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.

Understanding Hydrogen and its future value and importance is my point of reference, relating to the context, complexities, and creative, exploratory tensions that exist, as we focus on finding scalable solutions for Hydrogen.

The ability to scale Hydrogen is complex to be able for it to achieve this central pillar of being the principal energy carrier.

I want to identify the necessary capacities, competencies, and capabilities to undergo this hydrogen journey. The ultimate aim is to identify outcomes that can become ones that give additional focus to knowing which are valuable.

Also, which aspects need to extend the existing solutions and which have limited or no value and those resources and capital should be released to be redirected onto the ones that hold promise, impact, and value.

There is value in mapping out the Hydrogen terrain

Mapping out the hydrogen terrain to the task at hand enables us to understand and relate to what is needed – I call that the context for change.

I have been investigating Hydrogen as a promising energy carrier to understand the barriers and obstacles to the energy transition we need to undertake. There are so many underlying “tensions” in this change from established fuels, infrastructure, and product delivery that Hydrogen needs to overcome.

In my mind, any Energy Transition Fitness Landscapes needs to identify the opportunity spaces on where you need to focus your efforts- the appropriate resources to navigate the terrain. The higher the ‘fitness’ transforms your landscape potential into accelerating opportunities into final tangible outcomes.

Fitness Landscapes helps in this task of discovering tangible outcomes, by identifying the opportunity spaces on where you need to focus your efforts‐ and apply the appropriate resources to navigate the terrain.

The greater understanding of the ‘fitness points needed’ can transform your hydrogen landscape potential, or in business parlance, achieve your goal or mission objective.

My approach here is a work-in-progress; it will evolve and adapt.

These are my “opening pass” of the expected results or points of investigation sought; by identifying the critical aspects of capability identification for the Hydrogen (or any energy transformation journey), to make it a significant contributor to the Future Energy Mix.

The outputs need to meet these objectives shown below to give this work value and worth to be considered

• Achieving a greater understanding of the obstacles and barriers to Hydrogen, so it does become a significant energy carrier in the future energy mix is critical to understand. It “conveys” the fitness points within the landscape journey.
• To understand what needs to be changed moves Hydrogen towards an energy transition that is sustainable and evolutionary, collaborative and sharing, one built on technology investigation, validation, and ability to scale. Solutions gain world-wide recognition and adoption as the resulting outcomes and processes from discovery to realization.
• The journey generates a learning process for the identification of real and ‘false’ dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities bring about change in the environment. As we frame, we can identify differences separating the more static ones, that often just need reinforcement or retirement as not of lasting value to reallocate resources to the more promising ones. The more “dynamic” in impact and influence the more important to place resources and commitment behind.
• Pursuing limited or ‘selective’ development allows for potentially more accelerated exchanges within a network of specialization. These will not have the desired effect to accelerate solutions unless the broader network effects are not accounted for, in building the Hydrogen Infrastructure or market demand for example.
• Any fitness landscape journey, where change is a significant level of requirement, requires a holistic view of the existing issues and the intent and goal of the journey by framing a clear strategic plan to mobilize the necessary forces. This needs constantly “mapping” back too.
• The solutions suggested will generate discussions, further stimulate ongoing research. The growing recognition of the realities of the present, and what needs to change for future needs slowly get revealed in knowledge accumulation, for more focused resource allocation and capital allocation.
• Discovering the importance of linking capability across different activities or technology applications requires the building of ecosystems to become increasingly ‘dynamic’ for a more sustainable future built on constant exchange.
• The aim is to build out a clear capability portfolio knowing where resource needs to be applied and their likely timeframe from concept to fruition. These evaluations will also help identify synergies to bring new value and future impact options.
• We need to challenge long, well-established routines and processes to see how we can extend technology options. To discover and continue the existing can be valuable to place additional resources behind.
• Having clarity in the fitness landscape allows for regularly taking additional “adaptive walks” to learn and adjust current thinking and question alternatives more openly.
• Knowing your capabilities, competencies, and capabilities intensifies and solidifies the studies, the values of investigation, and the importance of innovation and discovery through greater engagement and a growing understanding.
• You achieve greater confidence in where to invest new capital and resources by having a robust portfolio of options that can be “whittled down” as you move through the innovation pipeline from discovery into validation.
• Outcomes from these expected results raise the capacity for a greater dynamic capability. Placing the emphasis on the importance of dynamism for more flexibility and fitness discovery is identifying the higher points of value. Through this, you accelerate the change process and plot different projects and their impact as outcome specific.

So far, I have had a relatively “intense” exploratory journey extracting the aspects of managing hydrogen.

I need to begin to evaluate the value of knowing the real part of any hydrogen ‘fitness’ and what makes up its distinctive dynamic capabilities that moves it towards the solutions we need to have in place to contribute in significant ways to the energy transition that is underway.

These solutions can be, but are not limited to; Technology and Innovation, Scale and Adoption, Infrastructure and Market Conditions, Government Engagement and Involvement, Industry, and critically vital Public adoption.

If you are interested, I have written a few posts on the part of this journey towards Hydrogen as my opening exploration to traverse this Energy landscape. These posts have been providing part of the ongoing analysis by exploring different aspects of Hydrogen in a series of extended posts (one- believing in hydrogen, two- the gas too deliver, three- shades of and four- tensions and bottlenecks)

Hydrogen holds such promise but it is now  theneed for this to be realized

The more you investigate Hydrogen, the more you realize the complexity of what needs to be achieved to deliver what has been suggested; that Hydrogen could meet 24% of the world’s final energy demands by 2050. Today it provides around 1%.

I find it hard to imagine the change our energy systems need to undertake. They are massive and complex. To move energy and power generation from reliance on Oil, Gas, and Coal and make these energy solutions sustainable, economic, and reliant on the sustaining renewables of Solar, Wind and, Water- suggested at a level of real global magnitude, I find it hard to grasp but grasp we must.

All I do know is that we have to decarbonize our world, rid ourselves of the greenhouse gases that are polluting our planet. It is the combination of combining the renewable resources of Wind, Solar, and Water with hydrogen as the primary energy carrier, does seem to be the most promising combination to get us to net-zero emissions as soon as we can.

****

• I have, in the past, been outlining this concept of fitness landscapes over on my paul4innovating posting site. Here I bring it over into my dedicated energy transition posting site.

The post Hydrogen is the big ticket, it needs a landscape view first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

The Hydrogen transition story is still in its early days of becoming a sustainable part of the solutions we need to decarbonize the planet.

Although the use of Hydrogen has been around for years, it is the potential to replace other energy sources at an industrial scale that is exciting. The execution of Hydrogen solutions is a real imperative for this decade to validate and demonstrate.

