Energy

Providing sustainable, reliable, consumer oriented and affordable energy services is a key necessity to achieve ambitious targets on low carbon and climate resilient development.

SQ Consult offers energy expertise ranging from policy design and evaluation to support in project development, and from reform of energy markets to energy systems design. This wide range of expertise is used to support public clients in shaping policy frameworks that facilitate the energy transition and optimize energy and carbon markets, and private clients in all sectors (energy, industry, transport and buildings) understanding the business opportunities of greening energy supply and demand and formulating their market strategies.

Our experts offer hands-on experience in overcoming market barriers for renewable energies and energy efficiency. Our technology and market expertise covers the most relevant (low carbon) renewable energy technologies and their markets, including energy storage and other flexibility options. Our experts regularly participate in various advisory boards and expert groups, and provide our clients with a wide range of capacity building activities in system implementation and understanding market impacts, including (in-company) trainings and university level courses.

Policies and strategies

Effective energy policies and strategies are key elements for achieving ambitious targets on low carbon development, climate resilience and sustainable development. The regulatory environment for renewables needs to be dynamic and regular changes to incentive schemes and policies usually happen. SQ Consult assists in formulating clear objectives, identifying barriers and drivers, and understanding impacts of such policies and strategies. We analyse market developments and support fine-tuning of regulatory frameworks to achieve policy goals. Our experience includes the impact assessment of a single policy instrument for a municipality to the impacts evaluation of a full energy EU policy package or the corporate strategy of a large multinational to adapt to new policies. We help our private clients to understand the impact of changing policy regimes and climate commitments on business opportunities and price setting.

Sustainable energy supply

Energy investors and project developers struggle to assess the risks involved in their activities as policy makers strive to strike a balance between economic rationale and the need for energy transition. SQ Consult is very familiar with the complexity of energy systems and markets at global, regional, national and local level. We have worked on the different policy and regulatory regimes to enable the growth of renewable energy, including green certificates and purchase obligation policies. We also apply qualitative modelling and scenario analysis to support policy development, using a range of tools. Our experience makes our assistance valuable to energy companies and investors developing their renewables portfolio or reassessing its value, to project developers and to manufacturers of sustainable and energy efficient products. We assist all of them in assessing their risks and opportunities.

Sustainable energy demand

Increased energy efficiency is in most end-use sectors and markets still the most cost effective route towards a low carbon society. SQ Consult has extensive knowledge of the energy efficiency policies and legislation (acquis) of the European Union and new market based instruments for energy efficiency, such as white certificates. Benchmarking, multi-criteria analysis and cost-benefit analysis are among the methods that our experts apply. The knowledge of SQ Consult experts covers the most relevant energy efficiency technologies and their markets. Our sector scope includes industry, energy sector, buildings, transport and SMEs. We design and evaluate energy efficiency strategies and policies on EU, national, local and company level and carry out monitoring and evaluation projects to check progress towards realising these policies.