Questioning the need to change how we approach the Energy transition.

I always determine the end of a year to be a highly reflective one to build out the future rationale, passion, and beliefs in what I do within the Energy transition. You evaluate what you have achieved, missed out on, and built upon all the new understandings and knowledge that constantly “flow” your way.

What really triggered me to go even deeper this year was the outcomes of the CoP28. 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 from narrow perspectives, and for me, this needs a very radical rethink and designed approach.

We do seem to be missing out on broader community engagement for this energy transition– I want to change that.

I don’t think we are making it the collaborative endeavour it needs to be. I wrote my final energy post for 2023 asking, “Can we change accepted practices in any energy transition?“

I opened that post by posing a question and pointing towards this answer.

“During this year, I felt we were in a growing need to significantly alter the accepted practices of managing the Energy Transition in a new, more innovative, ecosystem-thinking way. Why? We need to engage more broadly in community approaches related to energy. We need a broader energy transition movement.”

“The goal is to create a more dynamic, interconnected, and adaptable strategy that builds on having a more collaborative mindset on how we approach the transition to shifting energy sources and finding more creative solutions. We must infuse and interact with the community’s thinking to accelerate the energy transition to gain identification, adoption, and change.”

I have been focusing innovating4energy.com on being more at the front end of the Energy Transition we are all undergoing. I combine my thoughts with my business offerings, shown in separate tags at the top of this page.

I went through a revamp in the past weeks to anchor my approaches a little more. This post outlines this and equally encourages you to view each tab explaining this to see if I can help YOU.

Our integrated positioning statement

Innovating4Energy is a unique and invaluable knowledge provider dedicated to aiding organizations in transforming their energy ecosystems for sustainability, efficiency and forward-thinking.

Innovating4Energy is the catalyst for a sustainable and efficient energy future for its clients. Through a systematic, innovative, and flexible approach, we empower organizations to transform their energy ecosystems. Our unique value lies in driving collaboration, fostering innovation, and offering a roadmap reflecting options and pathways for showing the value of building energy solutions in innovating ecosystem ways.

Our unique value lies in fostering collaboration, driving innovation, and empowering organizations to shape a brighter, more sustainable energy ecosystem. Together, we pave the way for a future where energy transformation is necessary and presents remarkable opportunities for a sustainable future.

Our innovative and collaborative approach is anchored in bringing together the Key Pillars of Innovation and Ingenuity, the Research and Deploy methodology, and Reforming and Disruption strategies, which aims to propel organizations towards meaningful change in the dynamic energy sector and provide the delivery of impact and sustaining growth potential in a combined value proposal.

Approaching the energy transition in a different, more holistic way

As a knowledge provider at the forefront of energy, Innovating4Energy’s approach to the transition of changing to renewable energy is by firstly recognising it needs a really holistic approach in rationale and belief :

Recognizing the urgency of the challenge: The need to transition to renewable energy is more pressing than ever, given the accelerating pace of climate change, the growing environmental and social costs of fossil fuels, and many projects that do not offer a clear pathway to scale.

Harnessing the power of innovation ecosystems: Innovating4Energy should play a pivotal role in fostering collaboration among startups, research institutions, and industry partners to accelerate the development and deployment of renewable energy technologies in structuring ecosystem thinking and orchestrating the designs.

This offering can be achieved by:

• Fostering open innovation: Promoting the free flow of ideas, knowledge, and resources across the innovation ecosystem to ensure that the best ideas are shared and adopted.

• Encourage the Investing in early-stage technologies: Recognizing that early-stage technologies often hold the key to transformative solutions, Innovating4Energy should assist in identifying and building out business cases for clients to invest in supporting and nurturing these innovations.

• Providing credible and actionable insights: Innovating4Energy should leverage its expertise and insights to inform market participants about the latest renewable energy technologies, market trends, and regulatory developments. This can be done through:

• Publishing research reports and whitepapers: Sharing in-depth analysis of key issues and challenges the renewable energy sector faces to trigger new thinking and opportunity approaches by all engaged in the energy transition.

• Hosting or supporting webinars and events: Providing different options and insights into the platforms for industry experts to share their knowledge and discuss emerging trends.

• Developing data-driven tools and resources: Creating tools and resources that help market participants assess renewable energy projects’ feasibility and potential impact.

• Promoting responsible innovation: Innovating4Energy should emphasize the importance of responsible innovation practices to ensure that renewable energy technologies are developed and deployed to minimise their social and environmental impacts.

This can be achieved by enhancing work:

• Integrating social impact assessment into project evaluation: Assessing the potential social and environmental impacts of renewable energy projects early in development.

• Engaging with communities: Working collaboratively with affected communities to ensure that their concerns and interests are considered and integrated into any solutions in the future.

• Promoting transparency and accountability: Providing clear and transparent information about developing and deploying renewable energy technologies.

Our rationale is moving towards being a catalyst for Energy Transitions.

