Chris Pritchett – Shoosmiths

David Hunt (00:01.006)
Hello, and welcome back to the Leads in Clean Tech podcast. This is episode 166. Now over the last eight years or so of those 166 episodes, the majority of our guests have been founders, CEOs, and investors. But I do like to throw into the mix occasionally a thought leader who has a sort of a very much a very strong overview of the sector in a number of areas. And for that reason, I brought today guest Chris Pritchett.

who is the co-head of energy and infrastructure at Shoesmiths and a bit of a legend, in the UK in the energy transition. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris David Pritchett (00:36.383)
Thanks, David, thanks ever so much for the intro and for that very kind, kind setup. Obviously we’ve known each other a little while and, know, we know you as sort of ever present as part of the scene and part of the community around the energy transition. So it’s, you know, it’s an absolute joy to get to talk to on camera.

David Hunt (00:40.598)
Hahaha

David Hunt (00:54.902)
Yeah, it has been a while and some of the things we’ve seen over the years and then we’ll dive a little bit into that because it has been and continues to be a massive important sector but sometimes and obviously you feel that because we get into a little bit of a bubble of course and we all meet each other at the same conferences and conversations and there’s obviously benefit in that but actually there are certain times in the world where energy becomes a bit more prevalent as a topic and we’re in that now I think which is

perhaps a useful thing to start framing around. But before we do that, let’s have a bit of an intro from yourself, Chris. Give us a little bit of the bio of what led you into law initially and then what led you into, very specifically over many years now, the energy space.

Chris David Pritchett (01:39.135)
So well, that’s a, I guess going back too many years now, unfortunately, but I thought for a while I wanted to do business and economics and started off doing an economics degree and then I did.

bit of law with it and then realised that gradually the law was something that came more naturally to me compared to the economics which had quite a lot of numbers and quite a lot of maths in so gradually sort of shifted to doing a law degree. I of really enjoyed that, really enjoyed law school, really enjoyed the discipline of it and you know the ability to kind of argue. think my parents would tell me that that was something I was always quite prone to do but also I think like many

like perhaps like medicine or…

areas like that, there’s so many different areas you can get excited about. And whilst you don’t have to love the whole of the legal industry, there’s elements of it which become really relevant, become really exciting. And I was lucky enough to get a training contract at a firm called Burgess Salmon, Bristol, and fell into the environmental law team at that point, which was still quite a new discipline. It was one of the first dedicated environment teams, I think, in the UK.

And I think it was looking then very early at issues that really, really mattered to me. And I think were something that I got fired up by. although I didn’t start off doing renewable energy, because it was of barely a thing at that point, I kind of felt it came into it from sort of environment and sustainability and really enjoyed those conversations. And I think my wife always made the point that

Chris David Pritchett (03:19.069)
you it sometimes kills the mood at dinner parties when you say I’m a lawyer and particularly in slightly progressive Bristol if you said, yes, but I’m an environmental lawyer and I’m dealing with sustainability issues and then the conversation could start up again and you get accepted back into the mix. So yeah, I think it was.

David Hunt (03:31.16)
Right.

Chris David Pritchett (03:34.974)
you know, very early on being in, you know, wanting to do law in a subject area I cared about and also with people that I found inspiring. And I was lucky to have that all the way through my career. People who were fired up and passionate and believe in what they do. And I think some of the people that we work with and work for and, you know, people that you’ve had on your podcast before, people I think are in it for, you know, not just a way of making money, but a way of making some sort of positive change. And I think those are good people to spend your time working with.

David Hunt (04:04.672)
Yeah, you know, it’s a fascinating thing that how many people who look back and kind of to some degree fell into what they’re doing. I certainly would hold myself into that. But this where that question of intent and luck and timing, which is everything in life, I think, and certainly in business is there’s an intent, there’s a passion, there’s obviously all the attributes that you need. But sometimes it’s just right time, right place.

right connection and that started environmental law. How many years ago? I’m going to embarrass you now, but how many years ago is that now?

Chris David Pritchett (04:39.679)
who are 25. Yeah.

David Hunt (04:41.39)
All right. So that then takes you to a point where you would just pre, you know, the stuff where I started getting involved in 2007 when solar suddenly started becoming a thing and exploding and you’re obviously fortuitously and say with intent, but fortuitously able to really excel at that time. So tell us a little bit again, because there’s always a misconception a bit about lawyers and plenty of jokes, of course, and we won’t share all of those right now, but perhaps you can just share a little bit of your

Chris David Pritchett (04:50.718)
Yeah.

David Hunt (05:11.406)
area of law in energy and infrastructure, what exactly do you get involved with? Because I’m sure that’s quite varied.

