Assurance to accelerate the deployment of renewables

UAE

Jan Zschommler, market area manager for the Middle East and Africa at DNV, talks to The Energy Year about building trust in renewables projects to support the UAE’s energy transition and helping to lower the carbon footprint of the country’s energy exports. DNV is an independent assurance and risk management provider, operating in more than 100 countries.

What are some of DNV’s offerings for the UAE’s energy industry?
The main role of DNV in the energy arena is to assist our clients in their energy transition process. Decarbonisation is happening globally, but also very much here in the UAE and the Middle East. However, and we know this from our research, while the energy transition is happening, it is not happening fast enough to meet the Paris climate goals. We see a gap between goals and actions across the world. Within this gap, we see our role as supporting our customers to become even more efficient and effective in decarbonising their businesses and deploying and scaling best-in-class solutions.
We are helping oil and gas operators such as ADNOC and other NOCs in the Middle East to decarbonise their production and market their low-carbon-intensity products through our advisory and certification work. There is a growing interest in the UAE in harnessing CCS [carbon capture and storage] and CCUS [carbon capture, utilisation and storage] solutions to reduce carbon footprints.
DNV has certified the feasibility of carbon dioxide storage, first in the Middle East for ADNOC’s West Aquifer CCS project. We can provide expertise from one of our global CCS expertise hubs and combine it with an on-the-ground presence in the UAE. This approach will ensure international best practices are transferred and applied in a way that meets specific local requirements to deliver best value to the project.
At the same time, we also serve the renewables sector in the UAE and globally by helping to accelerate the deployment of renewables. The UAE is starting from a very low renewables penetration in the electricity mix compared to Europe or the US, but the current and projected growth rate of renewables is fantastic.

How are you assisting renewable energy players in the UAE?
Through its broad experience and deep expertise, DNV advances safety and sustainable performance, sets industry standards and inspires and invents solutions. As renewable power generation picks up, we are supporting renewables developers and the UAE authorities. We help drive growth in the tendering phase of new renewables projects by providing technical advisory and assurance work to bidders, which builds confidence in new projects and improves access to finance.
We also do a lot of technical advisory work with lenders, supporting banks and de-risking their investment decisions through our technical expertise. All of this is very much needed to reach the Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. At the same time, we are serving the UAE’s power transmission and distribution segment because renewable capacity needs to connect to the grid to become available. Adding renewable capacity brings volatility to the generation profile, so the grid needs greater flexibility, capacity and resilience.
We can also provide engineering services to support project owners, technically specifying and executing the work or overseeing contractors. Moreover, we provide a lot of in-depth technical work in certifying components and qualifying certain technologies. We can also act as key players in the due diligence process. Mega-projects tend to have a moving framework with multiple stakeholders and varying ownership structures over their lifetime. This creates the need for technical due diligence to validate the technical conditions and specifications to support the financial deal.

How does DNV introduce best practices from other markets to the UAE?
DNV is a global company that was established 160 years ago, and we have worked with many customers and governments around the world facing similar challenges as the UAE. The UAE is a leader in many sectors, but in the deployment of renewables and the scaling of renewable generation, other countries have been through a similar transition a few years ago.
We have worked for example in the UK, Germany and Norway, and we can bring those learnings to the UAE and apply lessons learned and international best practices to help the country go through the process more efficiently.

What is your assessment of the developments taking place in the UAE’s green hydrogen and ammonia segment?
The UAE is taking a lead in the low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia segments, both green and blue routes, and aiming to transition from a top exporter of fossil energy to the world into a top exporter of low-carbon energy. Using their current position as a long-standing and trusted supplier of traditional energy to, say, Japan and Korea, the UAE is moving towards providing the low-carbon fuels that those countries will also have to import.
I see the UAE making big investments to achieve that position. You need world-scale infrastructure, resources and financial strength because those segments require large upfront investments, and the UAE is fortunate to be able to take them on.
The country is making a substantial effort, and we are also helping them to reduce the carbon footprint of their hydrocarbon exports. Being able to offer lower carbon oil and gas to global markets will be a key competitive advantage going forward. We certify CCS storage sites, for example in the UAE, that will ultimately be part of such export schemes. This will provide the customer on the receiving end the confidence that the UAE’s hydrogen or ammonia was produced following international standards and can be traded as low-carbon commodities.

What are the key growth priorities for DNV in the UAE?
Our objective is to continue focusing on customers who are leading the energy transition and offering support to their much-needed projects, whether it’s domestic CCS, low-carbon ammonia or the solar generation and storage projects that UAE’s national champions are developing abroad. By continuing on that journey, we will have a positive impact on the energy transition.
Companies outside the energy industry are also becoming more engaged to decarbonise and support the UAE’s Net Zero 2050 Strategy. The steel, aluminium and cement sectors, for example, are key actors in the UAE industrial environment and becoming increasingly active in this respect, and we will strive to support these customers with customised solutions and services.

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