We need Hydrogen solutions across so many industrial applications as well as a significant contributor to reducing heat in buildings or powering up our vehicles.

What I can see in the Hydrogen story is all technically feasible, but I am having several concerns on the pathway to delivery.

Let’s look at some of the present and future issues that will need to be resolved for Hydrogen to realize a greater future and play its part in the energy transition. I want to here summarize a few of my present concerns over Hydrogen.

Let’s be clear, the energy transition is a twenty to a thirty-year project, but my present concerns or points of ignorance relating to hydrogen center around the following for starters.

Before we climb into these, this post is a further part of my Hydrogen series. It is my learning journey shared with you, hopefully, a patient listener and reader.

Here are a few of my present concerns over Hydrogen

Sequestering is the massive Elephant in the Hydrogen Room.

What I struggle with and so far, I just cannot get my head around, is this sequestered CO2 and where all this storage is going to appear magically.

Who is going to pay for this long-term storage of something we do not want with pushing the Blue Hydrogen solution? The insurance companies will love this risk of CO2 leaking out and the pollution charges. Methane is ten times more lethal for greenhouse gases, and we still are burning fossil fuels in this Blue solution. In any natural-gas solution alongside CCUS, we must fully decarbonize the processes for delivering the Paris Agreement and beyond.

I need to understand the accelerated deployment of CCUS technologies and the required infrastructure. The “simple” idea of geological storage development or suggesting forming CCUS hubs seems theoretical. Are we not merely burying or delaying our decarbonization needs? We need to rid ourselves of as much man-made carbon dioxide at least.

 It is the C02 use opportunities that need to become more explicit in my mind as commercially viable.

I need to get into CCUS a little more, that is for sure. If we look harder at the circular carbon economy and waste incineration or material recovery, this might form a backbone needed to build out a sustaining CCUS approach. I have also read we need to develop “nascent” technology solutions.

I remain uncomfortable on the Blue Solution with CCUS at present as it might be deflecting our focus away from making Green Hydrogen the absolute choice, no option!

Blue versus Green is going to become highly contentious, politically, and lobby intensive.

The problem with pushing the Green solution today is it is merely not commercially ready, at scale. Green Hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water. The whole concept of “green” is it is powered by the renewable energies of solar or wind power. It is the clean energy we talk about, 100% from sustainable resources.

The need today is that the cost of renewable energy must keep falling, but it the Electrolyser that is fast becoming the “bottleneck.” The full understanding of the Electrolyser is another of my issues I am failing to get my head around.”

The Electrolyser is our “green” hydrogen bottleneck.

As the Electrolyser is the only viable solution for Green Hydrogen, it then is the ‘solution on the ‘block.’ Today it is expensive and not scaled to handle the job of replacing other energy sources. Until the Electrolyser comes down in price, can be scaled up, Green Hydrogen is arguably simply caught in being in “pilot purgatory.”

Electrolyzers are like wind towers or solar panels, it needs ‘massive’ support in technology breakthroughs, scaling up, bringing the learning curve down. The debate on which Electrolyser solution is also another battle of technology.

We rely today far more on the use of Alkaline Electrolysers for Hydrogen production, as it is already at a mature, entirely accepted technology understanding, versus PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane), a solution still regarded as an emerging technology. The PEM, though, is expected to be the prime choice of Electrolysers by 2030.

Today’s battle is replacing grey Hydrogen irrespective, and this is where blue hydrogen seems to have a short-term edge. Should it?

Still, with claims building to stop the push of blue and switching entirely to green Hydrogen, we are getting into some future heated debates. Blue is championed by many, but specifically by existing fossil fuel suppliers (oil and gas sector) and Green pushed by the clarity of our real need of having only clean energy solutions.

The debate is only going to change when the Electrolyser becomes scaled significantly. The urgent need is to focus on the race for price reductions of the Electrolyser, so the cost of producing energy comes down to a comparable level to existing energy sources.

The timeframes to build the scale needed, the real need for larger Electrolysers, and finally determining if blue (including storage) is really green? Well, it is not if it is sequestering carbon. Recently the CCS has moved to CCUS where utilization (of the coal) comes far more into the solution requirement. The only net-zero solution is green Hydrogen, even with that CCUS concept.

Whatever the outcomes of the type of Hydrogen, it must become a significant clean energy carrier. Will it if it supports fossil fuels?

Hydrogen has such a broad field of applications due to its versatility as an energy carrier.

Hydrogens certainly have a future pathway ahead of it. The key is putting the synergies in place, removing the barriers, and ramping up the technology solutions to commercial levels.

The concern becomes one of recognizing all the elements that can push it off course, to derail it or force it along in a less than optimal way are the very forces of any transitional change acting against it.

The battle of our sources of energy

Any transition from well-established energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas (we can say the fossil fuel gang) are fighting the new guys on the block (the renewable kids) of wind and solar. Variable energy has a new friend in Hydrogen; it bridges the gap in providing clean green energy to offer a complete energy system based on renewables of wind, sun, and water.

Of course, it does go beyond “head-to-head comparison” it has a real source of abundance, water that can provide energy security, allow for a set of new energy players in energy supply to create new jobs, and different approaches. Hydrogen is an absolute necessity for achieving the energy transition.

Looking beyond today, we need to make this the Hydrogen Decade.

The future of hydrogen energy is wrapped up with the prospect of natural gas, renewable energy sources and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) working together. It is the flow and synergies between them that need to be managed at political, economic, and technology complexity levels.

The battle comes only when there is a more apparent momentum on the certainties of the hydrogen solutions. Much needs to be done before any conflicts surely to prove the solutions are commercially ready, fit for global scale-out, and purpose?

Hydrogen’s potential is now necessary to be realized as urgently as possible. As we move from grey, through blue Hydrogen, the end game is to get us to deploying green Hydrogen solutions as soon as possible.

The search for greater clarity and validation

The understanding of the Hydrogen Pathway needs even more articulation. It does seem much is “still to do and deliver.” We need even more clarity, in my opinion.

We need to rise above the tensions within any change debates. Irrespective of the time frames, there is a likely thirty years of progressive validation and investments. In this time, competing solutions will evolve or fall away. Decisions will be made on political, energy security, geological, and geography conditions as well as commercially viable ones.