Chris David Pritchett (05:19.877)
It’s completely varied. think we’re set up very much as a sector team. So people don’t come to us because I do contracts or they don’t come to my colleagues because they do leases or they do financing. They come because we are…

you know, designed around being steeped in that industry sector, sort of part of its fabric, you know, understanding the pressures and the, you know, the objectives that all our clients have. Having said that, you know, short answer to question is, is whatever a project or a client needs. So whether that might be on a typical solar and calculated battery project, that could be doing the lease and option with the landowner. It could be helping on the planning applications. It could be advising

on some of the grid application process and managing that, particularly if you’ve got funders involved who the number of times we have to explain grid connection process to some very well-meaning but slightly baffled funders, know, half the time we’re just trying to explain what the hell is going on and oftentimes, you know, which we don’t always know ourselves, know, because neither does the rest of the industry. So that’s quite good. We’re getting to build, we might be doing

work on the financing, we might be doing the EPC contract or the O &N or you know component supply agreements for basically putting the things together and then of course there’s the route to market, there’s buying and selling power and I think that’s a real sweet spot for Sheetsmiths we’re kind of very big on.

corporate PPAs, virtual PPAs, but also new and exciting ways of people buying and selling power, whether that’s peer-to-peer trading or collaborations or buyers clubs. That’s something we’re really passionate about. think there’s, know, it more accessible for a wider number of people to be able to purchase renewables. And of course then you might buy and sell a project as well. So that’s transactional.

Chris David Pritchett (07:17.237)
&A side. So I think we’d like to think we’re a one-stop shop for much of the energy industry. We’re focused on clean renewable development, we’re focused on what we call energy procurement, so buying, selling power, and then also what we call next generation digital infrastructure, which for us is electrification of transport mobility, so that’s EVs, EHGVs, vans and fleets, but also data centers, which is clearly now

goes hand in hand with any conversation about energy.

David Hunt (07:48.771)
Yeah, I dive into those for good reason in a moment. But one of the reasons I wanted to get you on is because you have that breadth of contact with a wide variety of participants and stakeholders in the sector in terms of your customer types and people that you’re advising, be that from, let’s say, the sort of on the financial, on the development side, on the corporate side. What’s the mood like at the moment? Obviously, we’re sitting here with

the state straight from who’s still pretty much shut and with the Iran war going on I’m always intrigued when there are events of any significant nature as to which businesses down the hatches and take a very cautious approach and others who think actually this is You know, it’s higher stakes, but there’s an opportunity to to really take an advantage of a situation For good reason hopefully, but what’s the I guess the mood from from?

across the client base if you’re seeing people wanting to progress things more quickly or you are starting to see things with a more cautious approach.

Chris David Pritchett (08:56.095)
I don’t think everything’s, I like any sort of major geopolitical upheaval, I don’t think it galvanises action that quickly. I think people are very much in wait and and see mode. I think it does, of course, you know, more than underline the case for energy security, any resilience, energy independence. And it then triggers, of course, a debate about the best ways to achieve that. And in the industry that I would be in then.

David Hunt (09:08.334)
Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (09:23.135)
clearly building more flexibility and renewables into our system where it’s homegrown, then notwithstanding the fact that most of the components come from China and other places, it’s still the right thing to do. And oft quoted, I think, is the figure that the cost of actually going absolute net zero is the same as one oil price shock, which we already had in Ukraine. there’s this one, there’ll be others.

scarce and increasingly volatile way of basing your economy. Now, the coals will get deafening for drilling North Sea or opening gas fields and I happen to believe the economics of that simply doesn’t work but I think it’s getting to the point of just saying, yeah, go on, go on.

knock yourselves out, see what happens. And I don’t think anything will happen, but it takes a lot of wind out of the sails of the people that are using this opportunity to again try and push the narrative that actually going clean is what’s keeping people’s prices high. So I think the mood is cautious. I think everyone doesn’t want to be too smug. mean, particularly in my case as an EV driver, it’s important not to be smug.

David Hunt (10:11.779)
Yeah.

No.

David Hunt (10:27.052)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it.

Chris David Pritchett (10:39.839)
And I think if anything, I mean, it has definitely happened. think people have…

the inquiries for commercial and domestic rooftop solar and battery and an on-site generation, either domestically or in the kind of industrial sector, has gone very, very sharply upwards. So I think businesses recognize that if they can create a degree of control over their energy generation, they can hedge and they can predict what pricing is going to look like and they have some insulation against that form of cost. And I think it’s gonna be beyond

the immediate crisis, effects of this are going to last years. And I think the fact that we have not the highest prices, but some of the highest prices in Europe is going to come under increased scrutiny. think businesses are going to need to be open minded about ways in which they can bring energy prices or energy costs down, ranging from using a bit less of it to onsite interventions, to brokering the way they…

procure their electricity to thinking about interesting ways of procuring in a different way. so the options are opening up. But I think sort of stamping one’s foot and saying, prices are too high and waiting for something to happen, I think are gone. I think we have to get on the front foot with it.

