This has been a hard year for me in my Energy engagements. What really triggered me to go even deeper into my energy shell was this year was the outcomes of the CoP28 followed by CoP29. I wrote a piece “dealing with the raw emotions of the CoP28 event“- it really did “push my buttons”. So much advice and pursuit of making the Energy transition changes seem to be tackled (and defended) from such narrow country or specific energy perspectives you can be in real danger of losing your engagement.

Here we are already one year further and having some really disappointing outcomes from CoP29. One quote I picked up upon “There is no deal to come out of Baku that will not leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth,” said Avinash Persaud, special advisor on climate at the Inter-American Development Bank.

This CoP29 continued to highlight the recurring impasses that had Saudi Arabia, India, Russia and China all pursing different blocking tactics and China still claiming it is a developing nation. How can some 20,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries gathered find unanimity? At this CoP29 the emerging anger at addressing real climate problems does not auger well for future CoPs. Something has to radically change, although there were some limited progress made in finance help for the flow of capital from developed countries to low- and middle-income countries to support emissions reductions and climate change adaptation.

We need real global commitment to really accelerating renewable energy, doubling down on energy efficiency and a clear commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. Yet we know how a new Trump presidency looking to ensure national security and leverage all its fossil fuel assets, arguable to the maximum.

Energy and Climate are in growing disunity

The world still faces disunity in climate policies, thoughtful transition approaches in its energy approaches. We are heading for polarization that does give low confidence for the future. Some argue that during the two weeks of fractious and at times openly hostile United Nations climate talks at CoP29 in Azerbaijan, we are learning more about where countries have drawn their red lines on climate cooperation and how can you achieve universal consensus?

Really is 1.5 degrees Celsius realistic?

The battle to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius has become a “fig leaf” that still keeps a rallying cry for climate action for nearly a decade but we have blown past that. Does a 1.5 make any sense now? Recently a report claiming the planet is almost certain to blow past the target why are we still clinging to a goal that no longer makes sense?  At COP28 last year, Bill Gates said realistically even 2C isn’t that likely anymore, and the world should just be sure to stay below 3C. Sadly for the world’s most at-risk nations, abandoning the 1.5C goal is not an option and why CoP29 was such a disappointment in finding the funding to attempt to hold the line or perish. After decades of pollution responsible for more extreme weather that now threatens their very existence. Can we afford to keep The 1.5C goal as a diplomatic and largely symbolic one. We need to get realistic but will we soon?

As nations around the world slow their transitions to emission-free energy and constrain their ambition in setting new carbon-reducing targets, which are due in February 2025 as redefined goals and realities on these recent CoP meetings where will this leave us? All three pillars of the energy transition – affordability, security and sustainability – are very precarious as governments the world over struggle to keep them in balance with domestic demands and finding all the funding demands to make a slew of transitions we need.

Climate breakdown is real

The rise in the estimated consistent hits to the world’s economies as a result of the shocks from flooding, droughts, temperature rises, and mitigating and adapting to extreme weather adds the huge increase in the risk from physical shocks to the economy. Will these new “constants” be the recognition point for a new global consensus?

We have yet to recognize the costs ahead of us when we start accounting for all the visible and invisible impacts we will have of climate tipping points, sea temperature rises, migration and conflict as a result of global heating, human health impacts or biodiversity loss.

What will happen with these Climate tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the deforestation of the Amazon, both are critical thresholds that, if crossed, will lead to huge, accelerating and sometimes irreversible changes in the climate system. How will we account for that when it becomes irreversible? some predictions are a massive one-third hit from physical damage on GDP to 33% of any global growth. Add in a shift to trade wars, tariffs, more wars etc, we seem to be in for some really tough times ahead, especially from extreme heat (acceleration)

Are we going to shift funding to preventable climate-related catastrophe management?

We need to turn more to energy and climate policymakers. We need more consistency of purpose. There as as many or more forces of change today than ever. How can we balance security and affordability? How can we build for sustainability and drive for efficiency when so much of our economics are based on fossil fuels? We have such an inherently complex set of challenges, one “wrong” move has impact or so many unintended consequences. We have unrealistic targets today and those are driving policies being made that have far-reaching impact which can span environment, social, economic and political spheres.

The struggles are real, the lobbyists for one group try to influence decisions and this is one of the biggest “blights” on CoP meetings today. A staggering 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been granted access to the UN climate summit, over 1,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29. Yet is was estimated the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations have only a combined 1,033 delegates at the negotiations. Something needs to change here? The lobbyists look to achieve “incremental change” at the best. Why is this allowed?

The other “beef” I have is “Net Zero”

Net Zero is banded about as the our saviour. This is where it gets really hard (for me) So what is Net Zero? We should consider Net Zero as ‘net zero impact’ on our whole ecosystem (not just emissions, but all forms of pollution, waste and related harms on climate, nature and the biosphere as a whole)

In our current political environment, Net Zero is reached when any greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are reduced to zero in total (against 1990 levels). This anchors the phrase Net Zero to ‘climate‘, for now.

Tomorrow, today, yesterday — ‘net’ means balancing the future and the past

In considering Net Zero impact we should be ensuring that not only our current impacts are non-negative, but also address the historical impact of our actions. Our material sustainability is contingent on ensuring that the net sum of the harms and benefits we create don’t cause compound negatives: we need to ‘spend’ less than we make so that we don’t bankrupt the ecosystem which we rely upon to prosper.

Just think about this. It bends my mind.

Hundreds of companies have pledged to reach “net zero” by the middle of the century, meaning that they’ll try to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero, and any remaining will be offset by planting trees, sucking carbon from the atmosphere, or other ways to capture CO2. So we get into the merky waters of carbon capture, storage, credits or offsets. If ever this stops me believing in an energy transition, it is this “Net Zero” that gets as close as you can get. For me it is only  real and meaningful reductions in emissions seen, verified and accounted for not all this experimental “hog wash” of carbon capture and storage. (CCS or CCUS).

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or (multiple) trains rushing towards us?

Of course there are more that make me despair but what will change this and when. Is it going to be the sum of so many catastrophes, the vanishing of whole nations as they see their islands slip under rapidly rising water, the dramatic change in seasons, that are so unpredictable our crops and harvests fail or the areas we grow them become unsustainable and this forces dramatic agricultural upheavals. Is it going to be this “unstoppable” move to renewables some claim is occurring? Is it going to be a clear distinction of policy separated from narrow commercial interest. Is it going to be social unrest. Investor uncertainty, growing bankruptcies and market volatility.

The complex interplay

We do have to recognize it is such a complex interplay between regulations, market dynamics, technology development and geopolitics but we do need a consistent purpose, pace and direction and that still is not to be seen. We need greater integration, alignment and collaborations but we seem to be going in the wrong direction on that, at present.

