I have to admit that I am sceptical of individual energy organizations’ pledges to move toward a carbon-neutral future. They argue that there is a limited amount of time to make this transition, yet it is broadly recognized that individual organizations cannot achieve this alone. Are energy organizations open enough to alternative suggestions for overcoming the resource and knowledge constraints working alone can bring? Are they exploring alternative thinking enough, such as organised collective challenges? We need to bridge the gap through collaborations at multiple firm levels.

I believe there is a weakness in the energy ecosystem that deprives it of more significant collective action and innovation to achieve a more accelerated pathway to the energy transition. My argument is that while many energy companies are working on solutions within the energy transition, they often work in isolation and struggle to get out of their “self-made” islands of knowledge.

I suggest that applying ecosystem thinking and platform solutions could bring together many organizations to work in broader, more ambitious innovation ecosystems of collaborations or even work through grand challenge-designed approaches.

When you consider that is a lot of cross-over, duplication of efforts on how the companies design, develop, and deliver new concepts as they stay within their own walls and R&D expertise,

Why can’t they throw open common challenges in finding solutions through contests, research investigations, accelerator programs, and open innovation platforms, looking for commonality and synergies?

Often the reluctance, besides the risk of giving something up, opening up to less internal work you need to explore the mechanisms for collaboration, we begin to think of ecosystem collaborations. The use of a common platform could provide helpful, knowledgeable, and higher levels of neutrality and overcome often needless arguments about who takes the lead and is the orchestrator. In Energy, the solution resolution to reduce current challenges in costs, fuel alternatives, and reducing the carbon footprint all need urgent addressing.

Besides finding the appropriate platform, however, I equally acknowledge that there are natural boundaries that any collaboration must overcome, such as competing priorities, intellectual property rights, organizational structures and cultures, regulatory and legal barriers, communication and coordination issues, and funding and resources. I wrote a series around cross-collaboration recently, here is the link to the first post.

All obstacles can be overcome and are “doable”. If you believe in the “need” to succeed at the energy transition as quickly as we can, then you have to be willing to open up your thinking to far greater collaborations. Complexities and challenges need collectively breaking down to find new solutions.

I also suggest that the opportunities lie in a number of “higher level” needs of common understanding and focus that are essential to transformation. These include Smart Grid development, Energy Storage, Grid Modernization and automation, and Electricity of transport. Cybersecurity and Data collaborations

Good cross- collaborations examples are where competition is transcended by energy solution needs that have common standards, potential and urgent need to scale, and can be offered in other geographical areas that need creative and modern solutions.

Also, we need to learn to be more effective in our collaborative approaches with multiple stakeholders, and policy regulators that having this level of greater collaboration would command serious attention and respect and lead, in many cases to industry solutions in more economical ways that over time speed up the Energy Transition.