All these present vested interests that seemingly are bubbling to the surface in this energy transition change are both healthy and dangerous. Let us not get too sidetracked that green Hydrogen, if commercially viable to replace existing energy options, is the only final, final solution to support a decarbonized world based on renewables

The post Tension, Bottlenecks and Concerns within the Hydrogen Transformation first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

I get conflicting messages and feel some underlying tensions are occurring between those fighting to keep grey or brown Hydrogen, blue Hydrogen, and debating when they can go to green Hydrogen. It needs resolving and arguably phasing correctly. This is a “brewing battle” that will not be resolved in the confines of the Hydrogen Council, or, will it as they position themselves as the Hydrogen Ecosystem orchestrator?

Here in this post, I want to ‘walk’ through the shades of Hydrogen and their differences, moving to the solutions being offered to expand our use of hydrogen.

Then  I want to offer a second post following, on discussions around Electrolysers and Carbon Capture, and the need to utilize or store as “hot” issues to be resolved. The present decade has been termed “the Hydrogen Decade,” but the road to travel is both bumpy, uncomfortable, and demanding to navigate.

I am Applying my Fitness Landscapes theory to the Energy Transition by taking my “walk” through Hydrogen as my opening exploration to traverse this landscape

Starting here with a simple ‘guide’ to explaining the different shades of Hydrogen.

Grey hydrogen is today’s most dominant method of producing Hydrogen. It uses the steam methane reformation or gasification of coal on the one side, arguing as it’s a hard-to-abate issue and highly mature as a system. It will remain stubbornly difficult to change, and besides the fuel, parts of the production process would have to undergo significant reengineering.

There is a need for a high-heat intensity to be achieved by burning coal or gas, and electricity fails to do this presently, it is the belief that different Hydrogen solutions might, depending on its specific energy delivery. The processes involved in making cement, oil refining, certain chemicals, for iron and steel production, and feedstocks covering ammonia and methanol are mostly based on natural gas as the primary source of today’s hydrogen production.

Blue Hydrogen is a transition solution.

The hydrogen is still produced from fossil fuels but is applying the CCS (carbon capture and storage) solution to capture carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It greatly decarbonizes the present hard-to-abate processes, and this is clearly seen as the natural way to scale the new hydrogen economy for the short-term.

Then you have green hydrogen.

This is hydrogen from the use of water electrolysis that splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Water electrolysis offers a high-purity of hydrogen needed by electronics and polysilicon as well as be a solution for many industrial applications.  The combination of rapidly declining costs for renewable electricity, alongside the deployment of the Electrolysis, as the most viable green hydrogen technology solution.

The Electrolyzer becomes critical for Green Hydrogen.

The electrolyzer splits water (H2O) into its two parts, oxygen and hydrogen.

Today the pressing need is to build Global electrolyzer capacity by continuing to seek developments in their size, output, capacity, efficiencies and significantly reduce their cost. The present need is to pursue this “learning curve” similar to the one that wind tower development or solar pv went through in technology learning, scale, and cost reductions.

The need is for Electroyzers to scale rapidly, we have a learning pathway, where economies, cost reduction, and scaling are needed over the next decade. Electrolyers should have the same sort of impact on the energy transition as solar and wind did on the previous one.

The stepping stone to green Hydrogen needs this blue transition, or does it?

I would tend to argue against this in five to ten years on present forecasts, green will dominate, but blue solutions will be more readily applied due to the promise of CCUS solutions. As I mention below on struggle on the present CCUS story, it seems half-formed.

We do seem to need a blue solution at present as the green solutions need to become more commercially grounded. The growing worry, the more we invest today in the Blue Hydrogen solution and infrastructure, the more we will delay the real need for our energy transition to make all energy green.

A changing energy world is offering plenty of options.

In any transition, one key is the ability to convert gas turbines to run on clean hydrogen can offer some of our decarbonization needs. To repurpose power generation facilities becomes part of our short to medium-term demand. To repurpose, renew, or build afresh are options. Each choice needs to be as “green” as it can be.

Blue Hydrogen with CCS is still perpetuating both Methane and Carbon Dioxide as it needs pipelines for Hydrogen, methane, and Co2, as it is based on fossil fuels and all, are required to be separated. Blue delivers the “job” on converting Grey, but it still has a lot of the harmful gases as part of its solution. The critical focal point of carbon capture is not so much the storage but the possible utilization, hence why we now have CCUS.

The battle of our sources of energy

Any transition from well-established energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas (we can say the fossil fuel gang) are fighting the new guys on the block (the renewable kids) of wind and solar. Variable energy has a new friend in Hydrogen; it bridges the gap in providing clean green energy to offer a complete energy system based on renewables of wind, sun, and water.

Of course, it does go beyond “head-to-head comparison” it has a real source of abundance, water that can provide energy security, allow for a set of new energy players in energy supply to create new jobs, and different approaches. Hydrogen is an absolute necessity for achieving the energy transition.

Looking beyond today

Today as we struggle to manage the rising environmental impact of global warming, Hydrogen is offering us one viable option to help clean up our world. Hydrogen now needs to become scalable to provide solutions to decarbonize industry.

The more I investigate Hydrogen, the more understanding I want to unlock. We are only at the beginning of the “claimed” Hydrogen decade, but it is sometimes tough to cut through the “hype” and get to the issues to resolve and not get simply caught up in the different tensions between all the “competing forces” jostling in the Hydrogen play, currently being undertaken.

With my next post I want some of the tensions, bottlenecks, and concerns within the Hydrogen Transformation

The post The different shades of Hydrogen are getting Hotter first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

I continue my Hydrogen journey. Recently I have leaned heavily on six great sources of Hydrogen knowledge to relate to the complexities with the Hydrogen story, as part of the Energy Transition we are all undertaking.

Absorbing reports from the IEA, IRENA, Bloomberg NEF, the Hydrogen Council DNV GL, and finally, Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy has helped me understand and relate to all the complexities within what Hydrogen offers in solutions. There have been countless others contributing their reports, views, or articles that I have read, tried to absorb, and relate too.

I set out to get a better picture of Hydrogens’ potential through some thoughts I offered in a recent post of applying a three-horizon lens to the understanding of any energy transition, and the one for Hydrogen has still to be finalized. Here in this post, I continue to frame the complexities within the challenges.

The more significant battle is all about shifting to clean energy sources thoroughly, and that should be our overriding focus.

The Paris Climate Agreement signed by one hundred and ninety-five countries in 2016 shifted the playing field dramatically. Hostilities were suddenly rethought, re-forged into new alliances, into different options. Competitive forces suddenly were collaborative forces but perhaps not wanting change at the same pace. The next climate conference, the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UNFCCC, has been delayed until next year, November 2021, will be a very tough one to bring accountability, alignment, and reaffirmation of the Paris agreement. The outcome will determine if we do achieve the momentum and targets set and manage our climate to avoid its continued warming.