By taking these steps and revamping this Innovating4Energy website, I am hopeful we can be recognized and valued as contributors to playing a growing and valuable role in accelerating the transition to moving at an enhanced speed towards providing a future based more on renewable energy and shaping a more sustainable future for the energy sector, in broader engagements and the recognition that the front end of any conversations or work needs a more innovative holistic and integrated approach that ecosystem thinking and designs can provide.

We aim to offer a customised, highly collaborative and sustainability that sets us apart for compelling business propositions for organizations and their teams to lead from the front in the dynamically changing energy landscape.

The post Rationale, Passion and Beliefs: Changing how we approach the Energy transition. 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.

There are so many risks in the near to mid-term to derail the Energy Transition. I feel it is really hard to stay focused and not become distracted by the anti-energy transition groups. I am a firm believer in having a navigable strategic and tactical pathway to keep you on a given track along the route you have chosen to get to a given goal. Clearly, as we progress, we learn and adjustments are made but you have to map out a fairly solid (looking) pathway to keep on track.

I wrote about the concept of exploring energy fitness landscapes. The article “My initial thinking behind Energy Fitness Landscapes“, written in 2021, uses Hydrogen as an example, with a follow-up one year later. Here I am looking at the Energy Transition from an evolving technology innovation perspective. In other words, what “forces” can be identified or promoted that can transform the existing energy system through the pursuit of new inventions, innovations, or technological advancement? I took hydrogen as an example.

A risk of the energy transition is we give higher emphasis on the depth of knowledge in one area, get distracted often and fail to pull this together, to map it into the bigger picture of the practical, broader-based one. We do need a clear pathway.

The current to near-term risks for the Energy Transition

I have been recently looking at what is regarded as the top ten risks to near-term success in the energy industry and although I agree with many of these, it tends to be a little narrow and forgets to reflect more of the individual company risks or specific industry-related ones.

• It groups them into instability issues that are with us at present. These are political change, supply chain failures, financial market instability, growing conflicts in wars, terrorism and riots.
• Then it groups the next risk factors as lack of focus on a just energy transition, people-related risks and negative public sentiment towards a part of the broader energy industry.
• Then public policies in inadequacy and timely response, delays or lagging procedures, regulations and also in unexpected surprises significantly change the dynamics within industries. The big pledges, the different investment acts that transform investment.
• Lastly, the risks centred around fossil fuels and the progress towards renewables. The current high prices and volatility for oil and gas, the pressures of withdrawing investment money into fossil fuel projects being effective, channelling the current high level of profits from oil companies into renewables and the whole question of where we are on ‘unabated coal power generation or a post I wrote on carbon capture (saga, viability and avenues)

Knowing where you are going

When you look through the lens of innovating at the Energy Transition, you often question the fitness or the reality (ability) to achieve something.

Also this “mapping back” gives our broader society and non-expert groups the opportunity to relate to the Energy transition from a specific perspective in their need to understand their part to play within this energy transition, it gives them identification. It generates their need to change or support change and brings about more extensive (behavioural) change and awareness.

Any transition needs to explain the value, need and the idea of advancement and offset the blockages if it does not fit their frame of thinking or how or why it is relevant to them due to poor understanding.

Fitness landscape thinking can help make the journey a lot easier to determine what is needed to undertake it. It is a dynamic process that stays ‘evolving.

Recently I was reading a paper written by the Dubai Future Foundation, which reimagines, inspires and designs Dubai’s future in collaboration with our public and private sector partners. Our aim is to make Dubai one of the world’s foremost future cities.

The Foundation paper “Hydrogen From Hype to Reality (opens directly to a pdf, 100 pages plus) provides a very comprehensive explainer of Hydrogen and its fit within the future of UAE. Worth reading

My suggested “handy” innovators’ strategic pathway guide for energy concepts to commercialization.

In reading the UAE report I felt there was a good “handy innovators” strategic pathway, well my version of one, to fit my focus area of looking at the Energy Transition from an evolving technology innovation perspective. In other words, what “triggers the innovation development process advancement” can be followed in the pursuit of a new invention, innovation, or technological advancement?

• The development of proof of concepts building and equally collecting future showcase use cases
• The development of prototypes demonstrating the ability to overcome challenges, technology hurdles
• Carrying out a pilot (or multiple pilots) for demonstrating the different stages of verification
• Building the assessment and feasibility study of a funded pipeline of innovation enhancements
• Informing and aligning key stakeholders and government entities to manage, influence, inform and coordinate the changes generated by the evolving technology innovation perspective.
• Drawing out insights, known risks and their management, timing and cost impediments
• The attracting, securing and building of the financial support needed to extend, speed up and scale.
• The ability to determine clear targeted measures, milestones and KPIs to facilitate and inform all the necessary stakeholders
• The identification of the roll-out targetted market potentials and conversion needs from old to new
• The development plan to fund, scale and invest on the appropriate level to support the technology change and its impact and value for those involved and society at large

I expect this could be improved or challenged even, but my point of emphasis is to have a clear manageable strategic pathway that provides a plan that maps out a pathway of change that includes an assessment of the landscape, the related risks that this transition needs to account for, and an innovation process for managing the evolving new technology innovation introduction or replacement validation. We need to have a clear understanding of all of these to provide a “reasonable” opening viewpoint of any contribution to the energy transition.