David Hunt (11:58.959)
think sometimes there’s an issue there because there are so many opportunities increasingly to make an impact in those energy costs individually from a commercial perspective and obviously from a governmental point of view as well. Sometimes there’s so many ways to skin the cat where you start, but I guess it’s

Chris David Pritchett (12:16.095)
Yeah, it can be overwhelming and I think we’re also getting to a point where people would say, well, how long does it take me to pay back the investments for the solar panels or whatever? And I think the answer is, five years or six months if there’s an oil shock and another wall.

David Hunt (12:30.862)
You

Chris David Pritchett (12:32.363)
particularly now this is sort of the second time in very recent memory that you know not just costs but whole supply chains are being put under pressure whether it’s co2 coming through the straight whether it’s fertiliser whether it’s you know everything all the kind of polymers that you kind of make out of some of these oils it is only going to put costs one way and I think we know we have to revisit not just energy costs and energy generation but also

David Hunt (12:44.877)
Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (12:58.491)
entire global supply chains are going to have to be looked at differently. And I think the shift in geopolitics is entirely about that. So think if any country is sort of looking at this with a as a real opportunity, it’s probably China. And seeing Europe really, absolutely right. Yeah. And for being organized, for being, you know, focused on the technology and

David Hunt (13:05.783)
Yeah.

David Hunt (13:12.598)
Yeah, and they have done for some decades now and reaping rewards now.

Chris David Pritchett (13:26.183)
and delivering at scale in a way that, you know, we can’t deliver either that speed of innovation or that scale. And one of my colleagues has just come back from China and Shenzhen, Singapore, and was just talking through yesterday what an incredibly mind blowing place Shenzhen is where so many of the young tech professionals have been.

building their careers and building their jobs and the speed of innovation, the speed of technology is just mind blowing. So I’m quite keen to get out and see it for myself before too long.

David Hunt (13:59.375)
Yeah, absolutely. They have the advantage, of course, of a controlled economy, but they’ve used that significantly and had the foresight to make the leaps and bounds that they have done and to a degree that leaves us in Europe and the US a little bit in catch-up mode. But there’s still a huge opportunity, of course, for all of those things to happen amongst the complexity of supply chains and all. Let’s dive into a few of the hot topics. At the moment, if you look at some of the podcasts, I obviously react a little bit to requests and the topics which are

favorable at the time, but we’ve had a number of guests talking around the electrification of transport, Delta charging recently. Because that I think leads into something you touched on there is the change now in the CNI, the sort of commercial industrial ability for companies to get involved either through solar and battery and or through fleet electrification. And ideally a combination of those things. That’s really interesting from, but I would imagine that’s also quite

the complexity you both enjoy and also where advice of somebody like you and your team really can make a big difference.

Chris David Pritchett (15:06.527)
Exactly right. mean, the projects are way more interesting because they’re multifaceted and yeah, depot projects are great example where they may want to electrify the depot so they can put a load of charges in either for buses overnight or for vans or even HTV fleets. And that’s a significant infrastructure project. Grid capacity, as you well know, is often a problem and getting access to grid in a reasonable time is a real barrier. deploying

some batteries behind the meter to try and help with smoothing out that grid impact is big, but it’s a big capital cost. And it’s people who maybe have managed Fleet before and they’ve kind of procured diesel and they’ve had to worry about the O licenses. We’ve now got a whole new sort of set of things to grapple with and to learn and to understand and to bring that alongside. For us, that’s a fantastic project because it involves power, flexibility.

involves talking about vehicles and how they’re required, how they’re financed, and that’s all got to come together with landlords and funders and DNOs on the grid, the OEMs as well. So I think what we really like about those projects is it does involve people collaborating in a way that they perhaps haven’t done before, and I think as a, you know, our view is that these projects work when people can really effectively collaborate, and I don’t just mean this at a turn-up and

think what’s in it for me, people have really got to get their heads around how do we make this happen as a collective and then everybody benefits, know, it’s the all boats rise together type approach. And I think that’s what appeals to me about the way our energy system is moving. And it’s partly driven by economics, but mostly by, you know, the limits of grid capacity. So I think when you’re

David Hunt (16:50.349)
Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (16:52.393)
considering a project that’s introducing a large amount of extra demand, then it makes sense to try and think about either some flexibility behind the meter or some additional generation on site and moving to data centers, then I think that’s going to be increasingly important because we simply can’t generate enough to meet the demand for data centers at the moment.