The thinking about adaptive frameworks, integrated approaches where we attempt to cover entire value chains to understand, (scope1,2,&3 being transparent) and we need to recognize rapid progress over the next 10 to 15- years is essential.

How do we achieve the most radical transition this world needs to sustain humans but to bring a balance back into our planet?

Should the United Nations undergo the most radical transformation or will that be blocked by radicals on the right and left? We do need international alignment and co-operations and major agreements on methane, plastics, carbon emissions, finance to bring us to advancing common goals

Have we the time, the will and the ability to achieve this Energy and Climate Transition? It has been a hard year indeed for me. Does my writing about it help? I doubt it as there are so many excellent reports written be experts that seem to just come and go.

After-thought: After I posted this I was reflecting on where progress really needs progressing. Bloomberg offered a Climate Policy Factbook : CoP29 edition to give three major policy areas that need significant progress to be made in the coming year, before and during CoP30 in Brazil. The first is addressing fossil-fuel support, it is rising not falling and this is suffering from a global consensus for making headway on subsidy reforms. The second area lies in carbon pricing policies where generous concessions and even free emission allowances and how they support green incentives. The third area relates to climate-risk, where a number of countries lack rules requiring firms and financial institutions to assess, report and mitigate their exposure to climate-related risks. The need for harmonization, stringency and resolving a fragmented approach to these three policy areas would significantly help move us along

Yet as Bloomberg point out climate plans are due to be bolder and proposed for CoP30 in Brazil. How more ambitious plans can be proposed when budgetary constraints, cost-of-living crisis, still strong wishes for energy independence (national security) and the approaches to using and extracting the domestic natural resources is mixed into a potentially volatile political period after recent election outcomes (Argentina, USA, UK) or pending ones (Germany, France for example).

Any radically new answers I want to hear

I wish I had answers as the human species is threatened but perhaps it is the evolutionary process kicking in as we seemingly don’t want to agree we are being threatened.

It is all rather depressing to be honest.

The post Energy transitions seem impossible first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

The World Economic Forum Advanced Energy Solutions Group is the catalyst for bringing together outstanding change makers, entrepreneurs, financiers and innovators from across the world and recently had one of its meetings to stimulate and encourage this initiative further. Why?

There are enormous opportunities in the clean energy transition but also so many current barriers and pitfalls.

Taking the WEF’s objectives with this group I quote from their website:

“The World Economic Forum’s Advanced Energy Solutions community aims to accelerate, from decades to years, the deployment at industrial scale of advanced solutions such as clean fuels and hydrogen, advanced nuclear, storage and carbon removal. It engages leaders in frontier segments of the energy system that drive the energy transition”.

The community helps build confidence in advanced energy solutions, provides a platform to engage leading innovators with large energy producers, energy consumers and investors, and addresses regulation and policy.

The WEF offers a wide range of communities to build a better future enabled by sustainable, inclusive, and resilient industry ecosystems.

WEF lays out a vision for this Advanced Energy Solution Group

This document proposes a vision for the advanced energy solutions industry and the key factors that will ensure success in achieving the required levels of deployment in the coming years. It aims to enhance understanding and support collaboration within industry and across stakeholder groups, inform decision-making and foster best practice-sharing.

The vision was shaped by the World Economic Forum, supported by L.E.K. Consulting, through meetings of the Advanced Energy Solutions CEO community, interviews with senior executives and in-depth research and analysis.

This group focuses on the central role of energy storage, carbon management, small modular reactors, clean hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels in the global endeavour to reduce carbon emissions and achieve a net-zero future. These may be deemed as advanced but for me, they are critical.

The challenge is well laid out.

The net-zero emissions path in 2030 will need carbon capture and storage (CCS) to scale to 20 times the current capacity, energy storage to 35 times, clean hydrogen production 70 times and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) 190 times. Additionally, mass deployment of new advanced nuclear reactors will be needed.

Such unprecedented capacity growth will need investment, which must grow to more than $500
billion per year by 2030. However, while progress is being made, it is significantly lagging. Publicly announced plans currently cover only a fraction of the estimated investment needs. The deployment of these advanced energy solutions needs increased speed and scale.

To quote from this vision document

This is not so much a technology readiness challenge, although that is demanding enough as technology development needs to continue to drive down cost curves and bring new innovations to market.

The WEF see the primary challenge in deploying advanced energy solutions over the next decade does not lie in their technological feasibility. Rather, it lies in confidence in these solutions. Many stakeholders recognize the need for these solutions and the opportunities they offer but are not confident enough to move at the speed and scale required.

The challenge can be broken down into technological confidence, demand confidence, business case confidence and public confidence. In essence, large energy companies, energy users, financial institutions, policy-makers and the general public need to be confident that technologies are proven, safe and able to deliver the most affordable path to net-zero emissions by 2030.

If confidence is the real key, it is the conflicting messages that create this uncertain environment.

The vision points to the critical enablers of collaboration, policy and community. It is all about informing and unlocking multiple challenges to scale. Essential to driving scale, are creating the demand signals, unlocking investment, spreading the risk and informing policy-making.

The ability to speed and scale are essential. Do we have a stable environment for growth and innovation, I think not. Are regulations keeping up with the speed of technical advancement or deployment, I think not. Are the solutions capable for specific needs and local challenges, I think not. Do we have a level playing field for innovation, experimentation and adoption, I think not. Do we have a recognized plan for phasing out assets that still have “useful life” but are hindering the move to clean energy, I think not.

Yes, enabling and informing are both key to the energy transition yet we stay “trapped” or hostage to what we know and have in place. To significantly create change does need a very different approach to energy transition thinking and that has not emerged, it is highly fractured.

The higher Ecosystem need

If the WEF are one of the bodies to enact the change we need to think of a higher order as the ones we have all got so caught up in “the weeds” and entanglement catering to multiple pressure groups, they are not enabling and fostering enough this higher-order we need. I shudder when you consider the CoP events each year. Moving the world back to the Charter agreed in Paris, known as the Paris Agreement would peel away much of the entanglements we have weaved into the Energy transition.

We need a fresh Natural Ecosystem approach.

In a biological ecosystem, ( I quote) “organisms function independently in that their behaviour is designed to promote their own survival. At the same time, they are deeply interdependent – their individual survival depends on their mutual interactions and exchanges essential to driving scale, creating the demand signals, unlocking investment, spreading the risk and informing policy-making.” We need a new energy ecosystem approach”

An ecosystem therefore requires both grand diversity and collaboration. What we need is a significant reordering of this for lifting up the Energy Transition into that higher order that is needed to achieve any successful Energy Transformation that enables us in our diversity to have a Climate that we can thrive and not just survive.

***I recommend reading this paper where the quote comes from “What Corporates Can Do to Help an Innovation Ecosystem Thrive – and Why They Should Do It” by Diana Joseph, Susan Windham-bannister and Mikel Mangold.