The post Navigating an Energy Transition strategic pathway first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

The need is to allow time for new technologies to commercialize.

To undertake something like a global energy transition, you need time to figure it out, validate the options and pathways and then provide the necessary time to pilot, learn and then commercialize the (multiple) solutions to be scaled and applied. The cost of this transformation will eventually run into trillions of dollars.

The innovation aspect needs to gather momentum. Technologies are emerging based on several solution needs:

• Ones that are grid edge in design, meaning more customer-facing and power-flow controls
• Radically different storage technologies that can handle the variances in renewable of holding the supply of solar and wind generating energy as well as converting energy through electrolysis, hydrogen and synthetic fuels that serve the needs of mobility, heating, agriculture
• The present gas and steam turbines need to be upgraded, optimized, and converted and have applied hybrid solutions that combine different energy sources and various technologies that combine to provide mixed energy source power plants.
• The advancement of carbon capture techniques and carbon removal
• Exploring next-generation nuclear fission and fusion
• Finding different solutions that allow high-temperature superconductor transmission and solid-state transformers to be introduced increasingly into the energy system
• We need to increase efficiency and effectiveness by increasing transparency, reliability, and resilience by using sensors, monitoring equipment, data analytics, and self-learning systems.
• Finally, putting to use digitalization for machine and device connectivity, managing growing complexity in overall systems.

Each of these initiatives “demands” new technology design.

Each initiative does demand new technology designs and validation. They must be economically viable and scalable, drive a clean energy transition agenda, and provide increasing system flexibility.

These new technologies need to break into the existing lifecycle of energy design to substitute incumbent solutions. The speed of development and deployment will be unprecedented for us to meet the climate goals, decarbonize the system, and change the fuel source.

Innovation is at the heart of the energy transition.

Innovation will be at the forefront of the energy transition; it will be both radical and full of breakthroughs to achieve the goals set to decarbonize our world.

Innovation is playing a significant role in facilitating the integration of the emerging new renewable energy system providing new opportunities to explore and evolve:

1). New services, enhancing the system’s flexibility, and incentivising further integration models can play their part in new business model design.

2). Then we have the consequence of any innovation change in energy source and delivery in exploring market design innovation. Regulations, policies, and new incentives for value-adding services are building new business opportunities that give a new breed of energy players, including a new set of infrastructure investors, the opportunities to support and gain from the new introduction of solutions.

3). Lastly, the innovative models for operating in the electricity system can give a different way to share the value of managing this VRE generation. It opens up the market to a whole new range of energy providers, including you as a net contributor back to the energy grid with the right approach to usage, storage, and generation from your renewable technology stack of solutions.

Innovation is enabling technologies, offering new business models, market design, and system integration options in focusing on flexible solutions to overcome solar and wind variability, providing increased system flexibility and allowing for reduced total system cost.

During the next ten to twenty years, we are in a race to transform our energy systems, one that moves from fossil fuel reliant to clean fuels based on renewable energy. Innovation is the catalyst for this.

The post The power to unlock energy is through innovation first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

In my view, we are struggling to get the level of momentum we urgently need into this energy shift, away from fossil fuels into a renewable, clean energy system.

I content it is not just the need to have the engineer’s insight into solutions, even if they might be the final arbitrators “go-to choice.” Still, it is to forge a strategic one, evaluating innovative options to broaden understanding and provide that essential and different perspective.

We all have a certain bias, often beliefs are well-grounded in past experience and approaches that WERE successful. Any transition is exactly that, it needs a clear recognition that what was often successful in the past is not the pathway to the future.

The energy transition needs a broad array of thinking; specialists, generalists, enthusiasts and passionate people that can move beyond their own view offering a “non-ideological confrontation” where solutions are both sustainable and accelerate a path to decarbonization and net-zero without any legacy or vested interest effect.

This innovator capacity that is needed to be ‘enforced’ requires greater insights and understanding of the alternatives, options, issues, and challenges. This is why I feel my multiplier approach offers a framework to help work this complexity through the energy transition in a supportive, systematic way.

As stated, my positioning is at the front end of the Energy Transition, building insights through the “eyes” of the strategic innovator.

• I provide evaluations and assessments of the front end of a transformation in discovery and validation that provide dedicated advisory and supporting services in knowledge and insights provision on energy-related matters.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics in “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are in my mind complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections for growth potential that have impact and growth potential.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach has ‘arrived’ capitalizing on the value points of digitalisation combining with technology, both in the Industrial IoT world and finding a growing place and pace in the Energy Transition that is having, in my view, a very different combination effect.

Offering a given value in the proposition

• The aim is to support the individual, teams, and organisations in their innovation and transition activity around the energy transition they intend to undertake.
• The aim is to advance further what they have in place or develop more significant innovation and transformation understanding and competencies, resulting in clients achieving positive and sustaining results from these transformation activities.
• The value for the client, so often time-starved, is that they can rapidly understand the latest thinking relevant to their focus areas, in thoughts, and insights around innovation, ecosystem building, or how the energy transition impacts them to identify new growth options or radically different stances in business positioning in the future.