David Hunt (17:10.574)
Yeah, with the, I guess those types of depot projects on the one hand, of course, I should say it’s been very, it’s very, very different managing a fleet when one which is consisting of hedging on your fuel prices and everything else, which, typically these organizations do invest and understand assets, I guess, because you’re buying a fleet of vehicles of any description that’s an asset and you’ve got to look at the longterm view on that. And of course, now we’re starting to see the TCO.

So cost of ownership really starting to lean in towards electrification, but they understand at least assets. Same for the real estate companies, I guess, that you deal with. They understand sort of, I guess, the nature of an asset and utilization of that. But it does become from the conversations I’ve had with my own clients and going back to the solar days of my own, which was very different then, but still we were doing some CNI solar at the stage at that time. And just…

because it’s been around for a while for us that have been around for a while, but for a lot of people, it’s still something they’ve never really had any exposure to. And there’s that complex of trying to get people to understand the, guess, the nuance of a new world where your power does become self-generated, where you can enter that sort of flexibility and aggregation market. I just wanted to, one question I did want to ask, because we do work, I’ve worked with a number of people in that sort of CNI battery space, is,

I think we’ve talked before that solar PPAs and power PPAs are, know, a core fundamental of your business in an area where you’ve got a lot of strength. Perhaps we can touch on that a little bit, but is an FPA, a flexibility purchase agreement, a thing yet, or is that just a bit of a phrase? Because it seems to be that there’s an opportunity there, but it covers a few bases. Is it yet something which is understood or that you’ve had much involvement with?

Chris David Pritchett (18:56.479)
Flexibility purchaser, I haven’t. mean, what we are doing of course is loads of aggregation and optimization and flexibility based arrangements, predominantly around battery. But I think we’re starting to, we have done quite a lot of aggregated.

CNI and Domestic Flex, so that’s coming. And I think, you there’s, can aggregate an awful lot of people’s houses and, you know, that’s one thing, or people’s, you know, smart charges. And that is a really exciting opportunity to participate in those flexibility markets. But you plug in 15 buses overnight, that’s a battery asset that the grid can use and can play with. So I’m really excited about that. think, you know, these agreements come in a number of different forms and names. And I think we’re, you know,

We’ve been doing sort flexibility contracts for over a decade now. And again, find it really exciting. And I think, you know, anything with a battery or anything with the ability to participate in those markets, either by sort of spitting out power or reducing its consumption. So anything from smart hot water tanks to EV chargers to whole industrial, you know, manufacturing lines.

can all be sort of switched down and up in order to support that grid and get paid a bit of money or provide that sort of flex that the local and the national grids need. So yeah, more and more and more, absolutely. I mean, we need a more flexible and a smarter grid. And I do think local markets and local, as far as I can matching local generation and consumption.

is the answer to take a whole load of strain off the transmission network. It introduces a whole lot of efficiencies because you haven’t got so much losses by moving too many things around. It allows a much more sort of granular approach to balancing the grid at the right frequencies. And it should deliver better outcomes for those people generating power and for people who then are purchasing it. So I think, you know,

Chris David Pritchett (20:59.113)
Let’s take a sort of depo and a data center as a good example. I think if you’ve got some generation and you can actually make those projects work, then we’re speaking much more to not sort of enormous hyperscale data centers, edge data centers with generation, with flex, with demand. And I see that as a much more sustainable, much more resilient way of developing our infrastructure around the country.

So I’m sort of, I’m excited by that. I think it’s got an awful long way to go. You we’re still on that transition from 14, you know, thermal power stations and a whole regime that was built around those 14 generating assets to a world where we are gonna have, you know, literally millions of generation instances and millions of flexibility assets, you know, and I think the system is catching up.

David Hunt (21:50.991)
Yeah. What are some of the challenges or misconceptions that you have? Because I would imagine that clearly a lot of your clients are obviously in the sector and they’re well versed in exactly what’s going on. But on the flip side, know, particularly in the commercial world, perhaps there are people that are engaging in this for the first time. are, you know, for those who are buying either the services and or the infrastructure for a depot or for a battery, what are some of the perhaps the misconceptions or the challenges that you have from outside of the bubble, if you like?

Chris David Pritchett (22:20.927)
Yeah, that’s a really good question. think, and also we have to accept that we are in a bubble and there’s stuff that we don’t fully understand. know, HGV is great example of that. I’ve only sort of recently started thinking about was the payload impact of having a battery HGV. And there’s obviously there’s additional weight in that vehicle. And if you’re then saying to, you know, your financial director that you’re going to have to reduce your operational payload by whatever percentage is 10, 15%, that’s instantly bad news.

David Hunt (22:45.55)
your payload.

