The Global Energy Innovation System is NOT Thriving
In a very sobering report from Hoyu Chong of Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published on 10th January 2022, it is highlighted how the global energy innovation system is in poor health.
In this report, it is pointed out there are weaknesses across most indicators and the need is to rectify these by most nations.
The key takeaways: Continue reading
visual source dreamstime.com
Many of us have wish lists or resolutions as we get towards the end of one year and think about what we want out of next year.
So I decided to do a top of the mind wish list for the Energy Transition
Now we all can add to this but here are my nineteen wishes for kicking off 2022 in a focused way for the Energy Transition we all need to gather momentum, in really serious ways. Can you improve on this wish list?
Some of the ideas or thoughts are in the links provided. Happy holiday reading! Continue reading
We have just finished the most critical COP meeting in Glasgow. It was the eleventh hour. For two weeks, nearly two hundred countries entered into discussions, finally agreeing on the “Glasgow Climate Pact” to keep the 1.5 degrees C target alive and finalize the outstanding elements of the Paris Agreement.
The President of the proceedings, COP26 President Alok Sharma, commented, “its pulse is weak, and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate commitments into rapid action.”
“Keep 1.5 alive” has been a rallying cry for diplomats and activists alike at the COP26 negotiations. The phrase refers to the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
1.5 degrees Celsius is seen as the threshold beyond which the effects of climate change become increasingly dangerous to people and ecosystems. But scientists warn that time is running out for humanity to take the transformative steps to achieve the 1.5 goals. And according to multiple estimates, the deal negotiated in Glasgow does not bend the curve enough to get there. Continue reading
Image: IRENA
Since I launched this dedicated posting site www.innovating4energy.com, in December 2019, specifically around innovating in energy, I have written 80 plus posts. Each post was undoubtedly a fundamental learning point for me as I attempted to dive deeper into the topic.
Within this, Hydrogen has been one of the main contributors. Including this post, I have written about different aspects of Hydrogen over ten posts, but most were during 2020.
Posts (with links) have covered Hotter Shades of Hydrogen, Tensions and Bottlenecks and Concerns, Show me the Electrolyzer, Hydrogen is the Big Ticket Needing a Landscape View,
Also, Has Hydrogen got the necessary gas, Massive Doses of Hydrogen Reality, Hydrogens Promise, Believing in Hydrogen and how Plug Power is the Apple of Hydrogen?
Then I suddenly “went off the boil” on Hydrogen. I felt a sense of hijack from the Oil & Gas Majors and the Equipment Suppliers, all pushing hard the interim solutions blending different gases for offering blue Hydrogen as the necessary bridge, over the next ten years or so.
I felt a sense of “lock into” as the investment to purchase gas generating assets and infrastructure can run for thirty or more years. That’s not interim or intermediate and is likely to stay blue as CCUS will get added on at the later stage as the logical option to complete a ROI on this “interim” decision
Following my last post, “Putting innovation into energy, sparking transformation“, I want to outline why I am focusing increasingly on this front end of the energy transition (FEE) within my innovation work.
For me, it is the ability to apply the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation that accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.
Today, we are all trying to piece together the Energy Transition.
The claim is that there are solutions abound to move us towards the Energy Transition we all need of clean, reliable, energy built upon renewables, but I honestly don’t share that current optimism; we actuaölly have an awfully long way to go in discovery, application and adoption. Continue reading
I see the front end of energy as the critical feeding-in point for the energy transition. So what does this mean exactly?
The front end of energy for me is the point of discovery and validation. It is the place I feel I can make the best contribution within the energy transition. The discovery is where the stimulus and catalyst point to take an idea to commercialization.
This capturing, evolving, exploiting and exploring needs a clear management process and understanding of how to undertake this. This needs a focused innovation specialist or a systematic approach to building those innovating capabilities and capacities.
I believe there is a real gap for many organizations involved in the Energy industry; often in the recognition, they lack a real lasting, robust innovation capability, capacity and competency, as the sustaining way to help accelerate the Energy Transition journey. Continue reading
Providing a digital twin solution in the manufacturing environment is becoming a critical part of managing the complexity of those environments that many companies have to increasingly operate within.
As digital twins become critically important, entities are beginning to adopt this “twinning” concept dramatically, and within the Energy Transition we are undertaking, it will be no different.
A digital twin enables a Utility, for example, to visualize its assets, track the constant changes occurring consistently, and make better decisions on performance optimization. Continue reading
We are currently locked into a ‘battle of energy ecosystems.’ Our very existence requires one side to win; it simply must not just survive but rebalance the planet ecosystem, the only one we have.