The return on the investments made.

• The insights delivered to offer a radically different view leading to a more balanced perspective, drawing in the external perspective, saving a significant amount of time in early resource investment.
• These insights and recommendations provide the triggering points for seeing fresh opportunities in growth.
• This fresh focus enables a more substantial client resource focusing on highly relevant aspects of building out and validating their future interest and value in new business options and energy design solutions.
• The value of applying this approach is by having access to a  greater depth of research and alternative understanding.
• Extracting knowledge, applying application and practice, gives clients the beginning of the “discovery and validation phase”, accelerating the client’s growth options in more structured ways.

Seeking problem resolution through discoveries.

• Through my depth of research across the needs of the energy, transitions it underpins and supports the changing understanding that is necessary.
• I provide insights and knowledge to clarify and quantify answers to many issues that lead to growing awareness and clarification on multiple energy-related issues. If I can’t provide the answers then I seek out the expert opinions that can.
• This focused research is associated with innovation, ecosystems, and our energy systems and the changing landscapes that transform and energise the existing everyday business into future ones that scope, speed a and scale the transition required.

My role is at this front end of discovery and early validation

• These insights significantly underpin my supportive advisory & mentoring services to a client. This dynamic environment nurtures my understanding of what is evolving and what impact and growth opportunities on a business by taking the innovators perspective into the assessment of the need of a clients energy transition
• My primary role is advising and coaching within these areas. The principal focuses then is to help support and build internal capacity, competencies, and capabilities to undertake any transformation journey.

Recognizing the value within the knowledge service provider

So my role, through this work, is to build the context and provide the content in useful knowledge and actionable insights. These provide the building blocks of the transition narrative to galvanise and achieve a common understanding of the Energy Transition being undertaken.

Then to support and help bridge the gaps in capacity, competency and capability recognition of the needs of having the innovators mindset, to get the Energy Transition journey onto a stronger momentum pathway of common understanding and realization of the tasks and issues to tackle.

Aspects of my knowledge and thinking through focus

I am a fairly enthusiastic researcher and writer that supports my work as a transition advocate for innovation, ecosystems and sustainability, specifically focusing on the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and energy systems that are radically changing our world.

A different combination effect- my multiplier framework

I see a combined effect of innovation, ecosystem design thinking, IIOT and energy as my work-to-be-done through different channels and services to stimulate and catalyse the energy transition we are all undertaking.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approach and building this into the front end of energy provides a greater discovery structure and process that can greatly facilitate the changes, with more informed knowledge, insights and validation of a path to travel.

The innovating4energy.website explains this in more detail.

*** FYI-  I discuss and investigate about #energy, #ecosystems, #industry4.0, #innovation, and #sustainability. My dedicted posting and website references, if you are interested, these are shown in this about section on my paul4innovating.com site

The post My multipliers for innovation at the Front End of Energy first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

There is often a mistaken belief that they are undertaking innovation as they react and copy others, not recognizing their own distinctive needs and never building their innovation capacity systematically.

Innovation is vital to the energy system’s evolution; it needs to be fully integrated and operational in design, and we need to recognise its crucial role further.

I certainly argue the systematic approach for the Energy transition

Innovation begins with discovery, then it moves through the innovation pipeline through its experimenting, validating, testing, often multiple trials, commissioning and eventual commercialization roll-outs.

The sooner you can do this validation, investigation, and conversation, the better my front end of energy. We always need to relate, even “ground” the thinking, and determine the real value and potential as a progressive journey. Sometimes the external person can become a valuable partner in this process to keep the thinking on track.

Innovation is made up of many enabling technologies that support energy.

This complexity requires innovative approaches to be built in highly systematic ways. Its ultimate result is to offer innovation that continually looks for re-imagining new market designs and business models to stimulate the changes and solutions for our future energy transformation.

To undertake the Energy Transition requires a radical transformation in how we supply, transform, and use energy. This requires a profound transformation in technologies, systems, and infrastructure. The complexity in the discovery, validation and lengthy process time to fruition is highly challenging.

Having a “system of innovation” enables the potential concepts to be captured in common, identified ways for all involved, the inventor, the developer and production groups to identify with the evaluation process.

When you establish a recognized system that others can follow as transparent to all, you can evaluate innovation activities through common “hurdle points” and evaluation criteria. It focuses on efforts that bring common identity and purpose.

What do I mean by a systematic process here?

We know that Innovation often begins with discovery, a new realization something can make a fundamental change to what is existing. That concept then moves through the innovation pipeline, experimenting, validating, testing, often multiple trials, commissioning and eventual commercialization roll-outs.

That can be fairly complex and demanding. It needs a combination of solution understanding (researchers, engineers, designers). Still, it also needs a constant “mapping back” to the commercialization and relating to the other stakeholders that can help facilitate or block progress.

There is nearly always a need to bridge the awareness gap or others to provide the validation. Knowledge is gained when it is shared and exchanged. I put a lot of my time into researching the energy transition.