Chris David Pritchett (22:50.881)
And I believe that there’s got a lot lobbying going on at the moment to say that actually because the weights distributed across the bottom of the vehicle, know, actually we could increase the axle weights by an equivalent amount. So I think that’s looking quite positive, but that’s one of those sort of instant things that we as lawyers in the energy space have to really understand. And we’re lucky we’ve got a really good logistics team as well at Shoesmiths who get all that and they get…

David Hunt (23:04.654)
Mm.

Chris David Pritchett (23:18.847)
the need for uptime and the impact on drivers and how do you sync drivers, tachographs and rest stops with charging or what’s the optimum amount of charging to be doing and how often do we need to go. And I think in this country, we’re quite a small island and actually the distances are not sort of trans-Canadian. So it really creates a great opportunity and I’ve been quite pleasantly surprised by how you sort of enthusiastically

HTV is looking at a battery, looking at electric, as opposed to the number of other options which could be out there, know, biomethane or hydrogen or SAF. And I think we’ve, I’ve been surprised and encouraged by the appetite and enthusiasm for the I think the funding barriers are there. Grid is clearly the one at the minute. was on the panel at the SMMT electrified event last month.

David Hunt (24:04.364)
Yeah, that’s gone quite quickly, isn’t it? I think you and I obviously

Chris David Pritchett (24:16.765)
And that was the main issue on debt policies. How do we get access to grid and how quickly and industry saying that we want priority access to grid and Twitch, you know, you and everyone else at the minute. No, and I think the industry collectively has to come together around that to otherwise the data center will have it all their own way, I think. But there are ways of approaching it. There are are ways to go about it and there are options there.

David Hunt (24:31.416)
Exactly.

Chris David Pritchett (24:45.993)
But it’s tough and that is one of the major sticking points of the minute. And I think if we had to focus on one area, it’s how do we create enough collaboration and people with innovative solutions that allow people to kind of get on with these projects. Because the appetite’s there and the money’s there. As with renewable generation, grid is still an issue. We’re suffering from a…

David Hunt (25:08.686)
Do you think…

Sorry, it’s an interesting point you make actually, because all aspects of the energy transition are reliant on a grid connection, the vast majority of them, certainly all of the electrification stuff, and the demand we all know is backlogs and everything are challenging. Do you think because there’s a hype around AI, and clearly it’s not just hype, but there is a lot of hype and discussion as well, that governments who are often swayed

more by hype than knowledge because it’s very difficult to know everything. As a politician, we’ll lean towards providing that kind of grid connection advantage to oncoming data centers to the detriment of industry, which is still the backbone of GDP.

Chris David Pritchett (25:55.592)
Yeah, and schools and hospitals. I think there is a real hype around the AI and hyperscaling, and I think that’s entirely understandable. We know where that’s coming from, but it is a of, because of potentially insatiable demand. If you deliver that amount of generation, it’s going to get used up, and then they’ll go again.

David Hunt (26:12.834)
Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (26:17.599)
And I do think that there is a way of doing things and maybe phase in your capacity alongside developing renewables. if you are going to go down the gas engine route, maybe you can then start to blend in some some some biot fuels or sort of biomethane as well, or biogas into that mix, which means you can, again, you can, can, if you’re going to put in a gas engine to fire a data center, at least you can then sort of clean it over a period of time. So maybe sort of, I think, sort of phased in

approaches make sense. think I’m a huge believer in the opportunity around SMRs and nuclear, again we’re talking about doing things on a distributed level. So we do things locally, we create those local clusters of demand generation. Same data centers, I think we can stick edge to data centers all around in the cities that need them, close to water, close to cooling. I think at the minute we are

quite driven by land availability, grid availability, latency on the cable connection, and also workforce, where people are actually able to… It’s interesting to see how Scotland, given that they’ve got grid, they’ve got land, how they got workforce. But you’re right, I think there is a slight danger that… And this was a point I made to the EHGV operators really, that…

David Hunt (27:28.94)
many people. Yeah, yeah, interesting.

Chris David Pritchett (27:40.352)
the data centers are the loudest voice in most governments here at the moment. And I think we probably needs to, or you find a way of collaborating with those entities. mean, you might have come across the guys at Reload Energy, but they are developing great big group connections expressly with the intention of allowing connections for HTV and data centers and ports and maritime. I mean, ultimately it’s a…

that’s a really sensible collaboration because there’s one connection process, a great big amount of capacity, and then you can sort of build a private wire network and spur off these various developments. And I think rather than 13 people buying into you. Yeah.