***To learn more about the ‘How’ of Clean Tech Innovation, listen In to this Edition of ‘Radio Davos‘ Podcast

The post Advanced Energy Solutions first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

The Whirlpool of Mixed Advice

As we continue to sail on this transformative journey, we’re bombarded with conflicting winds of information and often disinformation. Some advise a course towards renewable energy, while others suggest a reliance on traditional sources. This cacophony of guidance can leave us dizzy and unsure of our direction. We need consistent, well-thought-through advice with renewables as the core enabler to making the energy transition change.

The Storm of Closed-Up Industry

The energy industry, our vessel on this voyage, is often a closed-off ship, resistant to change and collaboration. This siloed approach hinders our progress, preventing us from pooling knowledge and forging stronger partnerships. This narrow, short-sighted approach of many is highly dangerous. We must embrace ecosystem thinking and design for different engagements that provide a more open-thinking and collaborative approach.

The Riptide of Evolving Standards

The rapid pace of innovation in the energy sector is like a series of riptides, constantly pushing us off course. Investments are far too often chasing the latest concept and often losing the needed vigour and assessment of validating the real, lasting value. We must navigate these currents by establishing global standards for renewable energy technologies and grid infrastructure, ensuring seamless integration and compatibility. We need to anchor our understanding and not let the chase for investment deflect us from determining clear business cases to gain lasting returns.

The Tempest of Information Overload

The energy transition is a data-rich ocean, but the volume of information can be overwhelming, drowning us in a sea of complexity. We must develop tools and strategies to filter and synthesize this knowledge, enabling us to make informed decisions amidst the chaos. We have got to filter this “overload” of insights, many provided by vested interests and give greater clarity and, most importantly, a clear context to the reader or future investor so they can “cut through” and find their own North Star to pursue.

The Typhoon of Vested Interests

The energy industry is often influenced by powerful interests favouring the status quo, hindering our ability to embrace revolutionary technologies. We must break free from these constraints and champion innovation that fuels the transition. A tide is constantly turning towards renewable investments, but this reluctance to change will constantly return and erode the resistance offered. We need to ride these tides and change the underlying currents.

The Undertow of Standard Offerings

The energy sector often provides one-size-fits-all solutions, failing to address the diverse needs of our stakeholders. We need to embrace flexibility and customization, tailoring solutions to the specific requirements of different communities. The Energy transition is a multiple endeavour that needs solutions that “fit” the circumstances of each party. To enable this, we need to recognize the history, the context, the ability to change and the resources to enable this. Recognizing differences gives diversity in solutions that deliver a certain uniqueness and often breakthroughs that we can learn from to shape the solutions that fit our circumstances.

The Fog of Engineering-Centric Mindset

The energy industry often operates from an engineer’s perspective, overlooking our decisions’ broader social and economic implications. We must broaden our horizons, considering our actions’ environmental, societal, and ethical ramifications. Scientists, market makers, development specialists, environmentalists, and those highly socially aware need to bring different perspectives to solutions that stimulate and stretch our “collective” thinking.

The Calm of Knowledge Sharing

The absence of centralized resources for knowledge sharing hinders our progress. We must create a common platform where insights and experiences are readily accessible, fostering collective learning and innovation. The need for building a shared global knowledge exchange that collates and consolidates choices and options will only accelerate the “diffusion of knowledge”. We must work towards this Energy knowledge repository consistently and with real purpose.

The Safe Harbor of Government Partnership

Governments do need to step up and act as lighthouses guiding our journey, ready to play a crucial role in shaping the energy transition but not biased or influenced by the strengths of lobbyists determined to “bend and influence” for narrow purposes. Governments and global institutions must strive harder to provide policy frameworks, funding support, and regulatory clarity, ensuring a smooth and equitable transition. We need to see the current CoP process differently from where it seems to be heading, caught in intense lobbying, not scientific fact-based thinking, where deliberations are taken far more objectively, not grabbed or pushed by the power of a few.

Embracing the Energy Transition: A Collective Effort

The energy transition is not a solo endeavour; it demands a collective effort akin to a flotilla of ships working together. We need to foster collaboration among industry players, academia, governments, and civil society, harnessing the strengths of each sector to navigate this transformative journey. Collaborations need to be placed on greater communicating platforms that are not just scientific or politically lead but broken down even further into the communities of similar need that become their “CoP” event determining outcomes NOT going in positions.

The Energy Transition: A Beacon of Hope or a Point of Despair?

Despite the challenges, the energy transition does need to be a beacon of hope, illuminating a path towards a cleaner, more sustainable future; we need to believe in that.

We can navigate this turbulent sea by harnessing our collective wisdom, innovation, and determination, reaching a destination where energy security and environmental stewardship are harmoniously intertwined. Is it to little too late?

It is hard to separate reality from aspirations, but we do have to try even harder than ever; the present CoP process needs changing and updating as the “public spectacle.”

For me, as a distant observer, the CoP28 event in Dubai diminishes our trust and beliefs and leaves a collectively exhausted group of people who attended and fought for their positions, finding each year harder and harder. It should not be; we do need this beacon of hope to burn brighter in the future and bring humanity into a real balance with nature and the environment.

As I reflect, I return to one opening speech at CoP28: We need to be balanced with Nature.

As King Charles stated “I have tried to say on many occasions, unless we rapidly repair and restore Nature’s unique economy, based on harmony and balance, which is our ultimate sustainer, our own economy and survivability will be imperilled.” He went on to say “We are carrying out a vast, frightening experiment of changing every ecological condition, all at once, at a pace that far outstrips Nature’s ability to cope. As we work towards a zero-carbon future, we must work equally towards being Nature-positive.”

King Charles most important point for me was “We need to remember that the indigenous world view teaches us that we are all connected. Not only as human beings, but with all living things and all that sustains life. As part of this grand and sacred system, harmony with Nature must be maintained. The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth”

The Energy Transition needs us to see sustainability in the “grander” sense, and that is our distant horizon we need to keep focused upon; we must put aside our established positions and seek out new ones that have the “greater good” for the future generations of all creatures as central, not just the fear of losing what we have gained, as it will not simply matter, if our earth breaks down, choking in unforgiving polluting air, unable to sustain life and moving from one disaster to another. We are at a real tipping point, and CoP is simply a yearly Cop-out and that cannot be sustained much longer.