We need to achieve a clean energy global pathway by dramatically reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.  We are in a race to save our planet, carbon dioxide is building up to unacceptable levels; that are building up harmful toxins filling our lungs, creating an unhealthy living environment, for those, especially in our cities. Pollution is building, temperatures are rising, and we need to offer a future for generations to come. Clean energy becomes essential to resolving pollution, stopping harmful emissions.

You would think this need for a quick and fast shift in our energy sources is a no-brainer, but when you have so much at stake, the chosen territory to fight over is full of obstacles, pitfalls, and hostility. It took a hundred years to build the infrastructure and energy dependencies and today, we are in a “climate crisis” to rapidly make changes away from fossil fuels, our main polluters.

We only have thirty years to undo and lay in a new, radically different energy pathway.

How will it play out?

• There is, on one side, mainly the “established territory players for energy fuel” having significant invested and vested interests. They have over one hundred years of providing our energy sources by extracting and producing fossil fuels, do they give up the ground quickly?
• We are heading rapidly, for all Coal, Oil, and Gas producers. to a point that they are all facing their “Darwin moment.” The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits.
• The producers of fossil fuel will be where only the fitter and adaptive will survive and will still have to dramatically adapt to what they offer in a rapidly adjusting environment requiring “clean energy”.
• Over a very limited time horizon the coal, oil, and gas producers will be forced to yield to overwhelming pressures to decarbonize? What solutions do they deploy to offset their assets still lying under the ground or sea? One solution is Blue Hydrogen, Hydrogen being phased into their power generating solutions helps by the deployment of different carbon-capturing techniques.
• As we shift to renewables we are in for a significant number of debates. How will the Paris Agreement stand up to the spirit of commitment against many vested commercial interests and needs?
• There is a growing argument that many of the current discussions, tensions, and reluctance around switching away from fossil fuels to renewables will linger until we have a universal carbon tax.
• Hydrogen is not competitive today, will it have the technical, political, and operational solutions to be seen to be a real commercial alternative, has it the ‘gas’ to drive change?

Until this, fossil fuels will likely continue to be the primary source of energy and simply hang on to what they have achieved as a recognized, proven energy provider?

The Hydrogen Pressure is On.

There is growing pressure within the necessary research and development on Hydrogen to find feasible solutions that are game-changing ones, highly competitive to existing alternatives. Ones that can quickly scale and significantly reduce existing cost designs, to change the current dynamics and speed the momentum for switching to Hydrogen.

Customers will be the eventual determinators of judging better values within any energy change. The final consumer will also need to relate to the Hydrogen story and what it means to them, in real alternatives, in options that are safe, reliable, and of sustaining value that improve their lives.

The competing forces caught up in this energy transition will see change as a battle between those wanting change sooner rather than those wanting this as late as possible, needed so they could reengineer their existing businesses, away from fossil fuel investments into alternative energy sources. Hydrogen is caught right in the middle of this battle. The competition will be intense, determined to safeguard existing options and vested interests, based on established fuels, slowing the energy transition.

Hydrogen might be about to have its day.

The Hydrogen Council released a report “A path to hydrogen competitiveness: a cost perspective,” published in January 2020. They are suggesting that approximately USD 70 billion is required for Hydrogen to become competitive.

They offer a very ambitious vision and see that Hydrogens’ positioning is far from automatic as there are many more established lower-cost carbon alternatives. Hydrogen needs scale and cost parity to compete effectively. It also requires considerable ramping up of hydrogen technology to achieve another equality with energy alternatives that are well-established and offering solid business case returns.

We are faced with multiple clean energy choices, that are all expensive

Today investment in clean energy sources is varied and expensive to build new infrastructure solutions. There are real choices, not just in different Hydrogen choices, the investments in clean energy are many.  The need to build out solutions based on the alternatives of  Solar PV, Hydro-power, Biomass/biogas, Solar thermal, Onshore and offshore wind, and Geothermal energy all require investment.

All of these are clean energy sources that can provide solutions that complement part of existing, invested infrastructure as well as compete in adaptive ways, that takes away the reliance on fossil-based solutions to give clean energy based on renewable ones.

Then besides the suggested significant investments, Hydrogen needs to create the market and convince policymakers to support the push towards factoring into the energy mix Hydrogen. I think we are at a critical moment.

The Energy Transition is one of our most pressing challenges to resolve.

Hydrogen to have a real chance of success needs to put in place the synergies and remove the barriers quickly. Is the momentum there?

Hydrogen is a robust and viable solution to the global decarbonization challenge, no question, but there are many “ifs and buts” to bring its potential into main-stream energy use. The issue of getting it to the point of validation at a large enough scale is where increasing competitiveness, political support, and growing market creation occur. It needs to complement alternative energy sources and, indeed, outcompete other low-carbon and conventional alternatives.

Of course, it does go beyond “head-to-head comparison” extracting Hydrogen has a real source of abundance, water, that can provide the energy security for many new countries, allow for a set of new energy players in energy supply and technology breakthrough that can create new jobs, and the eventual different approaches will generate new business options.

We know Hydrogen is potentially viable, is it scalable?

As we struggle to manage the rising environmental impact of global warming, Hydrogen is viable; it now needs to become scalable to offer solutions to decarbonize industry. It’s potential is now necessary to be realized as urgently as possible.

I do wonder about the push for such a change, is there enough ‘gas and intensity’ of purpose to drive the Hydrogen story within the Energy Transition?  It needs massive investments and is fighting on multiple fronts, yet it seems like my next post outlines we are in a growing battle of the different hydrogen solutions adding more complexity to the challenges of Hydrogen.

The post Has Hydrogen got the Necessary Gas to Deliver? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Hydrogen is becoming a central pillar for many countries across the world to help achieve their targets to this net-zero by mid-century. Hydrogen holds, it seems, such a promise, but it is nearly all to do. There is so much to validate, prove, and certainly scale to make a real impact on changing the sources of our energy.

The more you investigate Hydrogen, the more you realize the complexity of making it a viable energy source of sufficient scale. One that will really deliver the suggested results that Hydrogen could meet 24% of the worlds final energy demands by 2050. Today it provides around 1%. To change our energy systems reliant on Oil, Gas, Coal, and make these renewables based on Solar, Wind, and Water separation is at a level of magnitude is hard to imagine.

Hydrogen is familiar, but it has failed to live up to its reputation as it has been based on fossil fuels, that now needs to change.

Hydrogen has been around for years. We use Hydrogen today for oil-refining and chemical production. The problem is this hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels that have significant CO2 emissions. We have had hydrogen piped into our homes, offered as the alternative aviation solution, that lives always in association with the Hindenburg disaster.

