Category Archives: Renewables and Clean Energy

Mobilizing Innovation around Energy Poverty

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Mobilizing Innovation around Energy Poverty

Credit Muhammad Muzamil, Unsplash

As we look across innovation for our energy transition solutions, let’s think a little more about social innovation. What is energy poverty? Why is this important to turn our innovative abilities towards resolving?

Energy poverty has no universal definition. Each country is at different levels of understanding. Here in Europe, I read a white paper by Schneider Electric, released in 2018, entitled “Overcoming poverty in Europe.”

There is no official definition of “energy poverty”, but to start somewhere, it can be described as the struggle to afford the ever-increasing cost of heating or lighting in homes or being able to cook food or heat water as a result of low income or bills that are too high. Energy poverty leads to suffering from the cold in winter and from the heat in summer. Continue reading →

A dizzy array of Energy solutions to Decarbonization

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Finding the pathway to fast decarbonization.

We need the fastest transition through all means possible of the low carbon options, but we have to be highly conscious of the possible lock-in risks in investments and where we might deflect our research and development. We need to stay highly focused on taking us into the future of achieving net-zero emissions. And to be very aware of this “lock-in effect” if we chose the wrong transformation pathway.

The technology mix to decarbonize each economy and industry reliant is tough to navigate. Organizations like the IEA need to be turned to for the best advice, not specific solution providers pushing their solutions on a narrow pathway of their focus. Continue reading →

Our focus is finding a Sustainable Energy Transition

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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. Continue reading →

Planning concurrent shifts in Power Generation

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With so much change in fuel sources, the power generation sector has some significant challenges to tackle

The pressure to reduce the concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere is driving a significant change in power generation management.

The combined forces of a growing source of cheaper fuel generation from renewables (solar and wind), the continuing high levels of global Co2 attributed to fossil fuel combustion above 40% of all global emissions need further change.  Along with the continued, increasing demand for electricity as heat sources in buildings or factories are being replaced from fossil burning to electricity-driven heat pumps, and other equipment for greater efficiency, the power generation industry is arguable undergoing a sea-change on the creation and dispatching of energy.

Emission reductions are needed across all sectors. Continue reading →

Carefully managing and resolving Power Generation

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Currently, renewables are the fastest-growing source of new power generation capacity and meet increased demand for electricity.

This renewable growth, expected to continue well into the future, is a combination of a growing public awareness of climate change issues, the realization that the continued scale of cost declines provides cheaper generation, continued advances in solar and wind technologies, and favourable policies have provided this dramatic shift.

I will be looking across power generation in a series of posts in the coming weeks- so taking this as my opening post.

Is this renewable shift enough on its own to manage the future Power Generation needs? Continue reading →

My initial thinking behind Energy Fitness Landscapes

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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 the new invention, innovation, or technological advancement.

Specifically, the ones that will be needed over such an extended time and complexity of change that this Energy Transition will take upwards of twenty to thirty years to give it an unstoppable momentum.

I have been building out the value in my proposal of having a Fitness Landscape framework within the Energy Transition and why it makes sense.

Here in this post, I want to expand my thinking around navigating a complex landscape that the Energy Transition demands. Continue reading →

The Energy Ecosystem needs re-configuring to clean energy only.

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Understanding any ecosystem, you have to attempt to understand the whole system. The energy system is no different to begin to relate and build innovative solutions that bring this complexity into a new order.

To help with this energy ecosystem thinking the International Energy Agency (IEA) are doing some pioneering work that I want to touch upon briefly, so there is a broader awareness of this.

Exploring the IEA  report yet again, “Energy Technology perspective: Special Report on Clean Energy Innovation,” released mid last year, actually on 2nd July 2020, has so much depth of value to relate to in the energy transition challenges being faced.

In this report, they have developed some improved modelling tools to bring a higher capacity to answer key technology questions in greater detail that make up the Energy Ecosystem.

This new modelling is good news and highly valuable. Continue reading →

Why innovate Energy?

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Why innovate energy?

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 Continue reading →

Putting innovation intensity into the Energy transition

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The level of innovation intensity within the Energy Transition is a fascinating one, and it is one I continually place more and more a focus upon.

I think it is worth referencing here how the IEA breaks down to track clean energy progress, it is a pathway that needs innovation to be central.

The thinking within post has been inspired by the IEA report  Tracking clean energies IEA report, published last year and has significantly crystallized my own views or thinking on the need to accelerate innovation as central to the Energy Transition.

The IEA track the following aspects of the energy system; power, fuel, industry, transport, buildings, and energy integration. That gives innovation focus a sound way to break down the complexity within the transformation underway.

Just reflect how difficult this energy transition actually is. Continue reading →

Are we seeing the Apple of Hydrogen in Plug Power?

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This Monday, January 11th, 2021 Plug Power (PLUG) closed at $53.97 in the latest share trading session, it has gained 98% over the past month. Today with a fresh expansion announcement it is standing at $64.02 at this moment of time. Clearly, Plug Power is outpacing the Industrial Sector. It belongs as one of the alternative energy company stocks that focuses on green hydrogen, the present ultimate answer to as close as you can get to a zero-carbon fuel.

So what is going on? What is causing this incredible jump and market sentiment?

To add a little more to this “what is going on” let me do something else.

Why do I compare Plug Power to Apple in past years? It is simply how its stock has rapidly accelerated away in the past year or perhaps the growing expectation of sizable growth to come, on new products and market penetration. 

A year ago, Plug Power struggled to raise money, but it has been executing on a plan consistently in the past few years that is beginning to pay off. Continue reading →