Wärtsilä Energy’s Jon Rodriguez was a recent guest on New Project Media’s NPM Interconnections Podcast.
“We have a tremendous message and meaning as a company that aligns with the industry trend to allow renewables to be the future power source for humanity,” he said. “Wärtsilä is in a great position to help that.”
Wärtsilä is working to lead the transition towards a 100% renewable energy future. The company’s goal is to help customers in decarbonisation by developing future-fuel enabled balancing power plants, hybrid solutions, energy storage and optimisation technology.
Rodriguez, who serves as Wärtsilä’s Energy Business Director, spoke about the important role natural gas could play as we bring more renewable energy sources online while retiring other fossil-fueled plants. It’s important, Rodriguez said, to maintain firm, flexible capacity as we work to allow renewable sources, like wind and solar, to handle our baseload power needs.
“There’s a thought that any new fossil fuel plant is bad. What we’ve proven through our grid modeling studies is we can accelerate renewables if we put in flexible-capacity burning on natural gas now and that’s ready to transition to future fuels when they are ready. That hey, new natural gas resources aren’t harming but are actually accelerating transition,” he said.
Rodriquez also talks through his thoughts on the burgeoning hydrogen market, and the supply challenges currently facing the storage industry.
New Project Media (NPM) is a leading data, intelligence and events company providing origination led coverage of the renewable energy market for the development, finance, advisory & corporate community.
You can listen to the podcast here.