So what makes it different this time?

We are in search of a clean ‘green’ energy source that can complement our other renewable energy sources of wind and solar. We need a dispatchable carbon-neutral source of power that can bridge, supplement and compliment when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow. This is separating water into Hydrogen that gives us the potential solution.

In everything, you read Hydrogen can be the replacement “kid” for our energy supplies; in our building and heating solutions, for solving hard-to-abate industry sectors like iron and steel, chemicals and base agriculture. Hydrogen can be a fuel of the future for transport including cars, trucks, shipping and aviation.

Hydrogen seems to be the sectoral gift from heaven, water is abundant, all we need to do is separate the hydrogen out from the oxygen and turn it into reusable energy. Easy right?

Hydrogen is our decarbonization solution

You can get this sense of a Hydrogen as the best panacea for Decarbonizing the World. From what I have read and it has been a lot recently, I want to believe it, yet everything is currently couched in “It is technically feasible” or “ambitious, but achievable.” We have a considerable range of technically feasible or viable solutions. However, all the different “Hydrogen roadmaps” keep making you feel you are still only closer to the starting off point and not to the end result, we require in this next thirty to forty years if we can decarbonize our planet as we need too.

The sheer number of projects on a feasibility path to validate, prove, pilot, and understand the issues and barriers around Hydrogen are mind-boggling to follow. There are so many that look to be exciting, challenging and worthwhile

Today there are a number of countries all fleshing out their Hydrogen Strategies or pathways. Australia, Germany, the UK, the EU, the US, China all are developing their thinking and building the wider ecosystem of stakeholders to give these intentions with Hydrogen a greater momentum.

Reality often tells a different story

We need an awful lot of Hydrogen to replace our fossil fuels, to power our electricity grids, to decarbonize all the current sectors of our economy that have built their reliance on fossil fuels and have given ongoing focus to driving efficiencies and costs of fuel inputs into known models that work.

Hydrogen is yet to be proven, certainly, at scale as well as a range of applications or processes. Presently Hydrogen is far more expensive as a source of energy than existing energy sources. We would need to radically build a supporting Hydrogen infrastructure as it is to a large degree highly disruptive to the existing infrastructure, supply chains, and market acceptance. We need to resolve this to make it commercially viable.

Getting at simply releasing hydrogen from anything is an ongoing challenge. It needs different technology applications at scale. It does not matter if it is from fossil-based related sources (gas, coal, or oil)  that are the past routes of generation, or the one everyone is in hot pursuit of for the future, from water separation (H2O) to make clean energy of H2.

Turning Water into Wine, well OK Hydrogen

Water is the environmentally friendly Hydrogen that does not “release” carbon dioxide as you break down water (h2O) into the separate components of oxygen and hydrogen. This is a holy grail for our carbon-free world; the use of our abundant supply of water to separate out the hydrogen we need to drive our energy systems of the future. It is going to take an enormous amount of Electrolyzers to be operating and these will need to be way beyond their current size and capacity.

The exciting prospects of combining wind and solar power with water and hydrogen does, in theory, offer the solutions we need to get our world onto a net-zero carbon pathway. The reality is it is a thirty to forty-year slog, one that is hard and can only be achieved in a steady, well-thought-through way and across so much “unknown terrain” with difficulty and determination. It is a long exhausting journey to make Hydrogen the new energy source, it needs an alignment of so much.

Hydrogen needs Global Commitment

Today Hydrogen, the green gas is on shaky ground. The wisdom of many is it provides the only feasible answer to achieve our net-zero carbon emission world.

To achieve the vision of powering our world with green energy needs “all the stars to align”.

We need Governments to clear the pathway to this potential. That means tearing down many of today’s ‘accepted ‘ market conditions, to allow Hydrogen to effectively compete. They need to find ways to reduce subsidies on present fossil fuels or their infrastructure and manage the transition from “dirty, carbon-emitting fuels into clean, renewable-based fuels” and that is a difficult path to navigate through in energy security, cost, constantly changing and increasing energy demand and making sure those future decisions offer increased sustainability and ‘returns’ that constantly deliver growth, new job opportunities to replace those that will be displaced by this energy shift.

Research, development, technology, and innovation are all needed

We need research and development across the whole spectrum of solutions that cover all the sectoral pathways. Electrolysis, storage & fuel cell development are the unlocking keys. Once we get at the hydrogen separation, we can pursue all the cross-cutting technologies for improving fuel cells, improve clean-burning energy and develop storage solutions, build-out infrastructures, make more synthetic fuels and use cleaner hydrogen inputs into the industrial processes.

The real breakthrough in R&D is to find more radical technology design to enable the cost of scale to kick in. The more we create the demand the scaling efficiencies can drop, the pricing of solutions drop. They get closer and closer to the alternative energy and process alternatives. The path of scale is similarly predicted to be like solar, and wind costs have dramatically dropped over the years.

As Hydrogen becomes increasingly attractive to use, the application solutions begin to become validated as switching (costs) get re-evaluated as competitive and desirable. Desirable based on green energy solutions and not polluting ones based on fossil fuels. Zero carbon emissions are the endpoint for all and proven Hydrogen solutions that do scale become highly attractive.

How to get to this projected land of Zero-carbon emissions?

There is a long hard path to travel. Hydrogen needs to prove it can be scaled up, it needs to be attractive in cost to convinced present users, reliant on other fuels to invest in the switch. We need to balance Green Hydrogen through harnessing Renewables (wind, solar) to be able to live alongside Blue Hydrogen, which uses steam reformed natural gas with CCUS solutions. We need real solutions for this Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage as well that can handle the volume and difficulties associated with this. I will be looking more in CCUS in the coming weeks.

Green and Blue Hydrogen have to find the complementary pathway over the next fifty or so years They need to combine to reduce grey hydrogen, currently the one used in those hard-to-abate sectors (iron, steel, chemicals) and replace its principal sources of fuel coal and oil and stop the Carbon dioxide emissions, by at least making it Blue with Carbon Capture.

I want to believe we can get Hydrogen really going in its momentum

I think I am at that point of the more I research Hydrogen and try to understand, the harder it is in knowing the true and feasible pathway and what it is really is. Hydrogen promises so much, will it be realized?

The amount of hype mixed with valuable insights is like separating hydrogen from oxygen, we must do it. All of the Hydrogen potentials seem feasible, but our capacity to scale these out in a logical clear way and make the necessary investments is so mired by our inability to offer a clear pathway for Hydrogen; this needs to be put into place and clarified.

