The road ahead with Pedro Vasconcelos | edp.com

EDP Group’s Vision and Outlook for 2024

In an increasingly complex and volatile geopolitical and regulatory context, the new Global Energy Management (GEM) platform is becoming increasingly important for the EDP group. Pedro Vasconcelos also talks about the dynamics and expansion plans for the Asia-Pacific region.

What strategic positioning and emerging technologies should EDP focus on and what is the role of GEM?

EDP must promote the value maximisation of its global portfolio and the potential of its integrated position, actively managing energy from generation to supply. This is a critical factor in a macroeconomic context of greater volatility, and one that adds value, given the growing regulatory and geopolitical complexity, as well as a differentiating factor in the face of a highly competitive landscape and increasingly sophisticated customers.

The advancement of automation and digitalization plays a crucial role in facilitating advanced analytics and automated trades through big data analysis. Emerging technologies such as storage are pivotal tools for optimizing flexibility, particularly in aggregating and managing risks, especially where merchant exposure is concerned.

GEM will increasingly be an important competitiveness platform for the ambitious growth plan of EDP as energy offtaker, manager/placer of energy in markets and in identifying investment opportunities that bring flexibility and broaden our integrated position. GEM’s performance was already decisive for the good results that EDP group will present at end of 2023. The expectation for 2024 is no less ambitious, but our goals and priorities are clear: to integrate our positions with generation further and expand geographical scope to manage deviations worldwide, while becoming significantly more digital.

"GEM’s performance was already decisive for the good result that EDP group will present at the end of 2023. The expectation for 2024 is no less ambitious."

APAC region has very strong fundamentals, but it is still at an early stage of maturity

Since EDP arrived in APAC (Asian-Pacific region), we have more than doubled our installed capacity and surpassed the 1 GW milestone only 18-months post-closing. While building up a robust pipeline to sustain commitment to deliver 1.5 GW additions within the business plan period and long-term growth ambition to tenfold capacity within this critical decade to 5-7 GW by 2030.

Asia in general and South-East Asia in particular have a tremendous potential for decarbonization but are also a step behind the in terms of its intrinsic ability to develop renewables and thus the energy transition. ASEAN countries have very limited grid interconnectivity, which hinders the maximization of the usage of the renewable resources available.The Singapore government is leading the region with the aim of importing up to 4 GW of renewable energy into the country, which could be a catalyser for the connectivity of the region, potentially adding a population of up to around 2 billion inhabitants, with Singapore at its centre.

Looking ahead and from a strategic standpoint, the APAC region has very strong fundamentals, but short-term is demonstrating to be dynamic between markets. Thus, forcing to re-focus business development efforts while maintaining growth options and being efficient in managing them, which we can be achieved with a handful of active markets. Under the principle of going deeper instead of wider and following a dual track technology strategy that combines DG short-term actionability in a couple of markets like Singapore, China and others such as Taiwan and Vietnam, with centralized PV and wind onshore in the medium to long-term in Japan, Australia, South Korea, potentially Vietnam and Philippines, as well as from Cross Border projects promoting ASEAN interconnection. Namely importing 400MWac from Riau Islands, Indonesia into Singapore as per received conditional award.

With an increasingly consolidated and leading positioning in the region, the expectations for 2024 are even greater: continuing to deliver accelerated scalable DG growth while stepping up utility scale generation capabilities combining the group’s global expertise and the local know-how of the markets to develop greenfield projects.