External views can often make a decisive difference in any discussions; they offer independence to balance the vested interests, often defending what they have and show a different way to see new possibilities.

I have focused increasingly on the Energy transition. It fascinates me

Besides writing about innovation and energy on two dedicated blogs of innovating4energy.com (this one) and digital4energy, I recently launched an innovating4energy.website for my business offering.

I set out to offer the external perspective to those busy inside organizations by focusing on mapping out the future of energy, where they fit, and what gaps they need to fill.

This role is to support, complement, and provide different value points to this thinking and eventual work. I see this as more advisory to complement their insights, feeding into and augmenting their expertise with different value points.

My role is to be a “translator” and take the innovator’s perspective looking for fresh opportunities, supporting and accelerating your existing ideas and concepts.

We need to relate, even “ground” thinking, determine the real value and potential, and leverage all that innovation offers the energy transition.

**Originally published on paul4innovating.com “I aim to put more innovation into the front end of energy”

The post Putting innovation into energy, sparking transformation first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

The missing value of distinctive innovation needs greater appreciation in the Energy Transition

I think we miss something and it is a great big pity.

Distinctive innovation is actually not just the middle ground, the passing through point towards breakthrough or disruptive, but it is the inspirational point for all of us to rally around far more than we do.

 Pushing for that extra effort takes something good to something even better; it gives it a certain distinctiveness. Inspiration within the innovation process is essential; it is a great motivating point to achieve far more in our identity with something distinctive than just incremental. Whatever we work upon in innovation, we should seek something distinctive as an outcome.

I don’t regard the latest flavoured yoghurt or improvements to our computer processor power speed or a few more pixels on our I-phone as anything more than incremental. Good to have as they keep pushing our experiences and add more value, but this is incremental value. This is to keep pushing up the awareness curve to extract longer value from the brand or product. I’m looking at something that makes it stand out, to be distinctive.

Examples Solar or Wind Turbines

These were new technology, groundbreaking solutions. They have opened up the energy future for renewables as they use sustainable energy sources; they harness the sun for solar and the wind for turbines. The ability to scale these has been a significant pathway of learning. I deem this, once we are past the invention and initial innovation as the true breakthroughs, we went into really distinctive phases of advancement. We harnessed the power of technology, engineering and design understanding

Mobiles moving from a simple mobile to our smartphones

The amazing breakthrough of smartphones became constant distinctive advancements of design, technology and again engineering. To shrink the capabilities to do what a smartphone can provide has been stunning.

There are six innovation areas of electrification, hydrogen, biochemistry and synthetic chemistry, material efficiency and circularity, new materials, and carbon capture and carbon use that need to have innovative solutions. Working on the innovations within these six critical areas does have a real chance of fully decarbonizing these harder-to abate sectors of the world’s economy.

For me, the sector in the report (Chapter 8) that discusses the innovation agenda was the place I automatically went.  The two crucial slides from the Mission Impossible Report for innovation were highlighted in the chapter, discussing bring critical technologies to commercial-scale deployment, addressing engineering complexities, and driving down costs.

Exhibit 8.1 presents a summary of critical domains where incremental performance and cost improvement of existing technologies is essential to facilitate commercial-scale deployment. It provides a roadmap to explore identified innovation solutions.

from the Mission Impossible Report by the Energy Transmission Commission (page145)

Exhibit 8.2 presents a summary of key areas where innovations are further away from the market and require significant development, demonstration, and piloting over the next 15 years to bring them to market readiness by the 2030s or 2040s. Again, the innovative concepts are known; it is the validation and scaling-up that needs time.

from the Mission Impossible Report by the Energy Transmission Commission (page146)

The Energy Transmission Commission rightly points out we will be discovering other innovation alternatives in the years ahead.

The state: “Unforeseeable technological breakthroughs will significantly change the optimal pathway to decarbonization over the next fifty years.”

 The driver of the real change must come from a very forceful public policy set of decisions that reach net-zero carbon emissions from the harder-to-abate sectors non-negotiable.

The post Where does distinctive innovation fit in the Energy Transition? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Visual by dreamstime.com

You do get the feeling that the world is beginning to wake up to the climate crisis.

Is it too little, too late or that we still have time left?

The energy transition will provide the pathway for transforming our energy sector from fossil-fuel-based energy to ones based on a range of zero-carbon solutions.

Although 2050 has been the target set to achieve this zero-carbon transition, the growing realization is this must be accelerated.

As President Macron suggested recently, the target of 2050 needs to be achieved now by 2030. That might be a political aspiration, but the reality and all the associated transitions have a huge cost and disruption and not really possible. He is not wrong in calling for greater ambition, but this needs to be grounded. This is not just in the science recognizing this climate imperative but in the physical transformation that needs to be undertaken on a scale and cost. Some estimate will be north of $100 trillion to achieve.

Making the energy transition unstoppable needs massive commitments of political, public, private, and societal determination.