We are at the beginning of a decade for Hydrogen, we need to traverse the Hydrogen landscape. We have on the horizon a fixed set of goals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, but all those hills that we will need to navigate are hard when you are still caught in the valley.

The post Believing in Hydrogen first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

source of image: https://www.thegpsc.org/knowledge-sector/integrated-urban-planning

I strongly relate to Smart Cities or Smart Infrastructure as the grouping area within businesses, focusing on the Edge, delivering energy transmission to the final delivery point for residential, mobility or commercial needs.

There is so much potential in technology currently being invested in our cities and their infrastructures. There are many estimates of this investment, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, they estimated that cities around the world would need to double current infrastructure investments from $10 to $20 trillion annually, to build the necessary physical infrastructure to support growing populations and needs[1].

So often, the focus tends to be on physical or urban infrastructure, but the importance of social support needs equal attention.

To deliver the promise of digitally “smart” infrastructure does need the combination of physical and social infrastructure combining, to leverage all that can be made possible in innovative urban development, as this achieves the outcome of building a city open, inclusive, and delivering solutions to realize societal benefits.

The critical issue is achieving community engagement.

If we do not recognize the equal importance of social infrastructure, then we can face a potentially divided and polarised environment in which no amount of technology on its own can resolve. To make it inclusive, we need awareness and understanding.

This engagement needs to embrace all those that live in our smart cities of the future; the old, disabled, disenfranchised, homeless, vulnerable, marginalized, those rich or poor, all need to be broken down of the many “enclaves” we see today.

For a city’s citizens to value technology, they must relate to it, to appreciate it is contributing to their lives. Often this is referred to as a “quality of life” need.

The solutions for any contemporary urban city need to be engaging for all.

They need to unite communities; they need to provide a sense of identity where “advantage and benefit” are widely shared and seen but still value diversities that often make cities vibrant and attractive places to be living in.

The end solutions in cities should not only be “smart” but be intelligently applied

Citizen engagement is not just an end solution; it is an inclusive one from the very first moment any planning for change takes place. Cities will not engage communities if citizens feel you are disrupting, even destroying, long-standing relationships, and community spaces. Citizens need to relate and will ask: “what are the cost and disruptions, and will these be outweighed by the (eventual) benefits?”

City planners cannot make the mistake of offering binary choices of “accept or refuse,” they need to continually engage and communicate the value to the city, the cost to the citizen in “concrete” ways.

It is the partnership from inception that can bring citizen engagement and growing recognition that the changes, disruptive as they are initially, will bring economic and social benefits to their lives. It is articulating the case and giving it meaning and value.

Today we are providing outcomes of smart city investment.

The emphasis may be on City Smart solutions for infrastructure and systems, but increasingly citizen-centric smart solutions are as important; these give a greater connection and engagement. The provision of apps covering civic-engagement, digitalization of citizen services, bike and car sharing, smart parking, digital payments on public transport, private e-hailing, the arrival time of public transportation, and many others show tangible outcomes.

These solutions outlined above directly benefit the citizen; they can begin to appreciate the value of the investments made as ‘it’ relates to them. The more a citizen ‘sees,’ they will relate.

Smart city solutions are delivering real-time public transit info, road navigations apps, food ordering options, volunteering opportunities. Then as technology takes hold, we have the potential for the exceptional ability to share understanding, in health applications, water consumption, and electricity usage can be real-time in personal monitoring and control.

We can have greater control over home energy as the solutions connect into the utility providers and e-payment options. The end-user becomes a more active participant and influencer, getting more actively engaged in their consumption management.

The more significant benefits of the smart city are economical and social

For example, as cities improve their transport infrastructure, the critical aims are lowering congestion and pollution through more optimal use of technology. It is the ability to co-ordinate faster actions at times of emergency or in public safety threats through real-time analysis of sensor and surveillance cameras, better diagnostics, using artificial intelligence, and databases have high societal value for feeling safe and secure.

The ability to embed sensors and devices into the very fabric of commercial buildings, transport, homes, and factories, allows for putting a “smartness” through the data collected, monitored, and then analyzed to optimize those assets in there efficiency and effectiveness to more significant benefit.

Another level of engagement for citizens comes from a smart connected environment where they can search and find more dynamic groups of likeminded citizens to work together on collective interests. Citizens that they can help shape and form through a growing co-creation of decision making, digital democracy, and increase exchanges in a more participatory form of city governance.

As knowledge understanding forms the backbone of these engagements, the real potential of relating to data and information comes from the focused interventions that allow citizens to be more participatory in measuring the evidence of effectiveness, that openness will give all a growing sense of shared identity.

To deliver on this transformation to a “Smart City,” the promises need to provide tangible benefits or differences. Technology alone can make things better, but it is the combination with people that delivers the Smart payback. It is the marrying of both physical and social infrastructure into Smart Infrastructure as the central key, to engage communities, and connect citizens into any disruptive urban change.

Citizen engagement is essential to realize in our Smart Cities. A citizen who feels empowered determines so much of where their Smart City is going and what it means to them.

[1] Dobbs, Richard, et al., Urban World: Cities and the Rise of the Consuming Class, Report, McKinsey Global Institute, June

2012, https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/urbanization/urban-world-cities-and-the-rise-of-the-consuming-class

The post Innovative Urban Development needs public engagement first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Smart Grids are part of the Smart Infrastructure approach in our need for complete Urban Transitions currently being undertaken. Let me try to step back here and give some broader understanding of “smart grids”

Firstly there is a need and push to changing the Energy Systems we have installed to be more responsive, adaptable and flexible.

There is a considerable movement to a very different way of power consumption presently going on. A move that brings the end customer into the equation far more than in the past, through the development of Smart Energy Grids.

The electric power system is undergoing a radical transformation worldwide, firstly with the decarbonize electricity supply, in replacing aging assets and transforming control with new information and communication technologies (ICT).

A smart grid system is self-sufficient electricity network system based on digital automation technology for monitoring, control, and analysis within the supply chain, connected into the (national) grid. Being smart it is increasingly providing electrical power from multiple sources of energy, increasing renewable energy sources, including wind turbines, solar power systems, and biomass. Smart grid technology is to provide easy integration and reliable service to the consumers

The Smart Grid has opened Energy distribution up in radical ways.

The Smart Grid is presently being built, more from a bottom-up movement to handle today’s demands, driven by digitalization, where we are all becoming reliant on computerized equipment and technology, where energy is essential to be “on” at all times. Our world has become a connected one and energy keeps it “turned on.”

Transitioning from the past centralized energy grids into decentralized ones

The “grid” refers to the electric grid, a network of transmission lines, substations, transformers and more that deliver electricity from the power plant to your home or business. In the past, energy grids were all about utilities managing their infrastructure, protecting their assets and responding to any ‘outage’ as quickly as humanly possible.