David Hunt (28:15.02)
Yeah, comes to the… Sorry Chris, that comes back to the collaboration thing you were talking about initially is that you need to think more broadly and listen to have more partners who are able to take advantage of the grid connection ultimately or the project as a whole that independently…

Chris David Pritchett (28:31.983)
Well, the way look at that is that if you’ve got 14 different parties all applying to something, that’s a queue instantly and that is a problem. You’ve got one party aggregating all that and then managing the onward connection process. You’ve made a DNOs or a NISOs life easier, actually. I think those sorts of sensible collaborations, I also think…

David Hunt (28:40.152)
Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (28:56.975)
Minimizing grid impact is really important so you can actually, you don’t have to demand maximum capacity, you can reduce your impact with onsite generation demand plus flex. And I think that’s going to be increasingly important. I mean, it costs more because you’ve got to build more kit.

But then you’ve got to weigh that up against the fact that you might get connected three years earlier. And there’s three years of revenue and profit then that you otherwise wouldn’t have. And I think we’re starting to have more of those conversations where, you know, initially people might say, the battery, that’s a big capex impact. And I don’t like the way the numbers stack up. But if you can try and operationalize that cost, either in terms of, you know, speed and cost of reconnection.

cost of the UPS that you otherwise have to put in, you maybe that can serve that purpose too, a reserve of that capacity. Maybe you can generate some money during flex. You know, we need to look at it in a different way. It provides some hedging against price volatility as well. And it moves from just being a capex scary number to being sort of interesting sort of slightly amortized cost across the operational lifestyle of the asset. And I think that’s really where batteries can play.

when people recognise the ongoing value they bring.

David Hunt (30:14.19)
I that’s really interesting. I guess drawing analogies from my own sort of experiences is oftentimes, perhaps if you take your example of a battery, there’s my experience, it’s been a role or a personal in a business. But when actually you start to ask questions, it’s a myriad of other things which are all interconnected in terms of the success of a project or the success of a company. the thing you first brought in to talk about, sold them is the thing that really needs to be sold first.

Chris David Pritchett (30:37.449)
Yeah.

David Hunt (30:43.79)
from an enjoyment perspective or from an advisory perspective, think that obviously is intellectually challenging and enjoyable when you can actually bring some answers or at least some great questions to the table when people first think, well, we might need a battery or.

Chris David Pritchett (30:56.895)
Quite often, more often than not, it’s just simply, have you spoken to this person? And that can be the most useful bit of advice we ever give the client. Actually, this could be a really interesting conversation for you guys to have. At worst, it’s an interesting conversation. At best, it completely changes the strategy and it unlocks something that otherwise was looking sticky. So, yeah, sometimes that’s an involvement in that perspective.

meeting and dealing with lots of different people is something that clients value the most almost. We know who they might want to go and talk to and we might have picked up some sort of nugget along the way that they otherwise wouldn’t get hold of. So I think in the world of AI and Claude doing a great job on the advice, I think sometimes it’s always extra.

David Hunt (31:42.176)
Exactly.

Chris David Pritchett (31:42.26)
little bits of nuggets and wisdom and connection and experience that actually is the extra value that the client really values, really enjoys getting. And these are interesting projects. We’ve got energy projects, particularly on the kind of EV side, their solar battery, a load of fast DC charges.

and a Starbucks or an a Greg’s, you I can, I can take my mom to the project to work. I’m going to find that slightly mainstreaming of, of the technology really exciting. You know, it’s, it’s coming right into the retail for court and right into people’s faces. And I think, you know, I probably you find no shortage of people with opinions down the pub who wants to talk to you about it, but you know, it’s nice to know that we’re doing something that is at least relevant and people are, are interested in, in what, in whatever form.

David Hunt (32:32.377)
Yeah, yeah, the pub conversations can be a bit trickier. A fellow EV driver of many years, as you know, but certainly in business, when going back to the professional service and advisory thing, blowing our own collective trumpet a little bit, it’s not necessarily the specialism for which you technically get paid that has the value. Quite often, it’s everything that comes around that from a knowledge perspective. But cool. So let’s look, Chris. It’s been since…

Chris David Pritchett (32:37.553)
David Hunt (33:00.334)
We’ve been in the sector, it’s always been dynamic. It will continue to be so for a while, but perhaps let’s do a bit of backwards and forwards thinking. Firstly, what has changed in the last five years from the energy transition point of view, from the types of clients and customers that you’re working with? Yeah, what’s kind of evolved, what’s changed? What are the situations, some of the things which have, for better or for worse, are different than they were five or six years ago?

Chris David Pritchett (33:26.431)
Great question. Five, six years ago, we were right in the middle of COVID, so that was quite instructive, because all the businesses took off at that point. What has changed? What wouldn’t I do now? I’d be cautious about going into pure play front of me to utility scale battery development in the UK, which has got such an enormous capacity. So that has sort of evolved.

