Brexit has had an impact on investment in some energy projects.
That’s the view of some of the energy experts who was at our Power Ride charity event in London last week through which we raised more than £1,200 to support Parkinson’s and our Re-energise Nepal campaign.
When asked about the effects of the UK voting to leave the EU, Chris Johnson, Finance Manager at Net Zero Buildings said: “The first impact is the drop in the exchange rate. They have recovered but we are still suffering from those for the raw materials. Our SchoolHaus side of things uses Canadian seeder, PV panels that are imported and we’ve noticed a hit on those but we’ve limited as much as we can.”
Chris Kimmell, Commercial Manager at Open Energi said: “Financiers are slightly wary of investing in new things. That’s just yet more uncertainty to add to lots of other uncertainty that’s been piled on top of the energy industry unfortunately. Customers, some of ours are less willing to invest as well so for us we’ve seen a big impact on the financial point of view.”
However Dave Worthington, Managing Director at Verco, believes it’s too early to say Brexit has affected investment in the energy efficiency sector.
He added: “It has certainly affected some of our core clients’ business, construction and property particularly, now we’ve seen the value of property go down and that’s hit development of pipelines.
“Our clients I think are still going ahead with things they were planning to do in the energy efficiency space. We’re still seeing that whole area grow because the long term trajectory is still there, the government has signed up to the fifth carbon budget, we’re seeing the government now saying they are going to ratify the Paris Agreement so there’s a non-stopable momentum in corporate response to climate change.”
Other energy experts who attended the event said the money invested to support the construction of Hinkley could have been “better placed elsewhere”.