The past way was to manage energy by a central generation source, that put in place the distributed system where consumers or customers were designated as ‘just’ a receiver of energy services, trapped often by one monopolistic provider.

Energy supply, through this non-participative dialogue, became a general expectancy that “you flip the switch” and supply would be instantly available. The problems with this one-way flow of energy management have been increasingly under pressure for some time.

Energy supply has been reliant on decade-old infrastructure approaches; it became over time a ‘patchwork’ network that always needed to keep being repaired, added to, or fixed, to keep it going. The concept of the energy grid needed modernizing as it was not keeping pace with the increased variance in demands.

Many energy grids today are becoming highly vulnerable, not just to manage increasingly sudden “peak demands” but was having to deal frequently with outages and emergencies from increasingly severe storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, as well as increased risk of terrorist or security attacks.

The shift  is towards “Smart Grids.”

To move towards a different energy grid, we needed a new kind of electric grid, known today as the “Smart Grid.”

What goes into a Smart Grid?

A smart grid works like the internet or your smartphone. It allows for two-way communication between the utility, through the energy ‘transmission structure’ to the customer. By having this grid digitally connected through the transmission structure, the technology and the equipment infrastructure works together to give a responsive environment to adapt changing electric demand, detect and minimize outage when equipment fails, or requirements alter.

Also, this is not a one-way “flow” as in the past from energy supply to customer. There is a whole new “distributed generation” where customer-owned or community-owned generators can produce their energy and contribute any excess generated back into the grid.

This dramatic change in the energy business model has opened the potential for “home-grown electricity” that complements and augments energy supplied through the primary grid. The ability to generate and sell back into the grid allows the customer to play an increasing part in optimizing the operating system and reducing their costs.

Exciting new solutions are emerging, three examples being:

Solutions are emerging to offer “zero-net-energy commercial buildings” that can balance energy generation and conservation through smart grid technology approaches.

We see the pioneering of energy storage through Smart Grid Technologies with thermal storage or hybrid air conditioning for influencing peak load demands, and we have the growing potential of lithium-ion batteries for PHEV applications.

The ability to improve on the sensors enables more power to flow over existing lines, and along with continued improvements in superconducting cables, there is potential to reduce losses and carry 3-5 times more power than traditional copper-based cable.

In summary, a smart grid can deliver a dramatically different energy environment

A smart grid employs innovative products and services together with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies to:

1. Better facilitate the connection and operation of generators of all sizes and technologies.
2. Allow consumers to play a part in optimizing the operation of the system.
3. Provide consumers with greater information and options for how they use their supply.
4. Significantly reduce the environmental impact of the whole electricity supply system.
5. Maintain or even improve the existing high levels of system reliability, quality, and security of supply.
6. Maintain and improve existing services efficiently.
7. Apply digital processing and communication across power grids
8. Allow data to flow and gives information management a more central role to make “energy smart.”

The Smart Grid comprises everything related to the electric system in between any point of generation and any point of consumption, so the grid becomes more flexible, responsive, and interactive and from this improves the system by providing real-time feedback that improves efficiencies and effectiveness.

Source of reference https://www.iec.ch/smartgrid/background/explained.htm>

The post The Smart Grid is driving us towards a new Energy Future. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

As we grapple with the impact and effects of the CORVIt- 19 virus, we are rightly ‘transfixed’ on saving lives, keeping people healthy, but underpinning this is maintaining essential services. A reliable, constant power source is critical for hospitals, for our homes and work environments to support and sustain us.

The energy mix has dramatically dropped off within Manufacturing and Commerical Buildings as we all are forced to stay at home. The Utility companies are doing fantastic jobs of switching power to where it is needed but making sure they are indeed #keepingthelightson. Yet we do need to think beyond the present at some time, hopefully, real soon.

The energy systems we rely upon are old, outdated in design, in their efficiency, and in tapping into alternatives in the electricity source. Mostly we rely on gas, coal, or oil to by the primary sources of our energy. We had been making the transition to renewables (wind, solar, hydropower), but a significant slowing down in the momentum will likely happen as financial funding this change dries up.  In many ways, we can’t allow this, see my post “Has the pace of ambition in the Energy Transition suddenly vanished?

As our energy consumption continues to rise, we are facing several global challenges. The primary sources of our energy production will need to change, as carbon emissions and warming greenhouse gases are continuing to amass in the planet’s atmosphere creating a more unstable world we are living in today.

Traditionally we have been heavily dependent on mainly three types of fossil fuels historically in use for energy generation; coal, oil, and natural gas are all non-renewable sources, depleting the resources of the planet.

Environment Sustainability concerns have become the catalyst to make radical changes globally, driven by Scientific advice and Political will.  Today we have air pollution increasingly becoming a significant challenge, with PM2.5 emissions worsening for 67 countries, causing around 6 million premature deaths per year globally. The combination of political and scientific pressures is providing the need to reduce our carbon emissions footprint in an energy world

The continued burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation, is giving levels of carbon intensity that need to be dramatically reversed as this continues to put pressure on rising temperatures and a warming planet. We have this real need for an effective energy transition built on electricity supplied by renewables. The renewable energy sources offer cleaner alternatives based on solar, wind power, hydroelectric energy, biomass from plants, hydrogen and fuel cells and geothermal power

Any energy transition is a massive shift in energy supply

The energy industry has many problems transitioning from the present fossil reliance to renewables.

We need to build different energy solutions, to resolve the current grid difficulties of accommodating variable sources of power like wind and solar energy, the fastest-growing sources of renewable power. As these resources begin to supply increasing percentages of power to the grid, integrating them into grid operations will become increasingly difficult.

Our present energy grids are partly to blame in their out-of-date design and the reliance on fossil fuels to power them. Most of today’s grids were built early in the last century work and work on a central distribution model that has minimal flexibility to adapt to alternative energy sources or sudden outages.  We have a reliance on energy grids that are large scale, designed over many decades of upgrades and simply fixing and patching, and these are not up for the job to deal with the challenges of increased power demand. They are very carbon-intensive.

The energy transition is about reducing carbon emissions. Globally it is recognized electrification from renewable sources becomes central to reducing carbon. Carbon emission reductions are necessary for new transportation solutions as well as our energy supply needs for industry and cities.

We do have real alternatives through renewables.

At present renewables are overcoming many challenges to make them economically viable.

Firstly, there is a physical reality that the wind, solar, and geothermal resources often are located in remote places, or reliant on the sun or weather conditions.