David Hunt (33:48.535)
Mm.

Chris David Pritchett (33:48.552)
I don’t really think data centers were talking to energy companies in a totally advanced way. don’t think housing developers were talking to energy companies in the right way. And logistics, know, warehouse developers now, I think it is now a point where that is now considered a critical question. I think an understanding the grid capacity, whether for generation or for import and supply is a precious commodity and needs proper conversation. And I think that’s important.

I think the investment companies that own big warehouses have definitely got on board with the fact that solar is a really good idea. I think, yeah, definitely we’re sort of some of the future home standard is going to move the dial on actually, you know, what needs to be on a new build house. I think that’s a significant, because I think any company would tell you it’s quite hard to get retrofit sorted out.

takes an awful lot of knocking on doors, awful lot of convincing, but actually sticking with new build, I mean, it feels like a no-brainer. So I think we’ll see, and we’ll continue to see an evolution of a lot of solar. I think there’s still good opportunities for solar in the UK and in Europe. I think there will be a lot of batteries. think batteries will be working very hard in our system. They just might not all be.

gigawatt in front of the meter because I think that capacity is quite busy. They’ll be more distributed hopefully alongside generation, hopefully alongside edge data centers. So I think we’ll have a lot of batteries and a lot of flexibility is what we need. It’s just not all going to be delivered by shipping containers and fields given that we’ve got a big oversupply for that at the minute. So you might see a lot of those connections being converted into data center or demand.

David Hunt (35:11.011)
Yeah.

David Hunt (35:37.526)
Yeah, exactly. Creating these hubs.

Chris David Pritchett (35:38.56)
I think what is it that happens, think people are more excited, think EV is such a politically charged area, isn’t it? But I think, I don’t think we’re there at the mainstream yet, but I think the technology getting so good.

We heard yesterday the price point now is that a new EV is cheaper than an equivalent ICE vehicle. Those are big moments. think some of the game changers coming are going to be enormous. think BYD coming in with a flash network and the kind of megawatt level charging for cars and we can charge your car in five minutes is…

David Hunt (35:58.457)
day.

Chris David Pritchett (36:18.969)
big infrastructure project and again grid will be an interesting one but luckily they make batteries too so I think those sorts of projects with range going up to 400 miles plus and I think but I think you know if you what else is coming I think the payment you know the interaction between car and charge point such that the customer doesn’t have to get involved and get annoyed you know

David Hunt (36:23.713)
Yeah.

It’s interesting.

Chris David Pritchett (36:47.421)
Plug and play, plug and charge, think is exactly what’s needed. Anything that involves downloading multiple apps and having to fill in details and phone up the help support desk is instant no-no, even to people that are passionate about the sector. So think that’s changed. think setting up a CPO at the minute, I think would be tough. think they’ll be with seeing Proleo gone the way. We’ve seen some failures.

David Hunt (37:01.485)
Yeah.

David Hunt (37:15.522)
more &A activity for you there I’d imagine as that consolidates.

Chris David Pritchett (37:18.819)
Yeah, yeah, the market will consolidate and I think people will need to integrate with different parts of that ecosystem. So whether you are sort of horizontally integrated like the sort of fast charge, you’ve got the sign-throughs next door. You you’ve got land, you’ve got customers, you’ve got parking space and you’ve got the ability to drive traffic either way. I think that makes sense.

Or you integrate with your electricity supply chain. You develop your generation, develop your flex, you manage your energy. So you’re a fair chunk of your import costs are then within your gift a little bit more. So you can play with pricing. I think we’re going to see more hubs for commercial vehicles. And by that I mean light delivery, Ubers, taxi fleets. And then of course what’s coming is autonomous.

So developing charging infrastructure for vehicles that will go and charge themselves. You don’t need a Starbucks and a Gregson, you don’t need a playground, you don’t even need a toilet.

David Hunt (38:16.366)
But fortunately for you, you probably need to some fairly strong insurance and legal protection around these things.

Chris David Pritchett (38:25.407)
Exactly that. So it’s an evolving market. think people will start to see the value also of having that ability to really keep hold of that customer’s data. if you are, people will, at the minute, there’s still not enough interaction between charge points in a car park of either a retail facility or a gym or a pub. There seems to be very little crossover. I think.

brands will suddenly say, look, I want to capture that customer’s data and all that information. I want to keep that relationship tight. I don’t want to run them. don’t know anything about running a charging operator, but there’ll be people who will provide all the white label services in and it’ll have your brand at the top. And then, you you control our customer relationships. So it’s why the MSAs have done it, it’s the Apple Greens and Motos are doing it. It amazes me that…

A brand like Halfords doesn’t have its own CPO, but that seems like a great example of where wouldn’t you just have your own charging operator that is all provided by somebody else, white label to your brand and slap a yellow or orange sticker on it. So I think the CPO market is really interesting. think that’s consolidating and changing and looking for where it can.

keep its margins. EHGV obviously we talked about, think that’s hugely exciting. Lots of challenges but your real willingness to do it and funding is available, it’s overcoming these more practical problems and then you

Also getting people to work in a new way. These are people, as you say, in industry that is very finely tuned, work on very small margins, very sort of tight scheduling, very tightly regulated, and we’re throwing something completely new into the mix.