Innovation will be at the core of all the changes, be they for 2030 or 2050, and here lies part of the problem. Much of the solutions have either not been invented, scaled, or even commercialized, so are we naive or realistic in 2030. The reality is we have a chance by 2050, but the momentum of unstoppable change has to be in place by 2030; otherwise, to coin a phrase, “we are cooked.”

Innovation is core

• We will need significant technology breakthroughs to resolve the present no cost-effective alternatives to move away from conventional energy technology. There are ideas, working prototypes or pilots, but converting the iron and steel, chemical or cement, let alone find alternative sources for ammonia, ethylene, or other essential feedstocks, are significant challenges.
• The same is to provide aviation and maritime fuel solutions that overcome existing barriers and provide a global alternative. Tailoring to local solutions might be doable, same as short flights or regional shipping, but the fuel needed to be dense and highly efficient where distance is required.
• Then we need to look beyond existing energy solutions in storage, batteries, and electrolyzers, for example, to be of higher capacity and able to replace the existing solutions commercially. Solutions that, as they scale, become lower in cost and offer solutions that stimulate deployment
• There is a recognition and a call for new business models, but what happens to the incumbent, the vested interest, and the provision of “risk capital” to make these changes?  Can new actors break into traditional areas of energy across the energy system? Can renewable technologies achieve not just profitable scale-up but replace whole energy supply systems?
• Today our financing is built on traditional risk/return models. Still, these need to be very differently modelled, those invested rewarded and reflecting the shareholder returns required, be these public or private.
• Then we have so many policy and regulatory guidances that are often caught in a real-time lag and a range of multiple stakeholder dilemmas issues to be addressed. These reviews for change go through sometimes very long due process. How can that be altered to provide greater market access and growth incentives based on exploring and establishing alternatives?

The need to maximize economic and social balancing.

The objective of wealth-creation and inclusion of all stakeholders is a difficult balancing act.

So, in conclusion, at this point.  The reality is we are only just starting on the energy transition journey. This is a runners race. The whole energy journey is a marathon, made up of short technology sprints, middle distance commitments, and cross-country involvement.

We need technology invention and acceleration; we need to deploy smarter solutions based on information technology, research, and development that considers science, the environment, and the cost of deployments. We need fresh policy frameworks and market instruments.

Do I feel we are addressing these complex issues or just still picking off the low hanging fruit? The answer is low hanging fruit, in my opinion.

Perhaps a slightly deeper dive here.

Let us go a deeper level by breaking down the main issues to be resolved if we want to build a sustainable, well-designed, and thought-through energy transition; we need to have plans and commitments to the following: open-ended questions here.

These are just a summary of areas to tackle.

Electricity

How are we going to modernize grids globally? We need to have possible parallel solutions as we navigate from grids based on fossil fuel to ones that need greater variability and adapting to alternative renewable energy sources.

We are building wind and solar solutions worldwide, but these need to combine with more imaginative energy sources to deliver “clean” energy. Hydro, hydrogen and nuclear all need to be in the supply mix.

The nuclear plant issues for a clean electricity resource are still regarded as the elephant in the room we need to address. Is this going to be designed around small modular nuclear reactors (SMR’s)?

How can we harness the power of our oceans for providing greater hydropower solutions?

Transport

The delivery of highly efficient, electric, or hydrogen cars at scale and affordable prices and complete networks to enable this alternative transport to be viable is still in the early stages of exploring. Are we going to make some leaps into the future finally?

My impression of the current car industry is this continued reluctance to make real commitments is palpable; we can feel it, but it is not in real touching distance to make the transition.

The one area of real promise is high-speed trains, but we do not have the track infrastructure and operating conditions to provide lasting security. For example, the investments made by Japan and China are pioneering, but are they the future or the interim to the future?

Finally, here, what do we need in Urban infrastructure? Again we have some significant investments in (light) rail and smart connected road systems for improving flow and density but will these scales and evolve to cope with the future population sizes we will have in our cities?

Buildings

The whole need to open up the debate to retrofitting on a global, city by city, building by building to provide a more efficient existing building. Heat pumps or water cooling solutions are available, but the investment commitment is not.

How will we tackle the appliance efficiency within existing homes or ensure all new appliances are up to the level and design to contribute. We buy appliances still very much on cost, but the investment model should shift perhaps to consumption. Can it change to this?

Then clean cooking and heating for som any needs resolving. Wood burning for heating and cooking is still a major source of carbon monoxide. We are still failing 750 million by not providing them viable alternatives or generated electricity solutions.

Solar, wind, and hydrogen are viable alternatives delivering clean electricity, but the financial investments in infrastructure or incentive still badly lag the solutions available.

Fuels

How will we make a concerted effort to reduce methane from oil and gas operations by legal and societal pressures? Yes, but when?

When are we going to bit the fossil fuel subsidies bullet? We still offer all levels of subsidies. Taking subsidies, imposing carbon emission taxes needs bold, decisive, and tough political and investment will. Will we move from talking about this and actually addressing this problem?

The value of Hydrogen is well presented today. It has a future but do we have the ability to scale solutions into the scale needed? That is a massive task in research and development. If this stays within the hands of individual companies, its commercialization and funding will be constrained by vested interests or will it?

