It is time to electrify heavy transport in Poland. Let's do it cost-effectively

Alicja Jankowska: What is your background and how Decade Energy was created?

Casper Norden, CEO and co-founder: Our background is actually building electric trucks. We started 10 years ago with the same vision – we wanted to decarbonize heavy road transport. Back in 2016 there were no electric trucks which was the first bottleneck to our plan. We spoke what big European truck OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and realised that they were not serious about electrification. So we decided to do something about it and started our own electric truck OEM.

Now, 10 years later, all of the OEMs have electric trucks at least in development that are coming to the market soon. Mass production of several models is set to begin. Daimler is probably the one that is most advanced with the E-Actros 600.

There are a lot of Chinese electric truck manufacturers as well, that are really scaling production now and coming to Europe. Availability of trucks is not a bottleneck anymore. The new bottleneck is being able to charge those vehicles. And it is not really the access to charging infrastructure that is the problem. It is the access to power or large volume electricity supply. So that is what we are fully focused on right now.

So you are very persistent with your vision and mission. What does Decade Energy offer to the clients now?

Our long-term vision is to make electric transportation cost competitive to diesel transportation. One of the reasons is decarbonization, another – increasing European competitiveness. The third one, which became really clear recently, with the war in Iran and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, is becoming energy independent. 98% of heavy road transport in Europe runs on diesel and we import all of that diesel outside the block. It is a strategic vulnerability for us.

We think that the only way you can achieve this technology shift at scale is if the new technology is cheaper than diesel. So that is what we want to do – it is about making the electricity price as low as possible.

Before we do that there is another bottleneck which is to get enough power into the places where these vehicles charge. It’s a transition from a world where a depot for diesel trucks – on average 30-50 trucks – consumes very little electricity – to the world of depots where each of them consumes thousands of kilowatt hours of electricity a day.

The first problem we have to solve to enable this shift to electric at a scale is to get a big volume of electricity into these places. As a part of the service we offer we upgrade grid connections in logistics depots. An important aspect of that is it is an expensive thing to do and many of these depot and fleet owners do not want to make such a big investment right now because they do not really see when they will get a return on that investment. So we do it for them and when we upgrade the grid connections for the long term need we achieve overcapacity in the short term, which is valuable from a battery storage point of view.

This overcapacity can be used by battery storage to provide services to the grid, engage in the energy market and energy arbitrage. This way it generates an income stream that can finance these upgrades.

So we future-proof assets to enable the electrification of fleets in the depots. It is connected to a battery energy storage system that removes the investment barrier. We organize the entire process in such a way that enables raising of significant funds from the private sector to finance these upgrades, which are of great importance to society.

Once you get it done, you can very easily add charging infrastructure when the electric trucks start to arrive. And our experience shows that this is the moment when the clients only start to think about the whole infrastructure – when their manufacturer informs them that the electric trucks are coming when they get a delivery date from the OEM.

And now we go back to Decade Energy’s vision – you have electric trucks, charging infrastructure, battery storage, grid connection. You can start to run all this infrastructure as one system through our software to optimize the electricity consumption to drive down the cost of running your electric fleet. That is what we are aiming for.

And that is why clients choose your offer, right?

What is unique about Decade Energy is we are 100% focused on depot electrification. We can provide the grid connection, battery storage, charging solutions, integrated software layer at the same time. If you try to do each of these elements with separate companies you will not achieve the same gains.

We are the meeting point between energy and transport, we are creating solutions both for transport that also benefit the wider electricity grid and society.

So far you have been operating in France. What are your achievements there?

We have a pipeline of over 100 sites that we are developing in France — depots and e‑mobility hubs. We work both with smaller customers and with some of the largest logistics property owners in the world. Right now we are securing grid connections, obtaining permits, sourcing components and so on.

We have also just announced that we partnered with SET Ventures and Eiffel Investment Group, with continued support from our existing investors Contrarian Ventures and Ananda Impact Ventures, to finance these projects and scale the platform behind them.

