Accelerating the Energy Transition
https://innovating4energy.com

Over the next twenty to thirty years, the Energy System will undergo a massive transition to achieve that eventual 2050 net-zero target of decarbonizing the energy system fully, resulting in a clean, climate-resilient energy transformation.

I have been looking in a short mini-series at the need to structure the Energy System in a very systematic and consistent evaluation as we undertake the changes from a fossil-reliant ecosystem into a clean, renewable one, with the overriding obligation to address climate change.

In this third and final post of this series, I focus on 1. Innovation & Ingenuity, 2. Experimentation & Rapid Pilots, and 3. Leapfrog Opportunities and discuss a value proposal.

Within my first post, “Changing the Energy Ecosystem“, I began to lay out the need to change the energy dynamics by redirecting them away from the existing systems and structures and where I looked at the triggering points of this: 1. Changing the Energy System, followed by considering new 2. Value Propositions (scenario, synthesise, combinations, synopsis, sketches) and then evaluating the 3. Dealing with the different disruption and dislocation points, and 4. the need for rapid learning and knowledge sharing.

In my second post, “Building out the new Energy Ecosystem “, I  continued to build out the new Energy Ecosystem. This post focused on triggering thinking for reforming the Business Models within any energy system change and then looked at the necessary resolutions in the impact or implications any new business model will have.

Moving from proven to nascent solutions needs an innovation mindset

So why am I focusing on these? 1. Innovation & Ingenuity specifically, and then on the essentials of building real competencies in 2. Experimentation & Rapid Pilots, and then taking a future building capability with 3. Leapfrog Opportunities.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we need to dismantle the existing energy ecosystem; we are building the new one inside; that is the really hard part; it is full of variability and novelty.

We are replacing proven solutions with nascent ones, perhaps individually demonstrated but not fully connected up in an integrated, designed energy system showing validation and long-term return or resilience.

This is why within this post, my emphasis is on innovation generation, experimentation and the need to look beyond the known and sometimes leap into the unknown. We need an equal emphasis on start-up-driven innovation and rapidly establishing technology-driven solutions.

I have not focused here on the multiple energy solutions available.

They can cover additional concepts like blockchain, big data, microgrids, storage for providing and handling energy or the enormous potential of digital smart “everything” or cover electrolyzers, grid transmission solutions, power generation, electric charging, wind, solar, hydro etc., etc.

The list of innovative solutions seems endless, but this becomes a central point here. If you do not establish a real core innovation capability and set of competencies and capacities to innovate, you run the risk of not optimizing or capitalizing on all the solutions offered today or emerging in the next ten or more years.

Hence why, in any changing Energy Ecosystem, Innovation becomes a central tenet.

Innovation is the energy transition key enabler.

Innovation is the engine that powers the ongoing transformation of the
global energy system. Decision-makers need to identify the optimal combination of solutions, which needs a dedicated team of innovators exploring and exploiting options and validating them systematically.

Innovation needs to build the capability to understand the enabling technologies, investigate fit and innovative business models, and constantly determine different market designs and system operations.

We must recognize today that any energy innovation challenge we face extends to sectors that have not significantly changed for many decades and that do not yet have commercially available low-carbon options.

Technology innovation is the key, but we must make quicker progress through faster innovation.

Energy technology refers to the combination of hardware, techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of energy and the provision of energy services, i.e. the way we go about producing, transforming, storing, transporting and using energy.

 We require a rapid evolution of the technology mix, particularly in some emerging economies that are just starting out on their decarbonisation journeys. The under-appreciation of these urgent challenges in today’s energy debate is a real concern and why I believe we need to recognize the current Energy Ecosystem is not fit for future purposes.

We need to recognize there are no single or simple solutions to putting the world on a sustainable path to net-zero emissions; it will come from a radical re-assessment of what the future energy ecosystem needs.

I do not want to take this urgency further here; that’s for future posts with a growing recognition that today’s energy transition is falling behind in its goals to achieve net zero by 2050. We do need to speed up and innovate.