Then finally, the talk of BioFuels, can this be scaled and factored into a creative renewable energy mix. Biofuels emit many of the gases we are trying to eradicate. Waste or residue holds a real promise but capturing of these emissions needs to be always part of the future if they are to be accelerated within the energy mix.

Industry

How are we to tackle those hard-to-abate sectors we are so highly dependent on for iron, steel, glass, chemicals, pesticides etc.?

The efficiency of production is making a transition. The application of technology is providing glimpses or showcases of the factory of the future. The combination of technology and physical assets is increasing combined; this is where the digital twin will extend and define the future of much of industry.

The future of material efficiency will increasingly go hand in hand with Green building and energy conservation, and any other ways of incorporating Renewable resource’s in the building process from start to finish.

The future business opportunities of how raw materials are consumed, incorporated, or wasted, compared to previous construction projects or physical processes, will need a “step change” in manufacturing approaches. Sustainability will become central to this change in design and production/consumption thinking.

Innovation is at the core of the Energy Transition

Image only Credit: Miguel Bruna
@mbrunacr

Today we look at solutions to resolve hydrogen, batteries, storage, and CCUS as required solutions that can be scaled and deployed to radically alter the energy design equation.

Yet, my elephant in the room, nuclear, needs to be present within the energy transition discussion. The SMR route needs to be championed.

How it is managed in France will be a place to watch as they have a rapidly ageing nuclear dependency that will need actively addressing. Will this be the catalyst to bringing the nuclear debate to the energy table?

The energy transition is only at the beginning.

To achieve an energy zero-carbon world, we have an awfully long way to go. Realistic by 2030, no, but the political sound bite of President Macron provides the wake-up call; we do need to roll up our sleeves and move beyond political rhetoric and make clean energy happen sooner rather than later.

The post Our focus is finding a Sustainable Energy Transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

The front end of energy means what exactly?

It is the place I feel I can make the best contribution, a place where innovation thrives and drives discovery to commercialization of a new idea that emerges as a concept of value, often replacing something that does not “serve today’s or tomorrow’s purpose, where the energy transition must embrace fully “

My aim here is : “To achieve better, faster and more valuable future solutions with a focus on sustainability, to anticipate constant change and build different more exciting and valuable business models for lasting impact”

We provide a range of services that support your energy transition at the front of the change process.

I have three sources of energy reference that is building the Energy Story, as I am seeing it. I encourage you to take a look….please

www.innovating4energy.com – this is my posting site on all things energy

www.innovation4energy.website – my website that (begins) to structure my front end of energy offering

www.digital4energy.com – the digitalization of energy is a very exciting place at present as its value is recognized as vital to bring our energy up to date.

The belief of why innovation is vital to the Energy Transition

Our belief is there is real value for you to view what you doing with a different lens. There is often a need to bridge the awareness gap. Knowledge is gained when it is shared and exchanged. I put a lot of my time into researching the energy transition.

Our role is to be a “translator” and to take the perspective of the innovator looking for fresh opportunities, supporting and accelerating your existing ideas and concepts. We need to relate, even “ground” thinking and determine the real value and potential

We believe there is a real gap in the need to build a robust innovation capability, capacity and competency to help accelerate the Energy Transition journey. I have over twenty years of advising and transforming innovation activities, not a bad resource to “tap into”.

Two points of innovation reference that are my core here

www.paul4innovation.com – my posting site, since 2010 this is a regular

www.agilityinnovation.com – going through a revamp but my core since 2000.

Innovation begins with discovery, then it moves through the innovation pipeline, through its experimenting, validating, testing, often multiple trials, commissioning and eventual commercialization roll-outs.

My focus on understanding the innovation needs of the energy transition

Why did I chose to exclusively focus on different aspects of innovation within the energy transition is simple for me. We have such a real threat of climate change and any pathway to meet the Paris Agreements, where all countries pledged to keep the rise of the global temperature below 2 degrees C by 2050 and ideally try to work towards the position of 1.5-degree C above pre-industrial levels. These target goals mean bringing our temperatures down dramatically.

We are presently at a very critical decision time; there is the level of investment needed to achieve this,  the current estimate to create a safe climate system is a need to invest USD 110 trillion of new investments in the energy sector by 2050.

Much of the investments need to be directed away from fossil fuels (the primary carbon emitters) into clean technologies. It is renewables, including most power generation and end-use applications that need to invest mostly through generation sources of wind, solar, hydrogen, and biofuels.

The opportunities for change are simply opening up everywhere.

This level of investment commitment will radically alter the job landscape, where energy is generated, by what means, and how it is going to be distributed, stored and consumed by us all.

Presently we are not making the essential investments we need to make. The period 2020 to 2030 is absolutely critical for investments not just to be pledged but effectively deployed on the ground in the physical solutions and effective operation needed to make this energy transition required on track to reach the climate goals.

Innovation is critical in this energy transition.

We need to move from research and development, through engineering validation but into pilot and scaling actual solutions at speed. We do not have the luxury of evaluating these over standard lifetime returns or observing others over the years, there is the need to raise validation and take higher risks, than in more stable times.

