Best communications key to deploy renewable projects

Renewable energy companies can shorten the long approval process for their projects by communicating better with interested parties, according to experts.

Christina Shim, IBM sustainability director, said sponsors should focus on commercial value, in addition to environmental benefits, by discussing their projects.

“That said … now there are some unleashed words, depending on where it feels throughout the world, and I think that the more you can quantify the commercial value of what you are doing and linked, again, commercial operations and commercial decision making, it will only be more and more important,” Shim said Thursday.

“While the results are the same, you just have to make sure that you are communicating properly with the right interested parties.”

She compared it to how you could talk to a CFO, versus an investor, in front of someone in acquisitions. “You have to talk about things a bit different.”

MITESH PATEL, Interim CEO and Director of Operations of Suncable International, agrees that adjusting communication for the appropriate audience is crucial.

“For politicians, voters are their constituency, not their project or not their company. They must help them translate what benefits their project will bring to the constituents,” said Patel, whose company is developing a project to deliver Australia’s solar energy to Singapore through submarine cables.

The project, called Australia-Asia PowerLink, is valued around $ 24 billion And Singapore 1.75 Gigawatts of Electricity is expected to supply a 15% of its electricity needsAccording to the company.

Shim and Patel’s comments, which were talking to Steve Sedgwick of CNBC in a panel in Singapore, occur when renewable energy projects often take many years to take off.

TO report From the global infrastructure hub, which is part of the Private Public Infrastructure Advice Center of the World Bank, the complex nature of the necessary preparation said before an infrastructure project begins. He put the average project preparation time at age 6, but said he can take up to 14 years if the project is not planned correctly.

Cenk Alper, CEO of Sabanci Holding, a Turkish conglomerate, said that the biggest obstacle to taking off renewable energy projects is often regulatory.

“The biggest problem remains the government, permits. Due to licenses until a ready project, the total time is longer than construction time,” he said.

The situation in Europe is worse, he added, citing a project where the connection to the network took two years.

Alper said that Western countries must rationalize the approval process for renewable energy projects, noting that China has embarked on more projects in the last five years than the rest of the combined world.