Calling for rigorous due diligence standards and alignment with international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the statement underscores the sector’s readiness to support and collaborate with the UK government to help set and uphold high standards for ethical and sustainable sourcing.
Harmony Energy’s Head of Sustainability, Lucie Peralta Agass, said: “We are committed to working with partners who share our values of transparency, fairness and accountability. Collaboration between industry and government is essential to ensuring human rights are upheld across our sector and supply chains.”
Electricity Storage Network lead Olly Frankland said: “Following allegations of forced labour in the long supply chains of lithium-ion battery production, our members wanted to send a clear message that they strongly condemn and oppose the use of forced labour.
“We want to see international best practice used to develop new UK standards to enable this higher level of transparency in supply chains. The industry will work in partnership with the UK government to ensure this.”
The full list of signatories includes key operators and owners across the UK grid-scale electricity storage sector.
Signatories: Harmony Energy, Aura Power, Eelpower, EPNC Energy, Field, Flexitricity, Fluence, FRV, Gore Street Capital, Gresham House, Kona Energy, NextEnergy Group, NHOA Energy, Pulse Clean Energy, SSE Renewables, Statera Energy, Statkraft, Swanbarton, TagEnergy and Zenobē.
The Electricity Storage Network (ESN) is the industry group and voice for grid-scale electricity storage in GB. The ESN has more than 100 members who have a mission to promote the use of energy storage and flexibility to support the net zero transition. The ESN membership includes clean energy developers, owners, investors, optimisers and academic institutions. This includes representation from publicly listed specialist funds focusing on storage and independent developers that have raised several billion pounds to invest in this new technology.
