Saurabh Anand

One thing is clear from the data: natural gas remains difficult to replace economically across major energy uses. Its advantage is especially visible in: 🔹 Power generation, where CCGT competes directly with firmed renewables 🔹 Industrial heat, where few alternatives deliver comparable temperatures 🔹 Chemical production, where gas remains a core feedstock 🔹 Space heating and marine fuel, where LNG often retains a cost edge These fundamentals explain why gas demand remains resilient despite decarbonization efforts. To me, understanding where gas retains a structural advantage is critical nowadays. Our latest study breaks down the economics and strategic implications: https://okt.to/L8xzyv #RolandBerger #NaturalGas #EnergyEconomics #CostCompetitiveness #IndustrialEnergy #LNG

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Honoured to be part of a panel at Energy Storage Summit 2026 last month with Chris Elder Fidra Energy, Gili Almagor Nofar Energy, Orkhan Farzaliyev ING, Claire Heaton Santander, Jean-Christophe Oberto IDCM, Matthew Clare Masdar Arlington Energy Key takeaways from ESS 2026: #BESS has clearly moved from "emerging technology" to "investable infrastructure" – and the discussions suggest we’re now entering a more nuanced, maturity phase for the sector. 🔹 Market integration across Europe is accelerating Policy remains critical to market stability, but improving interconnection and cross-border integration are now central to the BESS story. As markets couple, storage will increasingly arbitrage volatility between countries, not just within local markets. Scale matters: large assets, platforms, and portfolios enable better optimisation, stronger procurement leverage, and more diversified revenues. 🔹 Revenue risk is still the hardest problem BESS economics rely on stacked revenues – arbitrage, ancillary services, capacity markets and, increasingly, co-location with renewables. The challenge is no longer finding revenue streams, but underwriting their durability over the asset life. In a merchant-heavy environment, long-term success will hinge more on optimisation capabilities than on pure asset ownership. 🔹 Risk is dynamic across the asset lifecycle Early-stage projects are dominated by development and supply chain risk, while operational assets face merchant and optimisation risk. Structuring needs to recognise that BESS risk is evolving, not static, and adapt accordingly across development, construction, and operations. 🔹Sponsor capability is a key differentiator In this asset class, not all sponsors are equal. The ability to trade, optimise, and operate assets effectively will increasingly separate the leading platforms from the rest. Merchant exposure turns operational excellence and data-driven optimisation into core value drivers. 🔹 Long-term value will be defined by flexibility Locking in revenues can support financing, but over-contracting too early risks capping upside as power markets evolve. The central tension for the next decade will be certainty vs flexibility – and how that balance shapes how BESS is structured, financed, and ultimately valued. BESS is no longer just about “building batteries” – it’s about platforms, capabilities, and optionality in an increasingly integrated European power market. #BESS #EnergyTransition

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A big week in energy — oil spikes, mega take-privates, and hyperscalers reshaping the grid. This week's #energy highlights 👇 - Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and EQT Group are taking The AES Corporation private in a $33.4bn EV transaction — a >40% premium to VWAP - BCI, Norges Bank Investment Management and Brookfield launched Northview Energy, seeding the renewables platform with 2.3GW of contracted US solar and wind - TotalEnergies and Allianz inked a 50/50 JV across 789MW of German BESS, the latest in Total's well-established playbook of sell-downs to financial partners - Google and Xcel Energy launched a new 'Clean Energy Accelerator Charge' tariff for its Minnesota data center project — Google funds the electric service costs, Xcel commits to build c. 2GW of new wind and solar - Enverus acquired Spatial Business Systems (SBS), building out its operating system for utility and grid capital deployment - And on the macro side — WTI +39%, TTF +64%, UK Power +52% since the Iran war has hit energy markets harder and faster than almost anyone expected ... and plenty more from Stonepeak, Bernhard Capital Partners, Schroders Greencoat LLP, Hanwha Group, Generate, Vertiv, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP)/Naturgy, SYSO Technologies and more — full newsletter below 👇 Ping me to receive it directly 📩 sm@hannam.partners #energy #renewables #power #BESS #infrastructure #datacenters #LNG #energytransition #privateequity #newsletter #optimization

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A number in BloombergNEF's latest investment report made me stop and read it twice. In the first half of 2026, money going into standalone utility-scale solar fell 20% compared with a year earlier. At $75.4 billion, it's the lowest level since the solar boom took off in 2021. Over the same six months, projects that put generation and batteries on the same site attracted a record $25 billion. Most of that went to solar paired with battery storage. The rest covered other combinations, such as wind with storage. It's nearly double the previous half-year and three times the first half of 2025. BNEF points to three worries pushing investors this way. Curtailment is when the grid tells a solar farm to cut its output because it can't take the power. Grid congestion is simply too many projects competing for too little network capacity. The third is price cannibalisation, which sounds dramatic but is simple once you see it. Solar plants in the same market all produce power at the same hours, around midday. When enough of them are running, midday prices drop, right at the moment solar has the most to sell. Each new plant makes the next one's revenue a little weaker. In busy markets, solar ends up competing mainly against other solar. A battery gives that midday power somewhere to go. It charges when electricity is cheap and sells later in the evening, when demand picks up and prices usually recover. For whoever is lending the money, revenue that was getting harder to forecast starts to look steadier. It doesn't make the project simple. Storage brings its own questions: how quickly the battery wears down, who decides when it charges and discharges, and how much of its income can be secured by contract instead of left to the market. Lenders will ask all of them. Still, a developer can plan for those and back the answers with evidence. Falling midday prices are much harder to plan around. Storage is starting to look less like an add-on and more like part of the basic case for financing solar. Have you seen a project get harder to finance without storage attached? #RenewableEnergy #EnergyStorage #ProjectManagement #DealExecution

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Global energy outlook scenarios suggest that electricity demand and electrification will continue to grow through 2050, while the share of hydrocarbons in the energy mix gradually declines. However, outcomes vary significantly depending on the pace of energy transition and decarbonization efforts. More ambitious transition pathways are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions, greater electrification, and reduced dependence on fossil fuels, whereas pathways prioritizing energy security and supply resilience result in higher emissions and continued reliance on hydrocarbons. Overall, the analysis highlights the trade-offs between meeting rising energy demand, maintaining energy security and affordability, and achieving long-term sustainability objectives.

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The IEA’s 2025 Outlook reinforces what we are already seeing on the ground. Energy transition, carbon finance and Article 6 pathways are converging fast, reshaping how projects are structured and financed. For us, this is playing out directly through our work in Ghana with CarbonPura, where large-scale land sector programmes and sovereign-aligned Article 6 frameworks are becoming central to long-term investment planning. This is precisely where the Green Bond Corporation, Carbon Capital Corporation and CarbonPlanet ecosystem operates, bringing project development, carbon origination and structured finance together to support governments and developers as these markets accelerate. A worthwhile read for anyone navigating the clean energy, carbon or climate finance landscape.

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LS Power closes Fund VI, oversubscribed. LS Power, a North American power and energy infrastructure company, has closed LS Power Equity Partners VI with about $6bn of commitments, above an initial $4bn target. Fund V raised $2.7bn in 2024 and is now fully deployed. Commitments came from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds through to family offices and private wealth. Source: LS Power press release, 6 Oct 2026.

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