So let me return to this third part of my structure to drive an Energy Ecosystem change.

Again I have used mindmaps to reduce content and allow an individual understanding of each idea and what it triggers. This offers the individual a suggested prescriptive framework and course of possible activation, but I stress again, as previously, “the devil is in your details and circumstances“.

Innovation & Inqenuity

The triggers to build out Innovation Capabilities for the Energy Ecosystem

Experimentation and Pilots

The capacity and competencies for experimenting and exploring pilots and prototypes become essential to learning and building an innovation capability.

Experimentation and Pilot building capabilities for the Energy Ecosystem

Leapfrog Opportunities

The need to change our energy systems in thirty years is a really short period. It needs to adopt a greater “leapfrogging” approach to technology, business model options, market design and system operations.

To accelerate the Energy Ecosystem, you must leapfrog as much as possible.

Through my focus on innovating for energy, I have placed my point of value on supporting the building out of a structured system that takes the energy ecosystem and builds the essential aspects needed for any energy transition into it.

MY Value Proposal

This dedicated website outlining services, thinking, and structures that can help you formulate a pathway of change in energy perspectives and solutions.

Any Energy Transition needs all its parts to become fully connected.  We provide the knowledge and understanding to help connect the parts that lead to fresh business opportunities and growth.

• Our value is in helping to translate the understanding and the decisions needed to provide that critical different perspective and positioned to operate at the front end of the Energy System.

There is a growing urgency in the innovation scope, pace and direction of changes needed. Any change in the energy system needs to have depth and greater knowledge, perspective and activism for delivering innovation intent and helps the positioning in building out your understanding of the Energy journey and our wish to support you along this transition pathway.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approaching 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.

Contact me if you would like to explore where innovation fits within your energy transition.

The post Accelerating the new Energy Ecosystem first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Why did I choose to give a specific focus on different aspects of innovation within the energy transition? Well, it is simple for me. I have focused on building capabilities, competencies and capacity to innovate for 20 plus years. Innovation has been my core area of focus. Today, I am channelling that specifically towards the building of innovation within our Energy Transition

The real imperative for finding new innovative technology is critical. 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.

The critical period for transforming energy is coming in this current decade. We need to speed up that transformation.

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. That equates to $3.6 trillion each year for the next thirty years.

The majority 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.

Presently we are not making the essential investments we need to make.

We are far to slow in Government policy in providing incentives and organizing the capital markets to raise, distribute, and commit to necessary investment levels. Our industry investments are constrained and lack the imaginative and bold thinking required to transform transport sectors, aviation, and those hard-to-abate sectors like iron and steel, chemical and petrochemicals and cement. Our buildings need converting away from reliance on heating and cooling by fossil fuels.

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 absolutely critical in this energy transition.

We need to move from research and development, through engineering validation but into the 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, the 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.

The power of combining and collaborating

We require bold leaders, policymakers, institutions, researchers, engineers and marketers to combine, to recognize and establish the systems and structures to allow innovation to happen. To generate the capacities and competencies for delivering innovation breakthroughs.

Innovation capabilities do not happen overnight, they need investing in, building, learning and discovering how ideas turn to insights and then to commercial possibility. These innovation breakthroughs can take months and sometimes years to materialize to combine, coordinate and commit to making the energy transition happen.

Today applying ecosystem and open collaborative designs we can connect into broader networks and build relationships across diverse expertise, that can come together to ‘make innovation happen’. Setting up a collaborative innovation environment needs equal expertise in understanding its connected parts.

In Summary

So for me,  the energy transition is at the forefront of “cutting edge” innovation to deliver. Innovation requires its own build of structure, process, governance, investment and capability understanding.

This is why I am giving this even more of my increased level of attention in the work that I do, to understand, investigate and support others in their innovation needs on their energy transition journey. 

The post My Job: Sparking Innovation within the Energy Transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

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.

Firstly, it is in the pursuit of advancing the Energy System beyond only on what we have today.

It is in the imaginative design of a new energy system in its operations and technology applications. Ones that are innovative in their design, built on new business models that capture the consumers’ engagement to make a change and become more motivated to be involved.

