Author Archives: @paul4innovating

Navigating an Energy Transition strategic pathway

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Energy Fitness Landscape primer

There are so many risks in the near to mid-term to derail the Energy Transition. I feel it is really hard to stay focused and not become distracted by the anti-energy transition groups. I am a firm believer in having a navigable strategic and tactical pathway to keep you on a given track along the route you have chosen to get to a given goal. Clearly, as we progress, we learn and adjustments are made but you have to map out a fairly solid (looking) pathway to keep on track.

I wrote about the concept of exploring energy fitness landscapes. The article “My initial thinking behind Energy Fitness Landscapes“, written in 2021, uses Hydrogen as an example, with a follow-up one year later. Here I am looking at the Energy Transition from an evolving technology innovation perspective. In other words, what “forces” can be identified or promoted that can transform the existing energy system through the pursuit of new inventions, innovations, or technological advancement? I took hydrogen as an example.

A risk of the energy transition is we give higher emphasis on the depth of knowledge in one area, get distracted often and fail to pull this together, to map it into the bigger picture of the practical, broader-based one. We do need a clear pathway.

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Thinking about the Energy Transition

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Thinking about the Energy Transition

One of the largest News Agencies recently asked me about the Energy Transition. These were some really tough open-ended questions: “What are the industry challenges and solutions,” “the key trends and developments“, What are the Challenges I face,” then “What critical solutions are there to the challenges” and finally “What value and guidance would you offer.”

The energy transition is a vast, complex area to view. I took a deep breath and thought about how I would break this down over a discussion of only 45 minutes. I decided to break it down into bite-size chunks such as Key Challenges, Worries, Big Ticket issues, My working issues, and finally, How the energy industry needs to get organized.

On reflection, I realized how many more points I could have raised or explained. Still, the structure of my breaking this down allows for some further thinking and additions that help me build this out, as many struggles with absorbing this energy transition, and I can build on my initial reactions here. Well, that is in my plans going forward.

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Raising the Energy levels for the Energy Transition

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https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2023

In the past week the Davos World Economic Forum has been on, where thousands gather to listen, explore, make contact and generally gather the mood of the Worlds economic climate over the coming year. The sessions are highly valuable to be selective over but listen into.

Over this weekend, I spent a fair amount of reading time working through the World Economic Forum to remind me of this incredible source of knowledge across many world issues and challenges. I think this is not an event to miss when you cut through all the negatives surrounding Davos and the “elite” and lucky ones are able to rub shoulders and get a better understanding of thinking and give some degrees of new clarity to individual thinking and their strategic direction from grasping the risks, potentials and value opportunities offered when so many leaders can find time to come together and exchange.

These reports (Whitepapers) are a storehouse of knowledge, facts and suggested actions that need to be taken. The Whitepapers found here cover Climate issues, Green Deal views, Resilience, Circular Transformation, Global Value Chains, Electricity views , Securing the Energy Transition and plenty more.

For me, the weekend focus was on the Energy Transition following on from their recent Davos event and the series of reports co-sponsored with different organizations built up over many years.

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Our Power Grids require Reliability, Resilience and Risk management.

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The pressure on our Power Grids needs urgent attention

There is a growing, possibly intense focus and awareness that our Energy Grids worldwide are in serious trouble.

The significant changing consumption needs and generation patterns are causing significant concerns that existing ageing infrastructure is becoming a major source of risk to power grid safety, reliability and financial exposure and in failing to deliver power on the expected 24 x 7, we need.

If you look at ten of the top issues that are causing a growing crisis

  1. Ageing or outdated infrastructure
  2. Supply chain failures are delaying infrastructure equipment changes.
  3. A continued public opposition delaying infrastructure options and bureaucratic barriers
  4. There is a continued lack of sizable funding to make major changes
  5. System redundancies and stranded assets and the issues of legacy write-offs
  6. The increased complexity of the grid is still unclear in its final generation mix design
  7. Cyber Attacks are continuing and exposing significant weakness
  8. Extreme weather events are growing and exposing grid vulnerabilities.
  9. Previously poor project management, inconsistencies in capital spending
  10. Changing demand needs, the acceleration of electrification and the lack of new infrastructure

The need is to find effective responses and considerations of the options, managing change simultaneously while maintaining increasing power demand.

The energy system is being disrupted, and where there are levels of high disruption, there is always uncertainty, debate and learning to take risker views of the future, creating a lot of unease and hesitation. As quoted by one senior person, “we have an inadequate view of what – positively, and in detail – we’re building towards.

As the sector transforms at such an accelerating rate, the move towards ambitious decarbonization targets has required that clean energy is explored in all those options and required to be pushed to the forefront of future solutions. Integrating that variable green energy onto the grid and hardening infrastructure assets against extreme weather are proving some industry’s most pressing challenges.

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The power to unlock energy is through innovation

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The energy shifts we are undertaking within all the energy transitions today do allow real innovation opportunities when you survey the innovation landscape.

There is complexity in all the energy transitions going on. Still, the ones that can see the possibilities and ‘energize’ through new innovative solutions hold the future in our hands to capitalize upon as fast as we can.

