Category Archives: Renewables and Clean Energy

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

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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

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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 →

How can we mobilize innovation capability for the energy transition?

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Image credit: Miguel Bruna @mbrunacr

To mobilize our innovation capabilities and capacities for the energy system, they do have a compelling need to be purposefully marshalled for the future energy demands and the carbon-free world that is being demanded, and supportive of the commitments within the Paris climate accord.

We need to pursue, nurture, and see beyond as our three points of delivering change within the Energy transition. The combination of all three gives us the potential to navigate the energy transition we need. This energy system needs to move from today’s reliance of fossil fuels and antiquated infrastructure into one based on clean, sustainable and renewable energy sources, delivered through a highly distributed infrastructure, designed for the final consumer of the energy. Continue reading →

Themes for Decarbonizing, My Agenda Setting Post

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Is deep decarbonization possible? The level of investments will be substantial and require enormous changes to the energy system we have in place today.

Taking a higher-level of decarbonization, I have summarized the critical aspects we need to consider when we discuss this area. I have put them in blocks of bullet points here in this opening decarbonization post. I am planning to delve into each of these in later posts. Continue reading →

Show me the Electrolyzer to deliver Hydrogen and Decarbonize our Energy System

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There are an awful lot of different Electrolyzers already in the market. The different parts of the industry will need to come together and establish some standards and common definitions and measurements to allow the focus to return to technology, resolving the basics of the Electrolyzer and bring it into a robust Industrial solution on a higher level of automation and scale.

I have referred to several technical documents offered by the Hydrogen Council, the Hydrogen Europe, and specifically, a white paper by Dr. Philipp Lettenmeir of Siemens called “Efficiency- Electrolysis,” written in January 2019.

So, getting into the different choices of Electrolyzer first, drawing from the different papers. Continue reading →