*to gain ideas on themes, I used Bard to help with this

The post Dealing with the raw emotions of the Cop28 event first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

Changing the Energy Ecosystem:

Changing the energy ecosystem refers to a comprehensive and strategic effort to fundamentally transform how energy is generated, distributed, utilized, and managed within a region or globally. This transformation involves a departure from traditional, often fossil-fuel-based energy systems towards more sustainable, efficient, and environmentally responsible alternatives. It encompasses various facets of the energy sector, including:

1. Energy Sources: Shifting from carbon-intensive energy sources (such as coal and oil) to cleaner and renewable sources (such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal).
2. Energy Efficiency: Enhancing the efficiency of energy production, transmission, and consumption to reduce waste and minimize environmental impact.
3. Infrastructure: Upgrading and modernizing energy infrastructure to accommodate new technologies, grid enhancements, and decentralized energy generation.
4. Policy and Regulation: Implementing supportive policies, regulations, and incentives to encourage sustainable energy practices and discourage harmful ones.
5. Innovation: Embracing innovation and technological advancements to create more sustainable, cost-effective, and reliable energy solutions.

Why Changing the Energy Ecosystem Is Important:

1. Environmental Sustainability: The current energy ecosystem heavily relies on fossil fuels, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Changing the ecosystem is vital to mitigate environmental damage, reduce pollution, and limit global warming.
2. Resource Conservation: Transitioning to renewable energy sources helps conserve finite fossil fuel resources and reduce dependence on geopolitically unstable regions for energy supplies.
3. Energy Security: A diversified and decentralized energy ecosystem enhances energy security, reducing vulnerability to supply disruptions and geopolitical tensions.
4. Economic Opportunities: The energy transition offers substantial economic opportunities, from the growth of clean energy industries to job creation in renewable energy and technology sectors.
5. Health Benefits: Cleaner energy sources improve air quality and reduce pollution-related health issues, benefiting public health.
6. Technological Advancements: Innovation in energy technologies can lead to breakthroughs with broader applications, driving progress in various sectors of the economy.
7. Global Responsibility: As a global issue, addressing the energy ecosystem is a matter of international responsibility. It involves nations cooperating to combat climate change and reduce their carbon footprints.

Changing the Energy Ecosystem by building an approach to change that builds innovation and ingenuity through experimentation and pilots, looking for leapfrog opportunities through rapid learning and knowledge sharing.

A strategic approach to transforming the energy ecosystem. Let’s break this down by focal points, step by step:

1. Changing the Energy Ecosystem: This signifies the overarching goal of making significant and positive changes to how energy is produced, distributed, and consumed. It often implies a shift towards cleaner, more sustainable, and more efficient energy sources and practices.
2. Building Out an Approach: This suggests developing a structured and systematic plan or strategy to transform the energy ecosystem. This approach should be well-thought-out and comprehensive and provide clear roadmaps for the essential broad inclusion solutions required.
3. Change Through Innovation and Ingenuity: To bring about meaningful change, the approach emphasizes the importance of creativity, originality, and novel solutions. This implies that following established practices may not be sufficient, and new ideas and inventions are necessary.
4. Experimentation and Pilots: This highlights the need to try out new technologies, processes, or concepts on a smaller scale before implementing them on a larger, more significant scale. Pilots and experiments allow for learning from mistakes and refining strategies.
5. Leapfrog Opportunities: This indicates the desire to skip over intermediate stages of development and adopt more advanced, efficient, or sustainable technologies or practices. Leapfrogging often involves embracing cutting-edge solutions instead of gradually evolving existing systems.
6. Rapid Learning: In this context, rapid learning means quickly acquiring knowledge and insights from experimentation and experiences. It’s about being agile and adaptable in response to new information and challenges.
7. Knowledge Sharing: To accelerate progress, the approach involves sharing the knowledge and insights gained with relevant stakeholders, such as organizations, governments, and the public. This helps spread best practices and avoid duplicative efforts.

To achieve a sustainable energy transition, there must be consistency in advocating for a systematic, innovative, and flexible approach to transforming the energy ecosystem. Its central emphasis is the importance of learning from experimentation, seeking advanced solutions, and sharing knowledge to make rapid progress towards a more sustainable and efficient energy future in highly collaborative and open ways.

In summary, we must recognize that changing the energy ecosystem is essential to address pressing environmental, economic, and societal challenges. It is not merely about upgrading energy infrastructure but fundamentally shifting our approach to renewables in energy production and consumption to create a more sustainable and resilient future for all. This understanding underscores the endeavour’s importance in the broader context of sustainability and global well-being, enabling the planet to stabilize and slowly recover.

Building out our Value Proposition:

“To focus and support wherever we can, the revolutionizing of the energy landscape, through supporting concept knowledge, insights and ideas to inform and support, to deliver cutting-edge innovation and unwavering ingenuity- both are needed in abundance. The work undertaken needs to build and deliver sustainable, efficient, and forward-thinking solutions that empower individuals, organizations, and communities to thrive in a cleaner, smarter energy future”.

Key Pillars of the Value Proposition:

1. Innovative Solutions: We search and encourage pioneering groundbreaking technologies, strategies, and practices that redefine the energy sector to trigger new thinking or build out existing understanding, hopefully in new, novel ways. Our focal point is the pursuit of innovation that pushes creation and discovery to create solutions that transcend existing boundaries or limits. We look to support those wishing to operate at the forefront of change and push the known edges.
2. Ingenuity in Action: We look towards challenges and view obstacles as opportunities. The search for understanding combines creativity, expertise, and a passion for problem-solving to craft unique and effective knowledge solutions tailored to the evolving needs of the energy ecosystem that trigger and support the advancement of others, better equipped to find breakthroughs in their business.
3. Sustainability at the Core: Critically, the work undertaken must support sustainable energy practices that reduce environmental impact, promote responsible resource management, and protect the planet for future generations.
4. Customized Approaches: We understand that every energy challenge is unique in context and content. Our approach needs to be highly adaptable and customizable, allowing us to address our partners’ and clients’ specific needs and goals, whether they are businesses, governments, or communities. The narrative and how it is built are vitally important to each piece of work.
5. Continuous Learning: We believe that innovation thrives on knowledge. We foster a culture of constant learning, regularly integrating new insights and technologies into our insights, knowledge and solution work to ensure that our clients benefit from the latest advancements. Learning is highly reciprocal and scalable; it is all about liberating creative energy and achieving higher engagement.
6. Collaboration: We know that transformation requires a united effort. We actively collaborate with searching for the latest insights and knowledge, connecting with industry leaders, research institutions, and local communities to co-create solutions that deliver sustainable impact.
7. Judgement-based results: Innovation collaboration can be judged based on its contribution, impact, scalability, sustainability, growth potential and the creation of mutual benefit and value for all parties involved.

Our positioning is anchored in the belief that together, we can create a future where energy transformation is necessary and offers us all a remarkable opportunity for a more sustaining future.

By focusing on innovation, collaboration, and seeking clear resolutions, we pave the way for a sustainable and prosperous energy ecosystem that benefits you. We are your partners in progress to achieve your vision and market fit for contributing to a cleaner, more efficient, and sustainable energy future based on renewables by taking our “Innovating Pillars” approach and working through the “Impact Steps“.