All we can predict is that the pace of innovation and energy transition will speed and then scale up to meet the needs of a world rapidly wanting to decarbonize. The companies that are investors in innovation will be the best placed to capitalize on this.

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My twelve energy Christmas words or triggers that will drive my 2023 thinking

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So as we wind down towards Christmas and begin to look out into 2023, I thought, what are my triggering points on the Energy Transition?

So I thought I’d turn these into a simple list of my twelve energy Christmas words or phrases that will drive my Energy Transition thinking in 2023

  1. The energy challenge
  2. Inclusive energy futures
  3. Innovation technology
  4. Complexity unravelling
  5. Unchecked consumption
  6. Stranded Assets
  7. Emerging Energy Platforms
  8. Energy backbone
  9. Climate change essential actions
  10. Clean energy innovator
  11. Pathways, landscapes and roadmaps
  12. Transition management

I made an Energy wish list for 2022, and all I can say is it was wildly optimistic, so this year, I’ll stick with my simple Christmas triggers.

So what trigger words or energy phases will drive your Energy work or thinking in 2023?

Add them below

Wrapping up the Energy Crisis Year of 2022

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(ABC News: Michael Barnett)

This has undoubtedly been a year where the Energy Transition has felt, more often than not, thrown into reverse.

In Germany, coal mines have been reopened, and nuclear power stations scheduled to be decommissioned been given an extended lease of life. Nearly all EU countries, very dependent on Russian oil and gas, have been scrabbling like crazy to find alternative sources, all at rising prices and growing difficulties in finding supplies. The cost of energy to the consumer has risen significantly, and many Governments have been forced to offset winter bills with different incentives, payments or credits that will be highly expensive, so where does that cost come from, and what gets sacrificed?

France struggles with a rapidly ageing fleet of Nuclear power plants and the issue of how many of these can be up and running and functioning at levels to maintain power to their network and be able to support neighbours at times of their need.

The UK Government announced this week it’s the first opening of a new open coal mine in Cumbria a year after the UK lobbied to ‘consign coal to history. The developer, West Cumbria Mining, said it was “delighted” it could now deliver what it called “the world’s first net zero mine”. It plans to offset the emissions from the construction, mining and domestic transport phases. I hate the word “offset”. West Cumbria Mining says the coking coal it produces will be used for steelmaking in the UK and Europe. The local council had granted permission to dig for coking coal until 2049, with the mine expected to create about 500 jobs.. Yet the two prominent companies that still make steel using coal in the UK – British Steel and Tata – say they plan to move to lower carbon production methods. According to the UK Telegraph, this Cumbrian coal mine is economical and diplomatic idiocy.

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Not in this Text; disappointment at CoP 27

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CoP 27- “Not in the text” is most telling

The UK’s lead climate negotiator, the minister Alok Sharma, delivered a very telling speech at Cop27 revealing what some countries had tried to push through to an agreement.

Sharma was the president of the Glasgow Cop in 2021, and he was clearly frustrated with the events of the last two weeks in Egypt. and especially the final text outcome adopted at the Cop 27 meeting.

I personally was disappointed by the Cop26 held in Glasgow and chaired by Alok Sharma and the stunning last-minute intervention by India (along with China) where the phasing out changed to phasing down of coal.

Twelve months on and we seem to be making extremely slow or no progress on fossil fuels in any Global agreement of phasing down or out.

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Building momentum, gaining idea generation into energy insights

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Gaining momentum and idea generation

I have been asking myself how a combined effect of innovation and ecosystem design thinking will support the energy transition we are undertaking to give it additional traction and generation.

In a recent report released by IEA in the last week or so, “Tracking clean energy innovation in the business sector: an overview.” they emphasised the point that “Acceleration of clean energy innovation, supported by effective innovation policies, is critical for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, and the technology development in the business sector will be to success“.

I draw from this report this initial perspective: “The major drawbacks are we are simply NOT recognizing the need to have a clear and consistent way of approaching and capturing innovation at the front end of discovery or exploration. The inconsistency of not having clarity of how innovation is undertaken and then reported uniformly is continuing to hold up upfront investment, institutional capacity building and consistent classification of technologies”.

The IEA estimates that companies active in energy technologies spent almost USD 120 billion on energy R&D in 2021, three times more than governments. They remark, “Beyond these headline estimates, however, information on the energy innovation activities of firms – whether freely or commercially available; at technology level or highly aggregated – is frustratingly scarce.”

We need to recognize the importance of innovation, not just on what it can bring in through future solutions but on its need to have a recognized, established process to capture, evaluate and openly report on any innovation project’s progress.

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Accelerating the new Energy Ecosystem

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Accelerating the Energy Transition
https://innovating4energy.com

Over the next twenty to thirty years, the Energy System will undergo a massive transition to achieve that eventual 2050 net-zero target of decarbonizing the energy system fully, resulting in a clean, climate-resilient energy transformation.

I have been looking in a short mini-series at the need to structure the Energy System in a very systematic and consistent evaluation as we undertake the changes from a fossil-reliant ecosystem into a clean, renewable one, with the overriding obligation to address climate change.

In this third and final post of this series, I focus on 1. Innovation & Ingenuity, 2. Experimentation & Rapid Pilots, and 3. Leapfrog Opportunities and discuss a value proposal.

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