We are in numerous world crises; the erratic weather patterns are causing droughts, floods, and high extremes of heat or sudden cold; less productive land and the oceans of the world are heating up, and that has progressively a dire consequence on our food chain.

We are still caught up in this fruitless debate of shall we / shant we switch away from fossil fuels, especially while we are (seemingly) in an energy crisis. We need to radically switch away from fossil fuel now period!!

We have worse to come. All these crises are heading us towards a world that will become increasingly difficult to live in as humans, to produce enough food or uninhabitable for many animals or species we have around us that increasingly are facing extinction. Then what about nature itself? I find it very hard that humans seem to ignore so much and just seem to want to carry on as usual. We as humans have induced climate change, we have less than twenty to thirty years to attempt to reverse it.

I would argue we need to have a revolution!

I wrote about this call for a revolution before. Revolutions are never easy, often messy, but once you embark, it is very hard to go back; it is the vision that drives the revolutionary zeal. In this case, clean air to breathe, a different economic logic, and a new way to appreciate natural resources, as we grow even more reliant on them, give us a sustainable future based on wind, sun, and water.

We need a new economic logic, one that can still offer us a market-driven or consumption-conscious one, one that can harness not harm.  An energy transition becomes a socially-driven one, compelling the existing market structures to change, harnessing, and balancing nature with all that needs to co-exist on this planet.

Immediate measures need to be far more reflecting our entering a real climate crisis

Recently, I read about immediate measures we should focus on in the energy crisis. IRENA, the intergovernmental organization mandated to facilitate renewable energy, in a recent report, “World Energy Transitions Outlook 2023“, looking at what is needed for a 1.5-degree pathway outlined EIGHT points to give structure and focus towards resolving the need to change our energy thinking.

These eight: Ambitions, Institutions, Physical Infrastructure, Jobs & Skills, Finance, the Power Sector, End-Use sectors of buildings, industry and transport, and finally, Cross-sector and Cross-Cutting policies, are suggested as needing to be tackled together, not in isolated initiatives.

Although IRENA suggested these were short-term measures, they triggered a level of thinking – we need a more radical dose of system change.

Stopping carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions is at the heart of our multiple crises. Regretfully the transitions we will need to undertake will not be orderly as we are in this crisis time. We only eventually get the world back on some form of stable footing for it to have any chance it can possibly return to one, in balance with what nature needs- clean water and air, free from carbon and pollutants, not being destroyed by human interference.

We, as humans, have brought this planet to a crisis point, and if we want to be in its future, we need to reverse all of the destructive forces coming into play as eventual consequences, plus we need future years to regenerate and replenish and bring back a balance in the planet’s ecosystem.

We need a very profound outlook on changing how we think today

What IRENA suggested as the eight parts were, for me, a need to “begin” to become more radical, more demanding, recognizing we are not in a “gentle” pathway to any energy transition but a rather grave, unpredictable one that DEMANDS a very different set of thinking on what does need to change.

Taking up as an organizing point for managing the Energy Transition, within ten to twenty years, needs the following that I imagine rapidly need to be as radical in change to adjust to the world we are only beginning to see.

I offer here some very rudimentary thinking at present

I am reacting to a suggested structure, triggering some more radical thoughts, and rough in their thinking but taking this need for undertaking a more aggressive revolutionary path..

Ambition. Our ambition needs to dramatically increase in renewable energy replacing fossil fuels. Our climate goal of keeping under 1.5 degrees by 2050 is long gone. We are on a path today of 2.5 degrees and it is time we own up to this and those consequences need to be dealt with in preparation for more droughts, famine, fires, floods, and natural disasters. Growth Nation Product as a measure of wealth needs to be abandoned. It needs to be a measure in our ability to respond, provide security and still generate “economic” affordability. My harness not harm

Institutions: Turning our present institutions into ones fit and able and fully mandated to deliver the energy transition so that we have a 2reasonable” chance to manage the real transitions we will be going through in the next ten, twenty, and thirty years. The measures in each country will be less financial-driven but resource regeneration driven, as the health and future wealth indicators.

Physical Infrastructure. Everything around us will undertake some level of physical change. To enable this change to be future positive we will need to replace existing policies and practices to manage the environment rapidly. be more responsive, optimizing solutions that provide social impact. Public acceptance and awareness need to understand the more radical approach we need in our infrastructural changes to limit natural loss, protect and prepare for the different impacts of a rapidly warming world. We need to “push through” changes that accelerate renewable solutions’ time-to-market application.

