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Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

Climate Confident is for business leaders, climate professionals and policymakers who need to understand what is actually cutting emissions—and what it takes to make those solutions work at scale.

Each Wednesday, technology and sustainability analyst, keynote speaker and former SAP Global VP Tom Raftery speaks with the executives, engineers, scientists, founders and policymakers turning climate ambition into measurable progress. Together, they examine the technologies, business models, policies and implementation strategies reshaping energy, transport, industry, supply chains, food and finance.

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Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

Generation Is Not Delivery: The Grid Problem Behind Decarbonisation

September 16, 2026 • Tom Raftery • Season 1 • Episode 294

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Building more renewable generation is not enough if the grid cannot carry the electricity to where it is needed. Curtailment, connection queues and delayed infrastructure are turning grid capacity into a climate and competitiveness constraint.

My guest today is Niklas Persson, CEO of Grid Integration at Hitachi Energy, with nearly three decades in electrification. We look at what happens as industry, transport and data centres demand more clean power while transmission infrastructure, permitting and grid connections struggle to keep pace.

We examine why the grid may need to arrive before demand is certain, how interconnectors can reduce the cost of resilience, and whether energy independence could actually require greater cross-border interdependence. We also explore HVDC, the 600 MW ELMED link between Tunisia and Italy, and a harder policy question: when grid capacity is scarce, who should get connected first?

Listen now to understand why electricity generation is only half the decarbonisation challenge, and what has to change if clean power is actually going to reach the businesses, vehicles and communities that need it.

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