We adopt a “Research and Deploy” approach, providing a structured framework for acquiring knowledge, generating insights, and deploying innovations effectively in your energy transition strategy. We believe the outside view or opinion is essential when embarking on a “Reforming and Disruption” within the changes undertaken within the Energy System.

We advocate for a systematic, innovative, and flexible approach to transforming the energy ecosystem.

The post Why I think the energy transition as one of the most important areas of necessary focus first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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 can CoP28 achieve 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 28 will 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

More than 70,000 delegates are expected to attend COP28, including the member states (or Parties) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders are also among the participants.

At its heart, the COP is a political process where critical decisions are made about our Global shared future. A series of “building blocks” are agreed on topics to gather the meeting around to change our present habits and mindsets:

The WWF expects the following essentials outcomes required from COP28:

• A successful Global Stocktake which paves the way for stronger NDCs to correct course to 1.5C.
• A decision to phase out fossil fuels no later than 2050.
• Full operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, with pledged funds.
• A decision on a comprehensive framework for the Global Goal on Adaptation.
• Scaling up finance by developed countries to beyond $100 billion per annum.
• Alignment of all private and public financial flows with climate objectives. 

The WWF regards that COP28 must be the moment where the world rallies to meet the climate challenge and delivers for people and nature. These are essential to achieve, can they?

The Building up to the CoP28 is a prelude to the hard work to come

Already there has been many pre-meetings. One critical one was a recent Pre-CoP meeting where delegates from more than 80 countries, including more than 60 ministers, participated over two days in some frank and lively exchanges on many of the issues needing consensus and deepening discussions on issues that will be key for the success of COP28.

Also present were the essential observers who continue to represent the often quiet or less able voices to be represented at these critical events that build commitment and momentum to any CoP meeting.

With such complexity in opinions, in positions that struggle to find consensus at any meeting. there is this critical need is somehow to enable a transparent, open and inclusive process always, so as negotiated positions. These positions are hard-fought, but as they are so intense, respect to foster a level of trust and progressive consensus-building on all positions seems, often stressful, exhausting work; adapting, accepting and recognizing compromise needs to be always needed.

As so often recognized, time will be the most valuable commodity at the actual COP28.

Organizing, forging connections from day one and recognising levels of flexibility across all the periods is determined by the work put into the first week. These the intense negotiations that need time, space so the more pressing matters have “bubbled” up to the surface for the all important political resolutions as the focus of week two.

The effectiveness of this first week is really determined by the abilities and capabilities of the Heads of Delegations to streamline and facilitate so a more effective decision-making period comes from the second week. Within this first week, the Global Stocktake needs to take center stage.

At this CoP28 the Global Stocktake (GST) is central

The Global Stocktake gives the reporting block to synthesize the key pillars of the Paris
Agreement. It has as its aims to connect mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation holistically and, like the Paris Agreement, strives to set the highest bar for ambition, recognises the different starting points of every party and finds the means, desires and ambitions to ensure equity for all.

In short, implementation of the Paris Agreement is lacking across all areas and not where it should be.

The Paris Agreement is praised for inspiring near-universal climate action and playing a central role in catalyzing cooperative action so the world can address the climate crisis.

But there is a well-known big mitigation gap, with the current trajectory of global emissions not being consistent with limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C, while adaptation to climate change is not at the levels needed.

The stocktake calls for a systems transformation, which follows a whole-society and whole-economy approach that mainstreams climate resilience and development aligned with low greenhouse gas emissions. Such efforts must be maintained over decades, supporting sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.

The stocktake also points to a growing gap between developing countries’ needs and the support they provided and mobilized for them. It calls for the unlocking and redeployment of trillions of dollars towards climate action and climate-resilient development.

The Global Stocktake resets the ambitions if accepted

The global stocktake is a critical turning point when it comes to efforts to address climate change

The first-ever global stocktake is set to conclude at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) at the end of this year. The global stocktake is a process for countries and stakeholders to see where they’re collectively making progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement – and where they’re not.

We know we are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The window for meaningful change is closing, and the time to act is now. Governments will take a decision on the global stocktake at COP28, which can be leveraged to accelerate ambition in their next round of climate action plans due in 2025.

To understand the success of the CoP28 lies around this recognition of the Global Stocktake so as to forge a better, more cohesive and collaborative path forward.

This frame offers the essential moment to take a long, hard look at the state of our planet and chart a better course for the future. It enables countries and other stakeholders to see where they’re collectively making progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement – and where they’re not.

It’s like taking inventory. It means looking at everything related to where the world stands on climate action and support, identifying the gaps, and working together to agree on solutions pathways (to 2030 and beyond).

It is the Global Stocktake and how this is recognized as the present global position will pre-determine all that takes place within this CoP28 and how, if we can, move forward- stumbling or striding towards.

It’s not the stocktake itself that is the game-changer – it’s the global response, the response by countries as Parties to the Paris Agreement, that will make the difference in the form of higher ambition and accelerated action.

To achieve a united response and clarity of essential actions and urgency will be a real achievement of CoP28

* Main source of reference for this post

https://unfccc.int/cop28

The post Please Reenergize, Revitalize, Reconnect and Reimagine at CoP28. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

Here are some strategies to help elevate these worries:

1. Communication and Transparency:
   • Provide Clear Information: Offer clear, concise, and accurate information about the proposed changes, including their purpose, expected outcomes, and potential impacts. Transparency can help demystify the process and reduce uncertainty.
   • Engage in Open Dialogue: Create opportunities for stakeholders to ask questions, express concerns, and voice their opinions. Engaging in open dialogue fosters trust and allows you to address specific worries directly.
2. Gradual Transition:
   • Phased Approach: Implement changes gradually, in phases, allowing stakeholders time to adapt. This minimizes abrupt disruptions and provides a smoother transition period.
   • Support and Assistance: Offer support and assistance during the transition. This can include training programs, financial incentives, or technical guidance to help stakeholders adjust to new energy systems.
3. Risk Mitigation:
   • Risk Assessment: Conduct a thorough risk assessment to identify potential disruptions and dislocations. Develop mitigation plans to address these risks proactively.
   • Contingency Planning: Establish contingency plans to manage unforeseen challenges. Demonstrating preparedness can alleviate worries about unexpected disruptions.
4. Economic and Social Considerations:
   • Economic Opportunities: Highlight the economic opportunities associated with energy system changes, such as job creation in emerging industries and potential cost savings over the long term.
   • Community Benefits: Emphasize how the changes can benefit local communities, such as improved air quality, reduced health risks, and enhanced quality of life.
5. Flexibility and Adaptability:
   • Flexibility in Solutions: Show a commitment to flexible solutions that can accommodate different needs and circumstances. Tailoring solutions to specific situations can alleviate worries about one-size-fits-all approaches.
   • Adaptive Management: Communicate that the energy system changes will be subject to adaptive management, meaning adjustments can be made based on real-world feedback and evolving circumstances.
6. Stakeholder Engagement:
   • Inclusion: Involve stakeholders in decision-making processes and seek their input on key aspects of the changes. This fosters a sense of ownership and control.
   • Partnerships: Form partnerships with organizations, communities, and industry players to share resources, knowledge, and expertise. Collaborative efforts can mitigate disruptions and accelerate solutions.
7. Education and Awareness:
   • Public Education: Invest in public education campaigns to raise awareness about the benefits of the energy system changes. Well-informed stakeholders are more likely to support and accept the changes.
   • Training and Skill Development: Offer training programs to ensure that individuals and organizations have the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in the evolving energy landscape.
8. Track Record and Success Stories:
   • Showcase Success: Highlight examples of successful energy transitions in other regions or industries. Real-world success stories can instil confidence and reduce worries.