The funding we unlocked this year is about moving from plans on paper and slides to batteries and charging stations in real life. We commissioned our first pilot project this month with a leading OEM, and we are starting construction on 50 more depots over the course of this year. Commissioning of those sites will begin early next year.

As you mentioned, you have received some funding recently – it is 22 million euros from Eiffel Investment Group and SET Ventures. What exactly will it be used for?

About ¾ of that amount – 16 million euros – will be used to invest into the projects themselves: purchasing of batteries, paying the suppliers, obtaining grid connections… so CapEx investments in general.

Additional 6 million euros will be invested in our company. First, into the platform that is developing all these projects. Another thing is launching new products and adding charging infrastructure to our offer already. Third area of investment is international expansion. A lot of our customers in France have international portfolios and want us to join them there. So we are investigating Poland, Germany and Nordic countries right now and we are ready to take the next steps in these markets.

Why did you choose Poland?

Poland is one of the biggest truck markets in Europe so, naturally, it is an interesting market for us. It is also a market that is currently undergoing a major transition toward an energy sector that relies more heavily on renewable energy sources. This leads to a high demand for battery-based energy storage systems. In effect, it is a market that can be really profitable, that really needs projects like ours, that investors are willing to invest in. The government has launched a lot of incentives as well. An important and practical factor is, of course, that our customers are asking us to develop projects here in Poland as they have lots of depots there.

What are your goals here and what are you working on already?

Our main goal is the same – to build and commission the projects in our pipeline and to develop our product vision further, in more countries.  It would be perfect to work with one or two large partners at the same time, but we would also like to work with smaller customers as well.

As you mentioned, you are also entering other markets in Europe. How do they differ?

I will compare them to France, as it is a very functional market to operate in. In France there is one distribution network operator so it is very transparent and easy to work with. The government has also launched specific battery-based energy storage systems incentives. In the face of war with Iran there is even more happening in the area of energy transition – there have been launched additional incentives to purchase electric trucks.

In Poland or Germany there is a good market for battery storage with relatively high compensation. The difficulty there, in both countries, is that there are a lot of different distribution system operators (DSOs) , so there are kinds of local considerations to understand. Also the grid congestion is a problem.

The Nordic countries are more advanced in the area of electrification of trucks. The sales are higher there. It is not only about the government incentives there, that is also a push from customers. There is general awareness present there and these countries are probably a couple of years ahead compared to France, Germany or Poland. The market for battery storage is quite mature there.

What is your opinion on the state of electrification of truck transport in Europe in general? What do we need to accelerate the process?

In Europe we are good at imposing regulation but then we are not always brave enough to stick with it when things get a bit tough. We need some big push for electrification in general.

First thing would be to ask our politicians to be courageous and confident to stay on the course. The industry takes some time to read the signals and to act on them. Once it gets to actions the regulations cannot be relaxed, this undermines the efforts made so far.

Additionally, supporting distributed battery storage - deploying batteries across many locations rather than in large centralized facilities - is becoming increasingly important for grid resilience and can defer costly infrastructure investment. Our solution is designed with this in mind. On the regulatory side, France has taken a smart approach by introducing grid tariffs specifically designed for battery storage, which incentivizes deployment. I would like to see similar frameworks adopted in Poland, Germany, and Sweden.

The third important issue is transparency. Where are the bottlenecks in the grid? Where is the available capacity? This kind of access to data would significantly accelerate development and electrification. It would be useful to be able to just log into a portal and check such information ourselves. It would help such companies as ours but it also helps local governments – as we do not have to send them lots and lots of applications which increases red tape.

Is there any specific obstacle in Poland that you observe?

In my opinion the biggest issue in Poland is having such a big queue for grid connections here. There is this first come first served principle. It should be changed to best prepared to serve, first served principle. It is already happening though and it will really accelerate the process. Another thing that unfortunately stands out is access to data and transparency.

Thank you for sharing this.