Jobs and Skills. We are at a point of vocational change, massive in upheaval and learning. Technology will take over much of what we currently do; we will need to build a reliance on artificial intelligence to allow human ingenuity to be released into being mobilized and ready to return to physical work but intelligent physical work. Human ingenuity has a real need to rise up, built on being adaptable and flexible.

Finance. One concept caught my eye in what IRENA suggested in their short-term report measures. That was “finance to crowd in private capital”. I take this to mean as we manage increasing risks from climate change we need to rethink financing so we direct our investments to where those clever ideas often lie, often they come from the “crowd”. We reduce the accepted narrow investor-centric appraisals into ones that take environmental and social risks to being central to judging returns on taking the increased risk. Risk needs to be risk responsive and how this is managed.

Power Sector. The levels of renewables we install, its primary position in use as our primary energy source needs to drive public acceptance and energy provider investment as the only investment decision in our future. We need to give priority to encouraging self-consumption or community-led commitments that build social community stock, energy security, and energy centers that are more adaptive to local needs. We finally make those adjustments to taxing fossil fuel at all its consumption or production and distribution points, regardless of pleas from vested interest. We MUST break the fossil fuel lobby and its lock. Financial institutions that invest in fossil related get heavily penalised in future financial markets, determined by Central Banks and coordinated by the World Bank. Clean energy from generation to consumption must be the sole driving point for future investment; no bridges or interim unless they have clear tax penalties. Also if they pass their helpful period for bridging towards renewables, measured on availability and deployments required, assessed by independent authorities, the tax position rises substantially to divest completely. .

End-use sectors of buildings, industry and transport. Here we need to slay the “hard to abate” dragon. Energy efficiency as a primary measure needs to be based on achieving readiness for new fuels, electrification, changing building standards, and driving behavior change on use. This acceleration of alternative financial incentives needs to be available and driven by scaling into long-term effectiveness to drive down costs. How can we encourage the industry sectors to de-risk, adapt, and adjust to rapid change not stay as rigid and fixed, reliant on a stable condition? Investment decisions need different pay-back criteria whereas renewable electrification gives more attractive returns. Transport needs alternatives to “needing our car “into community access where sharing and economic considerations dominate our travel decisions as private travel just becomes inhibitive in cost and social stigma.

Cross-sector and cross-cutting policies. I found in the original suggestions by IRENA much I could identify as changes needed are so reliant on this need to become highly collaborative. The development of collaborative bodies for managing and overseeing renewable energies (hydrogen, wind generation, solar, biomass) become significant institutions of worth and public recognition for their role in decarbonization. The application and enforcement of the circular economy need to extract and minimize the use of materials used. Energy transition technology needs to become cross-collaborative to speed up known and to be-found solutions. We need to find collaborations not just across different industry sectors but by applying real ecosystem thinking and design to bring concepts and solutions that require energy providers, climate assessments, sustainability, innovation development and governance across governments, institutions, the public and private sectors, financiers and communities of individuals. We need to rapidly accelerate our understanding of the differences in managing, sharing and learning to collaborate across sectors and to apply those cross-cutting policies that need identifying and implementing.

We need to recognize we are going to be faced with some stark choices in the future

Planning for mitigation, and having a more realistic understanding of the climate crisis unfolding needs to be told, and the decisions to put in place the changes required are essential. We must stop pussy footing around, to avoid making a decision or expressing an opinion because we are uncertain or frightened about doing so. This is the time to recognize climate impact can be devastating for our existence.

“Crisis” is often recognized in the immediate only. Sadly each day, each disaster we read about or experience is part of the building toward a real global crisis that we as humans will need to face. In the near term, five to ten years only we are facing so many tipping points that there is no turning back.

We, as humans, will not be able to influence we will only be held captive, struggling to survive on a planet that will become unrecognizable in what we have known.

Are we capable of such radical change?

These are simply opening thoughts triggered by my growing frustration and concern about what we will be facing in the next ten to twenty years. We need to be more radical in taking hold of the energy transition and making this “central” to international policy, oversight, and delivery.

What we do need is to be radical; we face nothing but a world beginning to operate more and more in crisis. Our task in our lifetime is to stop the emissions of carbon and other harmful greenhouse gases. Those just being born or yet to come need to remake the world and bring back a balance in nature where we recognize our mutual dependences within a healthy ecosystem.