The view is that the pace of innovation in the coming decades will depend mainly on the policies governments put in place today and the commitments made by the organizations involved.

Governments need to overhaul existing regulations and replace these with imaginative ones that take renewable energy as the central focus. It requires an energy system that purposefully integrates renewables into the infrastructure to deliver clean energy as the primary source of electricity, power, or heat.

Secondly, it is how we undertake how we nurture the essential parts.

Any change of this magnitude, moving from fossil fuel dependence to reliance on a sustaining source of renewable energy based on solar, wind, water, fusion, and biomass, will take decades. We need to nurture different technologies that will enable this in development steps. As we continue to recognize the long life-span of existing capital stocks, we need to find imaginative ways to balance and progressively shift sources of capital investment.

The shift is from further extending towards aligning and embracing renewable solutions. As we make any energy transition, we need to find ways to balance the current and phase in the new. It is the blending of the two that will give us a progressive and emerging clear pathway over time to decarbonize the energy sector. We need to encourage a more significant portfolio of low-carbon technologies, all moving along this transition pathway to eventual net-zero emission solutions.

Thirdly it is expanding beyond the known of today

We do need to look beyond the near-term horizon. The energy transition is a journey that will be over twenty to thirty years to complete.

I am a strong advocate of the three horizon methodology that recognizes we always need to plan for today’s energy needs (horizon 1) but we need to have clear goals of moving towards a net-zero final goal (horizon 3) and manage the interim (horizon 2) as a balance between maintaining the existing to position and explore the changes, in technologies, in breakthroughs, in experimentation that a different future requires.

Managing simultaneously in the three horizons requires a holistic approach to the management of comprehensive technology and energy system designs, to ‘account’ for all activities and understanding of the impacts and effects.

This three horizon framework can build a clear innovation enablement pathway.

This need to build out a comprehensive three horizon framework that has new market designs as central to any change is vital. A completed 3H structure determines resources, capital allocation capacities, and capabilities that will be required to put into place.

Knowing the sense of direction and the skills enable the understanding and validation of the different solutions in any changing infrastructure, technology application, and new ways of operating new and different energy systems. You can clarify ones that add value, provide a better solution set for energy transition stages that deliver on the ultimate goals of being fully decarbonized, built on clean, sustainable energy.

It is in this combination of pursuit, nurturing, and expanding our thinking through the thoughtful constructing ofa vision built on knowledge, exploration and understanding, that we can mobilize the changes needed.

There are so many places where innovation is essential within the Energy Transition, due to the magnitude, size, and complexity of the change needed. One of the most important catalysts for changing the energy system into a sustainable green one is by governments integrate clean energy innovation into the heart of their energy policymaking.

The powerful need is accelerating and consistently lobbying for the required changes, and offering a consistent clear demonstration that the innovative solutions can make the changes necessary. An energy system to provide affordable, sustainable, reliable and modern energy systems in design that met consumption needs and choice

I see innovation as my critical part of transforming the energy system.

Much of my focus is on building out the value positioning through what innovates and changes the energy structure we have in place today.

The need for a rapid learning, knowledge sharing, and leveraging approach has become an increasing “sense of mission” for me, this is why I position myself as a transition advocate for innovation, ecosystems within the energy system.

It is how I leverage, approach, and explore, that is my current “struggle” to get right. I know clearly, we do need to mobilize innovation capability for the energy system, and I want to be part of that transformation.

Also, I know I can influence and shape by offering a “collective” perspective from research, knowledge, and practical understanding.

My Value Proposition is always focused on content, the context it needs to be applied, and the experience and knowledge to back it up.

I have within my constant “Northern Star” document the following:

“content is free and abundant, constantly available, yet the time we need to read it, to absorb it and then finally translate it into our personal need or requirement is not!”

The translation I seek to provide is to give appropriate meaning, it is a large part of my job, to translate information and knowledge into tangible value and provide impact and validation to make a compelling case for change.

The post How can we mobilize innovation capability for the energy transition? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.