We need to be more pioneering. Without a coordinated effort, risk is always cautious without some form of guarantee or point of crisis. To date, we have not generated co-ordination in policies, collaborations, and commitments to shared risks. We have yet to fully place in the minds of everyone what the crisis is and where it is heading if we do not respond with a real sense of purpose.

So for me,  the energy transition is at the forefront of “cutting edge” innovation to deliver and why I have given this my 100% attention in the ways I can support the energy transition to offer ways to understand, investigate, research and become even more fully immersed in it.

My focus is to really become even more conversant in the Energy Transition, to build out what I know and can provide as “accelerating input” into its complexity in resolving both its issues and barriers, but also in “formulating outputs” in scope, opportunities and magnitude of scale for contributing where possible to supporting each organizations journey.

The post Why innovate Energy? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Everywhere you turn, you stumble across reports on one aspect or another of the energy transformation we are undertaking.

I am looking at this energy transition through the eyes of the innovator, as it offers so much in new solutions and designs that any innovator would love to be part of.

My big move this week was to determine my Energy Transition journey

I added my dedicated website on innovating4energy.website. It stays a W-I-P but its role is to keep the offer separated but also be highly support in this posting site as the more dynamic place for breaking news, discoveries and progress and combined they underscore the value position offering.

I am taking on the front end of the energy transition as my advising positioning.

More on that in future posts.

Why make energy my increasing focus?

Energy is tackling one of the world’s toughest tasks, turning our existing energy system, reliant on fossil fuels into one based on renewables, is an enormously complex set of challenges in its goal of decarbonizing it.

There is such an innovation landscape of solutions that are contributing to the world achieving a more renewable-powered future. Technology innovation, suggested new business models, outline proposals for changing policies, processes, and market design all are being “sketched out.”

It is overwhelming, but innovative solutions need to be continuously refreshed to reflect this consistent inflow of understanding, relating to the energy transition that is being undertaken. It is evident innovation must be way broader than just technological RD&D.

During this past week, I have been working through specific aspects of the energy transition model.

Firstly, just take the Grid Edge. The Grid Edge includes the innovative solutions of hardware, software, and business innovation that are enabling smart infrastructure to be installed at or near the “edge” of the electric power grid. So things that you can touch or see, such as solar panels, metering infrastructure, local energy storage systems, smart thermostats, appliances, and building controls, are in Grid Edge Hardware solutions. The software is automating this, more demand-responsive, real-time data, data analytics, and planning systems to extract the value out of the data. Business innovation is turning that knowledge (data) into value for aggregation, trading, and supporting whole communities with managing their energy needs, for example. The Grid Edge solutions are on the rise and that comes from innovation.

My main area of focus was to re-orientate back to innovation and its importance to transforming the energy system.

I spent some time checking back on the tracking of clean energy progress by technology in the different energy sectors or subsectors. These progress report cards come out regularly, but the one I wanted to work through was ones that cdame out some months back, from the OECD, IRENA and IEA.

IEA track in their clean energy report 26 technology classified areas of energy, covering energy supply, energy demand, and energy integration. The approach makes sense as it is the ability to deliver the WHOLE energy system will give us the climate, renewable, and energy transition benefits.

So in tracking the essential technologies within the energy transition, you get a clear sense of our progress or lack of it on a global scale. This 30,000-foot perspective is sometimes sobering to all the activity that seems to be occurring at energy events or within the companies dealing in solutions. Yet the gaps, in reality, need addressing and fast and that is where innovation comes in

There are so many promising technologies lagging the commitments dues to lower funding, more significant technical difficulties, or not being able to be exploited due to political, regulatory, or business constraints. Innovation solutions can only advance so much, but without the political or business will, resources or capital can only progress far slower.

It does seem we do not have the momentum we need to undertake the transformation of our energy systems yet and the value of giving a real intense focus on making the innovation process more robust and dynamic seems to make sense, well for me.

Drawing some interim conclusions

Why innovate energy?

To achieve better, faster and more valuable future solutions with a focus on sustainability, to anticipate constant change and build different more exciting and valuable business models for lasting impact.

I will increasingly focus and operate at the front end of the Energy System.

There is a growing urgency in the innovation scope, pace and direction of changes needed. Our position and value are to underpin and accelerate that journey you are on.

I offer greater knowledge, perspective and activism for delivering innovation having this as my specialised area of consulting, mentoring and coaching for over twenty years..

Partnering in your energy journey: We believe we can offer fresh knowledge, momentum and understanding on what is occurring and needed in the new innovation and technology identification.

Much of my past two years has been intensive on the Energy Transition. Based on research and know-how I believe there is real value to be a partner in building out the future validation of new technology, leading to sustainable change and new growth opportunities through accelerating the innovation focus.

I offer innovating expertise, well positioned at the Front End of the Energy Transition to accelerate your thinking and support the shaping of future opportunities that give growth and impact potential

Time to accelerate my and your energy transition journey I believe.

The post Continuing my Energy Transition Journey first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.