Remember that addressing worries about disruption and dislocation is an ongoing process. Continuously engage with stakeholders, adapt your strategies as needed, and be responsive to concerns as they arise. Taking a proactive and inclusive approach can help ease worries and build support for the necessary changes to the energy system.

Seeking stability is becoming more of a dream and not a reality in our changing world, so developing a dialoguing process to handle disruption and dislocation makes real sense.

The post Elevate those worries of disruption and dislocation in the Energy Transition. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Any search for advantage or validation of making a change must consider the art of leapfrogging, especially in the Energy Transition we are all undergoing.

Leapfrogging can accelerate the rapid and transformative progress toward a more sustainable and efficient energy ecosystem that provides advantage and customer identification.

Leapfrogging done correctly offers the benefits of evaluating existing solution options, considering the added value of environmental considerations and enhancing access and resilience in a rapidly changing world needing faster adoption of cleaner energy solutions to accelerate your solutions.

Where leapfrogging really ‘scores’ is offering the ability of a developing or less developed country to essentially “skip” less efficient and higher carbon-intensive technologies during their energy development.

Leapfrogging provides a significant opportunity to develop and cut carbon emissions simultaneously, it is vastly underrated and considered. We love reinventing the wheel when there is often no need.

Leapfrogging is when developing countries industrialize with renewable energy instead of non-renewables.

Equally, companies can learn and adopt from others to reduce their own research and development costs and long lead times, across a wide range of technical improvements in renewable and storage technologies, grid balancing, use of software management, saving running costs by searching for leading or emerging best practices.

Also it can be by taking certain component parts of a solution you can accelerate and adapt to upgrade parts or finding blending solutions that fit your circumstances.

The search for leapfrogging opportunities becomes essential in the context of energy transformation for several reasons. It can provide:

1. Accelerated Progress: Leapfrogging allows for rapid progress by skipping over outdated or less efficient technologies and practices. It enables you within your part of the energy sector to catch up or surpass competitors, providing advantages in leading with sustainability and greater efficiency.
2. Environmental Benefits: Leapfrogging often involves adopting cleaner and more sustainable technologies, reducing your current energy ecosystem’s carbon footprint and environmental impact, enabling you to promote this and gain potentially greater customer acceptance and adoption.
3. Economic Advantages: By embracing innovative and advanced technologies, your organization can position itself as a leader in the sectors you compete in, search for broader global energy market reach, and build upon the growth and competitiveness aspects these innovative solutions can offer.
4. Energy Access: Leapfrogging can bring energy opportunities by scale and price attraction to explore further access into underserved or remote areas by considering more novel, flexible and adaptable solutions that potentially offer advantages over traditional energy infrastructure developments available.

To enable leapfrogging to be a significant part of the proposed energy change, you need to evaluate different ways leapfrogging can be found.

Several ways and structures can be applied as viable leapfrogging potential. Here are a few to consider to build out a systematic “leapfrogging” capability and capacity evaluation:

1. Technology Transfer: Facilitate the transfer of advanced and proven technologies from developed regions to those undergoing transformation. This can be achieved through partnerships, international collaboration, and technology-sharing agreements.
2. Policy Incentives: Governments can create policy frameworks that incentivize adopting leapfrog technologies. This might include tax breaks, subsidies, or regulatory support for innovative energy solutions.
3. Research and Development (R&D) Investments: Allocate resources to research and development efforts focused on leapfrog technologies in the energy sector. Encourage public and private sector partnerships to drive innovation.
4. Public-Private Partnerships: To fund and implement leapfrogging projects and foster collaborations between governments, private companies, and non-governmental organizations. These partnerships can help bridge the funding and expertise gaps.
5. Capacity Building: Invest in training and education programs to develop a skilled workforce capable of operating and maintaining leapfrog technologies. This ensures that the workforce is prepared to harness the full potential of innovative solutions.
6. Regulatory Adaptability: Create regulatory frameworks that are adaptable and responsive to emerging technologies. Avoid rigid regulations that might hinder the deployment of new and unconventional energy solutions.
7. Knowledge Sharing: Establish platforms for exchanging knowledge and best practices in leapfrogging. Encourage collaboration and information sharing among stakeholders to accelerate adoption.
8. Market Development: Support the development of markets for leapfrog technologies by connecting suppliers with potential customers, promoting awareness, and ensuring accessibility.
9. Financial Mechanisms: Develop financial mechanisms such as green bonds, venture capital, and impact investing to attract investment in leapfrogging projects and startups.
10. Pilot Programs: Implement pilot projects to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of leapfrog technologies in real-world settings. Successful pilots can pave the way for larger-scale adoption.
11. International Cooperation: Encourage international cooperation and knowledge exchange to learn from successful leapfrogging experiences in other regions.

The energy change proposal can actively seek and leverage leapfrogging opportunities by implementing these strategies and structures, driving rapid and transformative progress toward a more sustainable and efficient energy ecosystem.

Leapfrogging can have the benefits for finding proven solutions to help the environment and saving additional investments, helping channel funds into other parts of the energy transition and economy and the potential for enhancing energy access and resilience in a rapidly changing world from the solutions applied.

The post The Art of Leapfrogging across the Energy Transition. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Recently released is the First Global Stocktake for the forthcoming CoP28

This summary of the progress made from the CoP23 Paris Agreement is the first official global stock take undertaken, known as the

Technical dialogue of the first global stocktake

The report will be a central debating feature of the CoP28 meeting, to be held between November 30^th to December 12^th, 2023, in Dubai, the UAE. This report aims to inform and gain consensus on how to move forward.

Over 70,000 attendees are expected to gather and discuss various issues relating to our climate and formulate a fresh impetus for the path forward.

So, in Summary, this global stock take undertaken had these conclusions

Context

1. Since its adoption, the Paris Agreement has driven near-universal climate action by setting goals and sending signals to the world regarding the urgency of responding to the climate crisis. While action is proceeding, much more is needed now on all fronts.
2. To strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, governments need to support systems transformations that mainstream climate resilience and low GHG emissions development. Credible, accountable and transparent actions by non-party stakeholders are needed to strengthen efforts for systems transformations.
3. Systems transformations open up many opportunities, but rapid change can be disruptive. Focusing on inclusion and equity can increase ambition in climate action and support.

Mitigation, including response measures

1. Global emissions are not in line with modelled global mitigation pathways consistent with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and there is a rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments in order tolimit warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
2. Much more ambition in action and support is needed in implementing domestic mitigation measures and setting more ambitious targets in NDCs to realize existing and emerging opportunities across contexts, in order toreduce global GHG emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 and further by 60 per cent by 2035 compared with 2019 levels and reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 globally.
3. Achieving net zero CO2 and GHG emissions requires systems transformations across all sectors and contexts, including scaling up renewable energy while phasing out all unabated fossil fuels, ending deforestation, reducing non-CO2 emissions, and implementing supply-and demand-side measures.
4. Just transitions can support more robust and equitable mitigation outcomes with tailored approaches addressing different contexts.
5. Economic diversification is a key strategy to address the impacts of response measures, with various options that can be applied in different contexts.

Adaptation, including loss and damage

1. As climate change threatens all countries, communities and people around the world, increased adaptation action as well as enhanced efforts to avert, minimize and address loss and damage are urgently needed to reduce and respond to increasing impacts, particularly for those who are least prepared for change and least able to recover from disasters.
2. Collectively, there is increasing ambition in plans and commitments for adaptation action and support, but most observed adaptation efforts are fragmented, incremental, sector-specific and unequally distributed across regions.
3. When adaptation is informed and driven by local contexts, populations and priorities, both the adequacy and the effectiveness of adaptation action and support are enhanced, and this can also promote transformational adaptation.
4. Averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage requires urgent action across climate and development policies to manage risks comprehensively and provide support to impacted communities.
5. Support for adaptation and funding arrangements for averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage need to be rapidly scaled up from expanded and innovative sources, and financial flows need to be made consistent with climate-resilient development to meet urgent and increasing needs.

Means of implementation and support and finance flows

1. Scaled-up mobilization of support for climate action in developing countries entails strategically deploying international public finance, which remains a prime enabler for action, and continuing to enhance effectiveness, including access, ownership and impacts.
2. Making financial flows -international and domestic, public and private-consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development entails creating opportunities to unlock trillions of dollars and shift investments to climate action across scales.
3. Existing cleaner technologies need to be rapidly deployed, together with accelerated innovation, development and transfer of new technologies, to support the needs of developing countries.
4. Capacity-building is foundational to achieving broad-ranging and sustained climate action and requires effective country-led and needs-based cooperation to ensure capacities are enhanced and retained over time at all levels.

The Thematics over the two weeks of CoP 28 are shown below.

Conclusion (no rocket science here)

Now is the time to rapidly accelerate action and support to make progress in this critical decade.

The post First Global Stocktake for the forthcoming CoP28 first appeared on Innovating 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.

Key Challenges

I put these into different bullet points.

+We get far too much-mixed advice (it often freezes us)

+Energy is a very closed-up industry- it does not open up its thinking to others for easier transformation

+The need to evolve (global) standards as quickly as possible (for faster adoption)

+Absorption of knowledge and its pace often is overwhelming

+The clarity of different assessments (vested interests, independent views)

+The struggle of individual needs and solutions fitting “standard” offerings

+There is a heavy reliance on peering through the engineer’s lense or mindset, often shutting out broader thinking, especially the customer side on their needs.

+Lack of insight sharing on what works, what is happening, and what is progressing (no great “go too” resource) for broader knowledge understanding.

+Government or Regional Authority issues, different understanding or awareness and the roadblocks of the “lead/ lag” on. this

Worries

• The pace of change
• Level of technology pace, understanding, roadblocks, coming down the pipeline
• Global / EU/ US / Asia, Regional and Local political and economic conflicts
• Regulations are constantly catching up, causing uncertainties
• The Bureaucracy of all the different engaged agents and bodies
• Engagement and involvement of the ultimate consumer

Big Ticket Items

+The swirling, whirling Climate Issues- opinions, facts, fiction and growing realities

+The Green Deal views and Fossil to Green Renewables- the managing of this carefully

+Resilience is the need to achieve in any forward-thinking

+The issue of circular transformation to recycle, repurpose etc.

+The growing worries over Grids, their design, their ability to transmit and distribute for different energy sources and managing central and decentral demand of peaks, storage and troughs.

+The breaking down of the Global supply village and the old value chain dependencies

+Critical rare components, minerals and metals- location, quantity, environment impact and price volatility

+The Electricity needs, scope and coping in this lengthy transition (what is chasing and reconfiguring to what)

+Building constantly for sustainable energy, at what cost to the immediate and the in-between

+Accelerating the digitalization for Energy and building Data reliance

+Demand, Growth and Prosperity are optimistic in change but realistic in reality.

+Securing the Energy Transition- the rhetoric, hype and realities, individual or national- who chooses

My issues

• Energy is a “laggard” in innovation creation, transfer and adoption- it needs a structured process.
• Risks and the barriers of a) Regulatory, b) Financing, c) Enabling infrastructure, d) Social, and e) Cultural constantly do not get evaluated as robustly as they should
• The New Technology Understanding is often piecemeal and driven by the strongest internal voice.
• The ability to listen broadly, the time to read and learn, the time to discuss specifics (outside events)
• Knowing the capabilities, competencies and capabilities in resource, knowledge, and capital internally is often lacking in clarifying context or scoping (and more on briefing external advisors)
• I don’t have time; I need resources and a better platform for helping, advising etc.

The need to get the Energy Industry organized

+The fantastic work of many from IEA, IRENA, UN etc., down through all the think tanks, market intelligence and analytics offered is utterly overwhelming to absorb and translate- global source Energy Wikipedia?

+Central sourcing of Independent funding, criteria, broader acceptance of returns of value

+Instruments, Institutions and the variability of (success) measurement stops promising concepts.

+The need for better roadmaps for key industry transitions, constantly updated, not once a year if you are lucky, and it is of interest to more than a few

+The opening up of public procurements, differences, complexities, resolutions

+Early stage accreditation, experimenting and prototyping methodologies and universal guidelines

+Super transparency of Research and Development, not one-liners placed in an annual report

+The pursuit of standards at national, regional and global levels needs resourcing and directing as it is constantly developing at periodic steps (CoP work, perhaps)

+The CoP meetings need to be SPLIT- experts in one, influencers in another, then finding the assessed middle ground where local politics or lobbyists join the fray ( hope is certainly a fine thing here!)

Summary

If you notice, I avoided or did not even want to get into debates about fuels, generation options, storage, utilization, consumption or the mind-draining points covering distributed, dispatched and variables etc., in a fairer, equitable world, all needing energy.

A lot of knowing where to start is to partly do with anyone’s embarking points and their energy journey, as I have outlined; that is why I invest so much of my time in research and translating this Energy Transforming narrative into a real understanding of its multiple parts.

So how many of these was I able to get across- don’t ask! Hence why I’ve written this post. Therapeutic, perhaps or just simply how hugely challenging and complex the Energy Transition is to grasp and translate as my posting site states; “Innovating the Energy Transition, a transition in all of our lives in knowledge, application and discovery.“

The post Thinking about the Energy Transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

LNG has taken on an entirely new lease of life, with shipments from the Middle East suddenly backing up and waiting around Europe to be offloaded as Europe rushes to increase their LNG receiving facilities. Many renewables, offshore wind, off the Northern coastal part of Europe are attempting to send power closer to the places of industrial or urban need.

The US has suddenly transformed itself within its energy approach.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 is the good news of 2022, this act makes the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history, enabling America to tackle the climate crisis, advancing environmental justice, securing America’s position as a world leader in domestic clean energy manufacturing, and putting the United States on a pathway to achieving the Biden Administration’s climate goals, including a net-zero economy by 2050.

The location of COP27 this year highlights the importance of the Africa and Mid-East regions on global net-zero objectives. Africa is set to take an increasingly pivotal role in the energy transition. Both its greatest challenges and most significant opportunities lay in the fact that its energy infrastructure is still largely under development. Thus a transition towards greener energy alternatives is highly feasible. The orderly energy transition could then unleash the crucial economic growth that the region is committed to, per the 2063 Agenda, becoming an economic, social, and climate win-win-win scenario.

There was a strong view that CoP27, held in Egypt, failed.

There is no doubt that countries could’ve done much more. It is also unquestionable that powerful actors, petro-state governments, and the fossil fuel industry are to blame for the insufficient progress made in Egypt. 

Compared to Glasgow’s CoP26 summit last year, fossil fuel lobbyists joining the climate talks in Egypt rose 25%, amounting to 636 people lobbyists. “The influence of the fossil-fuel industry was found across the board with the Egyptian Presidency of CoP27 producing a text that seemingly was protecting oil and gas petrostates and the fossil-fuel industries. This trend cannot continue in the United Arab Emirates next year for the CoP28, but the UAE is one of the fossil fuel giants. At present, it does not auger well.

The world has already warmed by 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels, and meeting the 1.5-degree target would require far more ambitious pre-2030 emissions cuts. Many experts and negotiators at the CoP27 felt this was the COP where we lost 1.5C as the target and began the significantly different debates on mitigation, which will, in the end, have a much higher, more devastating price to pay, in recovery, loss, disruption etc.

With its lower economic activity, caused mainly by a constant focus on controlling Corvid, China has not been so in the global market for oil and gas. That will change in 2023, and that added pressure of chasing less gas and oil globally will see the continuance of prices rising. Energy price protection costs are rapidly eroding the funds that would have been moving into the continued renewable changes we need.

We are pushing more Carbon into the atmosphere, goodbye 1.5C as our target

So we are pushing more carbon into the atmosphere due to the current Russian position on continuing the war on Ukraine and boycotting supplies.

Finally, our grids are under increasing strain, as power balance, effective responses, grid infrastructure limitation and present solutions are at a knife edge for possible blackouts and power shortages here in Europe. Power consumption and power generation are among the most difficult balancing acts for the winter of 2022/23. We can have severe bottlenecks in curtailment and activated response, insufficient transmission capacity at time of need and limited reserve capacity. Grids will operate under constant stress during these coming months.

Facing the challenges at the end of 2022

At the end of 2022, we will face more of the same issues as before but at heightened levels of risk.

In summary, we still have to continue to deal with ageing or outdated energy infrastructure; we are grappling with growing supply chain failures delaying changes into renewables we would like. The cost and availability of the raw materials to build at competitive prices new wind turbines, electrolyzers, solar, and batteries, all reliant on rare, expensive and limited raw materials, is yet to peak.

We continue not to inform the public in ways they increasingly support the need for a rapid energy transition; we have public opposition and permit delays and constraints due to multiple bodies required to approve any new energy project. A lack of streamlining or even harmonizing is a real drag on making change. The environmental impact always needs assessing, but the time, cost and vested interests are hard to modernize or adjust.

There is still a severe lack of funding for new technologies, renewables etc. The business models for renewables are still very immature, and the lack of (guaranteed) returns to investors, banks, institutions or venture companies needs some higher levels of underwriting by the Governments to change this.

Four other aspects are also holding back the energy transition.

The increased complexity of power grids is yet to be recognized as equal in importance to the shift from fossil fuel to renewables, not just due to variations but the technical abilities of distributed grids that need different designing. Cables, substations, switches, and thermal load limits require a radically different design.

The threat of cyber-attacks is a continued threat. When you are in the middle of substantial change, these become higher as you need to open up previously closed loops to accommodate new apps for monitoring, measuring and greater visibility.

We increasingly have extreme weather events, and the ability to build greater resiliency into the energy system is highly complex, expensive and time-consuming to change. With growing floods, fires, severe snow and ice storms, ground slippage etc., energy companies have their hands full in being able to respond and have spare parts on hand, anticipating what?

Lastly, our project management and development remain poor. We constantly reinvent the wheel, duplicate resources, and face difficulties in knowing if the solutions offered are the best of breed or a passing bridge solution. We lack a global “clearing” house to provide knowledge and understanding as the marketplace for competitive solutions is far from easy to compare or determine if they are the right fit for today’s energy system, let alone for one in 5, 10 or even 20 years with regulations changing, technologies still emerging and visualizing final supply/demand needs.

So for me, 2022 has been an actual energy crisis year. I have only touched on a group of issues.

McKinsey, in one of their constantly “encouraging” reports, suggests we have a nine-step problem-solving framework for debating (in my view, we need to be past debating!) and addressing barriers to unlock 1) Physical building blocks, 2) Commitments and enabling mechanisms and 3) economic and social adjustments.

Oh, I wish it was that easy, putting all the energy transition and its multiplicity of complexities into nine building blocks. Still, we struggle to offer broader problem-solving frameworks or detailed roadmaps, let alone common language and KPIs.

Maybe my wish for 2023 is that we can find the best, orderly energy transition, but with what we have been going through in 2022, that might be wishful thinking. It is so complex, challenging and presently in crisis.

Role in 2023, let’s put the Energy Crisis of 2022 behind us.

The post Wrapping up the Energy Crisis Year of 2022 first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.