That CoP28 was an event that catches many of the basic emotions we are going through for managing the Energy transition to rapidly move towards a safer, sustainable climate and balance with nature.
I was reflecting on the different parts and sought a way to describe these “emotions” as my reflection of the CoP28 event and all it means to me.
The Energy Transition: Navigating a Turbulent Sea
The energy transition is a complex and challenging journey, akin to navigating a turbulent sea. It’s a voyage fraught with both exhilarating opportunities and daunting obstacles, requiring us to steer clear of whirlpools of uncertainty and sail towards the horizon of sustainability.
We are about to have the CoP28 event in the UAE from 30 November 2023 to 12 December 2023, which is crucial for the energy transition. I feel this is an actual watershed event. Those representatives attending must push for substantial agreements on what needs to be done to reduce carbonization and other polluting gases, seek ways to provide clean air and a more equitable share and conserve resources, or we will forever say goodbye to achieving anything like the 1.5 C degree.
Many experts predict that our planet is presently heading for warming to 3C. If we continue this trajectory, we will enter many unknowns in how the planet reacts and responds. If we have climate extremes, the cost of human life, upheaval and damage will continue to confront us.
This is why I think the energy transition is one of the most essential areas of necessary focus, as it is one of the most complex changes from fossil-burning fuels to clean renewables powered by solar, wind and hydro.
Here, I want to provide a view summarising the Energy Ecosystem, offering some strategic steps of underlying approaches to change and where I attempt to fit into contributions supporting solutions.
As all the delegates of CoP28 pack their things and head off to Dubai, will there be any real, lasting consensus on how we can manage our world where achieving rapid decarbonization is the priority?
There are so many conflicting opinions, vested interests and “evidence” but canCoP28achieve that with the right partnerships and immediate political, corporate, and financial action, we can live in a world beyond coal, oil, and gas — one that is safer, cleaner, healthier, and more affordable for all and forge a roadmap to get there that enables all to recognize their part.
COP 28will take place from 30 November until 12 December 2023. Pre-sessionals will take place from 24 to 29 November. There have been countless meetings leading up to the period (Pre-CoP sessions) trying to forge consensus and make clear progress on many areas of essential importance.
These CoP meetings are so often widely misunderstood, and chaotic to many present, and to the rest of the world looking in, trying to understand the process, the compromises and results that result in some of the most intense days of negotiations determining all our futures.
Let me draw from a few pointers made on the CoP process and what is needed
The search for stability with all the disruption and dislocation. Alamy Stock Photo
How do you reassure those worried that significant changes to their energy system will lead to the inevitable disruption and dislocation none of us like? How can you deal with this to elevate some of those worries? How can we manage so much change occurring to give some level of stability and continuity?
Addressing concerns and reassuring individuals or organizations worried about potential disruption and dislocation resulting from significant changes to their energy systems requires a thoughtful and empathetic approach.
Putting together some areas that are avenues to explore to reduce the concerns, build support, engagement and contingencies are suggested here.
In this second post of a mini-series of three, I want to explain this decentralized community energy concept further: “This radical concept envisions the energy transition as a living, evolving entity that bridges technology and nature, sparking profound shifts in how communities generate, consume, and perceive energy. It challenges established norms and prompts a complete reimagining of our relationship with energy and the environment”.
By introducing the concept of the “Energy Transition Nexus: A Living Energy Organism” and how it challenges the conventional approach to the energy transition:
While the concept described in my first and introductory post, “Envision Energy as a living, evolving community,” is indeed a radical departure from the existing way we see energy delivery and its transition, it takes an essential step in connecting much of the parts of the energy transition, its importance to our living.
I feel it is essential to bridge the gap between the natural world and the business world in a more closely aligned way, going beyond existing frameworks or thinking but still grounding this into business-orientated understanding to relate more.
Let’s explore a business-oriented, yet still disruptive, approach that brings a conceptual leap to the energy transition with this decentralized community proposal while maintaining some degree of continuity with business practices but set in an ecosystem way of thinking and design:
In this first post of a mini-series of three, I want to introduce a radical concept that envisions the energy transition as a living, evolving entity that bridges technology and nature, sparking profound shifts in how communities generate, consume, and perceive energy.
It challenges established norms and prompts a complete reimagining of our relationship with energy and the environment. It focuses on the community in a decentralized way for its energy.
My underlying thinking is through ecosystem thinking and design, triggering innovation engagement and activation strategies to promote innovation and change the energy transition dynamics within a community setting, offering decentralized community energy.
It comprises the following parts to consider shifting our thinking away from the presently accepted, more highly centralised thinking on energy provision into community enablement. It is conceptualized upon the following thoughts:
For me, the Energy Transition is a complex, multi-headed beast that always provides more challenge rather than less.
We seem to be faced with Hydra. The Hydra was Hercules’s second labour. He attempted to cut off the heads of the beast, but every time one was cut off, two more would grow back in its place. Another challenge in killing the Hydra was that its’ breath was poisonous to all who crossed its path.
The weakness of the Hydra was that only one of its heads was immortal. In the energy transition world, I worry that this one immortal head might be fossil fuel, challenging to slay.
I don’t slay beasts; I try to shape the behaviours of clients. Renewables feature front and centre. Getting engagement is hard work; adopting different thinking and application solutions is even more challenging. The level of engagement determines the ability to allow a different way to permeate and take hold. You need many tools, ideas, visuals, promoters, discussions, etc.
Finding the time for clients to get into these types of immersion is not easy; it has to be really “mixed” up. Do I have this “cocktail” right? Frankly, no, but tackling. Individuals or teams need to find their reactive points. They need to want to open up to change. I love the word “catalyst.” if it gains the type of reaction you are looking for, you are the agent that provokes or speeds action or change.
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.
Is the needed path to the Collaborative Energy Transition ApproachthroughGrand Challenges?
I have to admit that I am sceptical of individual energy organizations’ pledges to move toward a carbon-neutral future. They argue that there is a limited amount of time to make this transition, yet it is broadly recognized that individual organizations cannot achieve this alone. Are energy organizations open enough to alternative suggestions for overcoming the resource and knowledge constraints working alone can bring? Are they exploring alternative thinking enough, such as organised collective challenges? We need to bridge the gap through collaborations at multiple firm levels.
I believe there is a weakness in the energy ecosystem that deprives it of more significant collective action and innovation to achieve a more accelerated pathway to the energy transition. My argument is that while many energy companies are working on solutions within the energy transition, they often work in isolation and struggle to get out of their “self-made” islands of knowledge.
I suggest that applying ecosystem thinking and platform solutions could bring together many organizations to work in broader, more ambitious innovation ecosystems of collaborations or even work through grand challenge-designed approaches.