David Hunt (40:10.19)
Yeah, and people inherently resistant to change. That’s just human nature. And, you know, obviously you get people who are the early adopters, if you like people like ourselves, who were doing things early and most of our audience, I would imagine. equally, generally, you’re asking people to change entire systems and ways of thinking and going about their business, which they may have done for 10, 30, 40 years of their career.

Chris David Pritchett (40:30.591)
And this is it, and this goes back to the question you said earlier, it’s not just about can we agree to what’s the total cost of ownership. There’s a whole sort of ecosystem and culture that we don’t fully understand. that’s why we’re very lucky at Jusness, we’ve got a very experienced commercial logistics team that do, they understand all that. And also like, know, great big…

logistics warehousing development teams understand building the infrastructure. And so actually what we’re really excited about is bringing all that together in the same conversation and actually seeing if we can properly understand the barriers, but also the reluctances and the nervousness and how do we create the right collaborations to overcome those. to come back to it, these are the projects I enjoy because it’s ultimately about.

Clearly it’s about legal advice and it’s about options and introductions, but it’s a lot about bringing people together to get something done. Hearts and minds bring stakeholders together to deliver. That really is the most satisfying thing.

David Hunt (41:26.68)
Yeah, move the door forward.

David Hunt (41:35.267)
Yeah, actually, it leads me a little bit with slightly running out of time, but it’s been great to get those insights. But just jump back on something you said there, because I know you’re one of Rory Sutherland, who obviously engages quite a lot on the V front. I just recently, blatantly, because it recommended some time ago, read Alchemy, one of his books. So leads me to the question I tend to close on, which is, are there any books over your career that have had an impact on you, be they fiction or nonfiction?

Chris David Pritchett (41:44.361)
Yeah.

See you

David Hunt (42:04.856)
have had an impact on your life and career.

Chris David Pritchett (42:09.087)
It’s a really good question. Yes is the answer. It’s sort of hard to pick one or two because I sort of tend to consume and flip top around, but I do.

I do like autobiographies and I find that actually they are, I mean they vary, gosh they’re incredible, sometimes they’re of massively narcissistic and other times it’s really instructive but I kind of, I like sometimes to focus on you know people that don’t, that I don’t think I think like if that makes any sense. I like Peter Gabriel’s autobiography and I love that but I kind of love that sort of creative, yeah that’s probably why.

David Hunt (42:44.342)
Okay, but you’re a musician as well. but yeah, but I do like Peter Gabriel. Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (42:49.919)
But I also played a decent amount of Rogue People. I read Sam Warburton’s autobiography and that is not going to set the world alight, but it is full of more of these kind of leadership coaching bits. It reads a bit like a sort of annoying LinkedIn post from an ex-Marine after time, but I found that really useful. It was a really good sort of book about discipline and self-control and, you know, sort of managing your own…

emotions to deliver a sort team outcome. I found it incredibly vulnerable and incredibly revealing and you know yeah so not related to renewables at all you know.

David Hunt (43:30.158)
But sometimes that helps on that front, to add a few red legacy, which was obviously written by the All Blacks guys around rugby ostensibly. But actually in terms of culture and teams, phenomenally insightful and useful.

Chris David Pritchett (43:36.915)
Yeah.

Chris David Pritchett (43:40.511)
They are the highest performing team in the world pretty much. So really weirdly I do enjoy books about the environment, books about sustainability, but it’s kind of the people that make it happen and I think how we try and build ourselves into that most effective, that’s where I of probably came away learning the most.

David Hunt (44:02.894)
Yeah, yeah, now we’re a big advocate for and reader of the biography. Well, listen, Chris, it’s been great to catch up with you. Hopefully we’ll catch up face to face for a coffee or a beer at some point soon. But thanks for sharing your oversight and tell the world looks a little bit at the moment in the in the end of transition. And yeah, we’ll share some links on the podcast service to you and to shoe Smith’s and I’m sure we’ll see you speaking at an event or contributing to the to the broader discussion very soon. thanks for your time, Chris.

Chris David Pritchett (44:10.665)
that we look forward to.

Chris David Pritchett (44:28.159)
It’s David. Take care.