Complexity, Debate and Many Starting Points in the Energy Transition

Image source and rights: Siemens Energy

I have just finished the third and final day of panel events offered by #SiemensEnergyME in their #EnergyWeek. I took the time to attend all of the panels, the debates, the complexities, and the significant differences as starting points in the #energytransition we are all undertaking was well brought home.

The panels were full of highly knowledgeable people, the hands-on ones that are dealing with the energy issues of today each day, and thinking through the ones for tomorrow. Siemens drew in Ministers, CEO’s, Senior Management, CFO’s, CTO’s and Director-Generals to offer insights and create the atmosphere for what I would call “creative tension” that good knowledge brings to a debate.

The third day was positioned on Sustainability with digitalization as key to the future of solving grid complexity and the growing challenges of renewable integration. Continue reading

Capturing Carbon – the most challenging part of the Clean Energy Transition today.

The big four needs of the Energy Transition for clean energy are achieving greater Electrification from renewables, building out Hydrogen, sustainable Bioenergy, and Carbon Capture. These are suggested as the main pillars to get us moving towards the Net Zero targets of eradicating the harmful emissions by the 2050 to 2070 range. We have a long way to go in time, commitment, and investments. I also feel in belief!

We are seemingly on the right pathway to shifting the source of energy away from fossil fuels into wind, solar, and hydro. Yet, the costs of moving from the power generations we have known, change our transmission and infrastructures to cope with the change in the fuel mixes is a massive undertaking. Continue reading

Hydrogen is the big ticket, it needs a landscape view

Hydrogen is undoubtedly becoming the big agenda ticket within any Energy Transition. It is the promise of being a central pillar for many parts of the world to achieve their decarbonization targets to get as close as they can to zero carbon by mid-century.

Hydrogen seems to hold, it seems, such a promise, but it is nearly all to do. There is so much to validate, prove, and certainly scale. We have some exciting pilots, even some emerging commercial-scale projects.

Still, these pilots or pockets of limited commercialization are not connected up or integrated into a Hydrogen Economy. So far we are not able to scale sufficiently to generate that same unstoppable momentum that Wind and Solar as sustainable renewables are achieving, in dislodging fossil fuels.

Today we do not yet have a Hydrogen infrastructure, market and price competitiveness, or overarching policies to build into a movement that shifts the energy needle.

We have lots of desire and willingness, some recent infusion of development money, especially here in Europe, but we do need to now make hydrogen really happen on a commercially sustainable basis. Continue reading