Category Archives: Energy Ecosystem

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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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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Building out the new Energy Ecosystem

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Building out the new Energy Ecosystem

I firmly believe the Energy System needs 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.

As you consider a change of this magnitude, you recognize how complicated this becomes, and the deeper your thinking becomes, hence why I like thinking through this with the use of mind maps.

I would argue we need a consistent framework to keep working through all the changes that will be undertaken in the next twenty to thirty years to achieve that eventual 2050 net-zero target of decarbonizing the energy system fully;  resulting in a clean, climate-resilient energy transformation.

Within my first post, “Changing the Energy Ecosystem“, I began to lay out the need to change the energy dynamics by redirecting them away from the existing systems and structures.

This is my second post, which continues to build out the new Energy Ecosystem.

This post focuses on the two points of Reforming Business models and the needed Resolutions to take this different thinking forward, then I will take out in the third post, Innovation & Ingenuity, Experimentation & Rapid Pilots,  and Leapfrog Opportunities.

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Changing the Energy Ecosystem

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We have a very unhealthy world.

When I set up this posting site https://innovating4energy.com in December 2019, I stated within the site identity the tagline “a transition in all of our lives.” Little did I know how our lives would change at that time and continually do so in a very unhealthy geopolitical environment where collaboration is rapidly deteriorating to solve our rapidly warming planet.

I have found working in this energy transition space to be extremely hard, if not at times overwhelming. It is so complex, challenging and caught between the extremes of needed change and no change. You wonder what will happen, not just in the year 2050 as that year we need to have achieved bringing our world to a net-zero in carbon.

Just how we will be capable of transitioning to a net zero energy system by 2050, ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust economic growth is seemingly getting harder to grasp than it was a year ago or even when I started this posting site. Continue reading →

Pinned to my door, my way of approaching the Energy Transition

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Pinned to my door, my way of approaching the Energy Transition

I have on the door of my office the approach I am taking to build out my understanding and pace myself in what I can absorb, translate and offer views upon on the Energy Transition.

My site www.innovating4energy.website is where I outline and see my value contribution in applying the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation of the Energy Transition. The value proposition is in accelerating the clients/readers’ understanding of where the potential growth and impact points with the objective of triggering a new business opportunity for it to occur.

What we offer is exploring the Energy Landscape in understanding, so this can then be translated into fresh, exciting Energy Value Positioning Offerings. Continue reading →

Unlocking your challenges and issues

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Two really important points have troubled me in the past months and given growing challenges and issues relating to the energy transition.

The failure of CoP26 lingers very heavily and now as we are caught up in the Russian- Ukrainian war we are seeing so many reverses on pledges made in Glasgow or simply waiting to see where this crisis will take us all.

It seems to be that the lack of positives is presently being defeated with all the negatives I have been recently reading about in disruption, energy risks and the growing energy crisis. A level of panic is setting in. It does seem we are losing real momentum on reducing carbon emissions as we fall back on fossil fuel supplies.

At the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in November 2021, after a quarter-century of annual negotiations that as yet have failed to deliver a fall in global emissions, countries around the world finally included the word “coal” in their concluding decision. That is now back on the agenda, with old coal mines even being reopened.

Even this belated mention of the dirtiest fossil fuel was fraught, leaving a “deeply sorry” Cop president, Alok Sharma, fighting back tears on the podium after India announced a last-minute softening of the need to “phase out coal” to “phase down coal”.

The really shocking failure at CoP26 was this.

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Direct Air Capture- a viable dream or impossible

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Courtesy of CB Insights

I have been working through the latest IEA report “Direct Air Capture: a key technology for net-zero”

I have to be utterly honest here, I really struggle with the viability (as it stands) for Direct Air Capture (DAC) to be a significant contributor to achieving net-zero by 2050.

If we cannot soon demonstrate AT SCALE the viability I think this pursuit of capturing CO2 directly from the air is a distraction, huge experimentation that deflects us and much needed financial and human capital away from more proven (at scale) technologies or solutions. Continue reading →