This current ecosystem battle is between those highly vested in today’s fossil-based energy supply system and those forcing change into a more renewable reliant energy system as quickly as possible.
We are pushing so much of the principles and theories of ecosystems to the maximum test in the outcomes we wish to achieve in the energy transition we require. We are combining technology, science, engineering and design through the network effect.
Much of what we do in the future is to find solutions that determine our future planet and what defines and achieves a healthy ecosystem in a very ad-hoc, self-determining and self-interest way. The ambitions of so many vested interests need fresh evaluations in any new socio-economic structure. Continue reading
image credit: Changing Alisa Singer, Used by IPCC for 6th Climate Report
On Monday 9th August, 2021 saw the release of the 6th Climate assessment by the IPCC. It is a grim, sobering read. Also, it is a staggering 3,949 pages long!
So in a short simple summary.
If we continue to not stop our carbon omissions then it will lead to devastating lives and disrupting nearly all of us humans, in one way or another.
Simply put, if we do not get Carbon Dioxide out of our energy mix as fast as we can we are, I quote from the report:
– facing increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost”
– I go on in another quote “Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events”
– Then “increasing CO2 emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere”
– Finally, to really make my day, “Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level”.
This leaves you grappling with what the consequences will be and what the responses of all those in a position to make the dramatic level of changes we need to irradicate all human-created carbon dioxide.
My immediate reaction is, can we honestly support extracting fossil fuels and Oil and Gas companies need to “front up” to what they need to do to make massive, effective and fast changes while they have some of the control still in their hands.
Can we continue to debate gradual shifts?
How can we recognize and mobilize real sustainable energy transitions based only on clean energy?.
Do we start calling this the Climate Emergency, which is what it actually is?
We are caught in a pandemic today, we need to learn some hard lessons from this but as the IPCC states it is “unequivocal that human influence has (and is) warming the atmosphere, ocean and land”
The scale is unprecedented these extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, will continue to strengthen until we ADDRESS climate change.
We really need to look for deep, deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions in the coming years, perhaps not decades as we have previously felt
A first reaction upping the fight to bring about real change.
I read one view: If they, the Governments and Policy Holders and the Fossil fuel producers don’t act quickly enough and COP26 ends in an unsatisfactory fudge, then the courts might become more involved.
“We’re not going to let this report be shelved by further inaction. Instead, we’ll be taking it with us to the courts,” said Kaisa Kosonen, senior political adviser at Greenpeace Nordic.
“By strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme weather, the IPCC has provided new, powerful means for everyone everywhere to hold the fossil fuel industry and governments directly responsible for the climate emergency.
“One only needs to look at the recent court victory secured by NGOs against Shell to realise how powerful IPCC science can be.”
I also draw some comfort from this, Scientists being scientists are usually on the side of caution.
In the last report, in 2013, this ranged from 1.5C to 4.5C, with no best estimate.
This time around, the range has narrowed and the authors opt for 3C as their most likely figure. That is the bad and sad news as it is DOUBLE where we must be, aiming for 1.5C!
Why is this important?
“We are now able to constrain that with a good degree of certainty and then we employ that to really make far more accurate predictions,” said Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds, and an author on the report.
“So, that way, we know that net-zero will really deliver.”
Well there you go, simply deliver net-zero and we all will be saved. Has anyone seen the master plan yet?
Is this the beginning of the RIP of our world? It seems devastating?
No, but the likelihood that perhaps Humans in the form we are, how we live and function might.
So will we need to gear ourselves up for another “for and against” debate polarizing and neutralizing the urgent efforts needed? We can’t afford to wait, we need to act.
The price of inaction affects us all but to mobilize the World in today’s environment- I really feel a little helpless in seeing the way forward as the world stands in the hands of human behaviour.
Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a timely report on Cities and how critically important they are to achieve a net-zero world.
The report “Empowering Cities for a Net Zero Future” covers all aspects of the issues and challenges that Cities are facing on climate action.
The IEA states that “Cities are key to a net-zero emissions future where affordable and sustainable energy is accessible to all. The global population living in cities is expected to surge from 50% in 2021 to 70% in 2050. Cities today account for 70% of global CO2 emissions and 75% of global energy use. But with size comes opportunity.”
The report covers a wide range of opportunities, challenges and policy solutions that can help city-level governments capture the significant value of efficient and smart digital energy systems, no matter their unique context by illustration, through more than 100 examples and case studies,
The report also provides actionable guidance on ways national governments can help cities overcome barriers to progress and accelerate clean energy transitions using digitalisation.
Let me summarize some of the main findings here:
