, the flexibility operator, the operators who are going to be essentially buying the fuel. We need to work out what is that business model that will allow that. I was going to say the revenue, which I forgot to mention, but the revenue from flexibility, et cetera, to allow that revenue to flow to help offset some of those costs and how to allow that revenue to reach the right parts of the markets and be fairly attributed, I guess.

[00:28:40.800] - Phillip Twiddy

We need to work on that. Hopefully, that then will create a testbed and demonstrate that the marine sector is one that can be invested in. Again, that will be if we can get that investment flowing into the sector, then we can speed up the decarbonisation of the operations because, as Andy mentioned, it's a huge investment, so we probably need to get that external investment into the market. That's one of the things we want to build and to then demonstrate in the beta phase.

[00:29:14.280] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, this is so important, right? This innovation funding has been referred to as, and the reason for that is so you can test these things out so that longer term things can be proven to be self-sustainable so that they can spend on their own two feet or with private investment.

[00:29:29.190] - Phillip Twiddy

Yeah, absolutely. You don't want it to just be a project and then very nice, we've done the project. We want this to be something which we can absolutely demonstrate, can be replicated across the country, perhaps across the world, and can accelerate the decarbonisation. That's what we want to see out of this.

[00:29:45.510] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, it's super interesting. Fingers crossed for the next round of funding. We're going to finish up with the question we always have, which is around looking into our crystal football and trying to see what will happen in the future. I'm going to ask two slightly different questions, Andy. Imagine we're in 2030, 2035. When you're looking back, what do you hope to have happened in marine decarbonisation? It's not very long away. Let's say 2035. It's five years away. It's not very long away, is it?

[00:30:16.550] - Andy Hurley

No, it isn't. No, not at all. And it's hugely challenging, but massive opportunities. I think it's just worth probably go back a little bit on what Ben touched on, which was around the PLA engagement with because this links directly to your question, actually, because the Port of London Authority have got a Clean River plan which aims to achieve a net zero status for the river by 2040. And that's ahead of what are the international deadlines. Internationally, it's 2050 for maritime through the International Maritime Organisation. But 2040 is quite a stretched target in itself, and that's for the whole of their area, including the estuarial waters, which I've covered earlier on. So, it's really challenging. And what do I think it's going to look like? Or what would I hope would be achieved? I think some of the critical things we've touched on briefly in terms of making it viable, both financially and operationally. So, that's a really key, because if it's not viable, it's really hard for a commercial organisation to shift. So, I think the technology is coming a long way forward now. I think the technology is less of an obstacle to actually the other challenges that sit there.

[00:31:32.520] - Andy Hurley

So, I think what we'd like to see and hope to see really would be that we'd have a number, quite a large number of vessels operating in the inner-city area of London, for example, on full battery solutions. We'd see a smaller number, I think, operating with hydrogen that enables them to work. What this means we have to achieve by then is an agreement with the regulator who we haven't discussed at all today, the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency, who to set the rules for how these vessels operate. They're just really entering that space. Last year, they've introduced a new set of regulations which tried to help us move forward, but it's very early days for them, and at times, they are seen as a bit of an obstacle, to be fair. I think what we need to do is to transition to a stage where actually they start to enable things to happen as well, and then we'll see that opening up a little bit more. So, we've been looking for a number of vessels to be in place. We could be looking for the infrastructure to support that, to be there, and for operators to recognise that perhaps they need to look at how they transition and not look to achieve exactly the same answer with the same solution.

[00:32:39.900] - Andy Hurley

It has to be a more imaginative approach to how they do their business to enable it to work. So there's a number of things that are all mixed in together, which we should start to see, I think, over the next few years, and Electric Thames will certainly help to deliver that.

[00:32:56.100] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, so a bit of a mixture of customer change, some physical big and small assets on the waterways. That sounds like a lovely hopeful future. And Ben, a similar question, a little bit different. What do you think the London Waterways will look like in 2035?

[00:33:15.080] - Ben Turner

Yeah, so I mean, I live in London currently. I don't think I plan to live there until 2035, but I guess I'd like to see this multimodal zero-emission transport being available. So, if I fancied it, I could drive down to the Thames in my electric car. I prefer cycling, but yeah, you can plug your car in, leave it there for the day, and then you catch your electric boat up the Thames. When you look at travelling an electric car, it feels nice. It feels futuristic, doesn't it? It's quieter, it's smoother. Imagine that, but you're on a boat. I think there's other examples of electric boats across Europe and some of the passenger feedback has been like, Yeah, it's so nice having a quiet, smooth ride without any emissions. So, yeah, if we can get to that point, I think that would be really interesting. And you'd maybe see a lot more people using the Thames as a mode of transport.

[00:34:18.010] - Charmaine Coutinho

Yeah, I mean, I think that's quite a nice image for those of you not familiar with England. If you go the other way towards inland as a big nature reserve towards West London, which you can imagine having a quiet electric boat around there is probably a lot nicer for the wildlife there. Okay, I'm going to have to stop there. This has been really fascinating. Thank you both, all three of you, Andy, Ben and Phillip. It's been really wonderful hearing about the Electric Thames. We'll keep our eyes and ears out for the next round of funding. Very interesting to hear about marine decarbonisation. If any of our listeners have got any experiences of projects similar or around vessel-to-grid or any marine decarbonisation in other parts Europe or even beyond, please do get in touch and let us know. For me, to stand out for that with this idea of taking what we've learnt around some of the other decarbonisation pathways and applying them to a sector that really needs support and the role of innovation projects in that and how we can get towards this sustainability as well as environmental sustainability. Again, thanks everyone for listening.

[00:35:27.260] - Charmaine Coutinho

If you want any more information, if you've got any ideas for the podcast, please feel free to drop us a line on talkingnewenergy@lcp.comand follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Until next time. Thank you very much.

[00:35:43.400] - Sandra Trittin

Thank you. Thanks.

[00:35:44.460] - Sandra Trittin

Thanks for tuning in. We are excited to bring you captivating conversations from the leading edge of Europe's energy transitions. If you got suggestions for topics or guests for future episodes, please let us know.

[00:35:56.930] - Jon Slowe

If you're enjoying the podcast, then please do rate colleagues. For show notes, transcripts, and more, please visit lcpdelta.com.