Secondly, energy distribution radically needs to change to efficiently distribute the power from renewable to where much of the power demand is, in urban city areas, is one of the significant infrastructure issues to resolve.

Thirdly, a new strategy for providing storage capacity will be central to this ability to switch to renewables and this conversion to electricity

Fourthly, we need to build electric superhighways that provide power infrastructure that is radically different than the past to meet the future demand.

Our new energy sources of supply are being designed to be bi-directional, so power utilities, intermediaries, or final consumers can all play their part in managing their role in the generation and management of electricity. This two-way energy flow allows for returning to the grid excess capacity, offering very different business models than the past for new pricing models that are increasingly flexible, challenging the past, often monopolistic positions of one energy provider.

The challenge is building a global consensus of understanding for an effective energy transition and making sure this becomes even more of a commitment after the COVID 19 virus and our economies start to pick back up. We need some radical approaches now.

Bailouts need Energy Transition Conditions attached to them

Energy needs to shift to more dependency on clean energy from renewables. This change should be part of any new economic deal. We bail you out Mr. Car Manufacturer but you have to commit to ramping up electric or hydrogen cars. You want a bailout Mr. Airline then you have to commit more funds to find alternative fuel solutions than the existing ones. Mr. Iron and Steel, Mr. Big Oil, Mr. Cement, etc., etc all need to have conditions attached to loans, bailouts or new borrowing.

So the bottom line for all, irrespective of the energy sector they are in is simply if you, make clear, quantifiable commitments to RD&D or changes in your energy mix, then you do not qualify for public money or you will have tougher conditions from our private institutions if they draw down from Federal funding.

As for your existing shareholders they can determine which side of history their future invest is going; to the past extending fossil fuels or to the brighter future of investing in clean energy of renewables that improve their own and all our lives and contribute more to saving our one planet.

We need to achieve a global momentum in the time of significant energy change and pushing much harder on forcing change needs to happen. Out of this current tragedy we can build a new deal, a deal based on switching to renewables or in twenty or thirty years’ time we will be facing another crisis that might have even more human impact, which is called “global warming” and equally unhealthy environments where we are forced back inside our homes due to the air we breathe will be equally impacting our lungs and shortening our “useful” lives

Useful references

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is providing the meeting place for building a global understanding for an effective energy transition. The WEF, in collaboration with analytical support from McKinsey & Co, offer in in a report “Fostering Effective Energy Transition: A Fact-Based Framework to Support Decision-Making, March 2018, a useful Energy Transition Index (ETI).

Having this common understanding will enable a quicker energy transition. The goal of the global transition is sharing the ETI three principles of working towards 1) inclusive, economic development; 2) environmental sustainability; 3) secure and reliable access to energy.

The post The World still needs to make an effective Energy Transition following this crisis first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Energy networks are finally moving from century-old models were the power was flowing from centralized sources, based on the conventional generation of coal, oil and gas to the load centres and grids, based more on renewables.

Today and in the future, a new generation is spreading out across the energy networks, based on renewable sources of wind and solar and through innovative technology, into a more decentralized, distributed generation that the end-user can influence and control.

New solutions of Microgrids, energy storage solutions, and even the ability to localize renewable power is changing the energy supply business. In many ways, the end-user or final consumer is establishing control over their energy needs; they need to take out the volatility in energy supplies and build resilience into their system. They are looking for solutions that optimize their power demand, consumption, pricing, and overall management of their energy resources.

In a world increasingly reliant on data, on the use of digital devices, supporting distributed networks, and in our dependencies, on the internet, we rely on a high level of energy security. Outages can impact data centres, vital support services and any “break in service” is often costing millions in claims, bad-will, and lost business.

We all increasingly feeling this need to determine our energy destiny. We are entering a rechargeable world in our energy options, and energy storage is becoming central to this.

Two distinct and different markets for storage are emerging

The two markets are stationary storage and electric vehicles. Stationary storage is being deployed throughout the grid or can offer the utility the flexibility in scale for energy shifting (excess solar and wind generation). You can manage peak spike demand in power systems, and you can provide services that customers increasingly want, to store energy, and to be able to deploy this at their own energy demand needs.

A growing market of stationary storage solutions will be installed behind-the-meter by households and businesses. These are small-scale battery systems deployed alongside PV (rooftops), for example, where homeowners can improve installed payoffs for greater self-consumption, extracting more value than PV alone.

The other need for storage will be when E-mobility finally happens at scale, as this will need massive deployment of charging infrastructure- physical grid upgrades and stationary battery storage.

Presently, there is increased concern that power demand will exceed available grid capacity for E-mobility vehicle to grid. While energy networks continue to be upgraded, stationary battery storage becomes the best alternative option for flexibility and meeting demand at critical charging times.

Understanding the increasing value of storage

When you can store your energy, you can increase your capacity for stability and management within your designed energy system. Calling on installed storage gives you access to improved energy reliability, a higher level of efficiency in managing your energy-consuming assets, and ensure the sustainability of your business or environment. You become increasingly less dependent on others and can determine your energy mix and optimization.

Having greater control over your energy management allows you to control energy costs more effectively, you have critical power when needed, you can enhance existing energy designs and capabilities to enable you to extend your storage needs as and where they are required.

Energy battery storage is increasingly allowing storage options in their utility and flexibility. They are rapidly becoming the planner’s “go-to solution” as they give multiple options to manage energy.

Storage offers options for holding energy reserves, time-shifting, supply firming, system stability for each segment of consumer/ prosumer, decentralized generation, distributed grid options, variable generation solutions for wind and solar, transmission grid substitution, and conventional power support.

Mostly today and in the foreseeable future, Lithium-ion batteries make up most of today’s energy storage technology. Today, battery designs last two to four hours, but the energy and power density of Li-ion technologies continue to mature and scale for further capacity in the future.

We have increasing utility-scale battery storage capacity. Battery prices have been dropping, and they are reaching the point where renewables (wind and solar), combined with storage are becoming competitive with traditional energy sources powered by natural gas and become ideal to be switched on during times of high electricity demand

Energy Storage, paired with solar or wind, offers a real on-site value proposition.

Storage helps to integrate variable renewable energy resources (VRE). It is this combination of wind, solar, plus storage that is disrupting the commodity cycle in the future. It is this combination that allows companies to embrace clean, low-cost, renewable energy generation, replace or supplement existing baseload generation, hold and store this VRE for consistent energy use.

Storage also offers the essential and immediate back-up of power supply at times of catastrophic system failures, at the facility or within the grid. Resilience in energy is so critical; it gives growing security and storage solutions provide part of this stability.

Energy storage becomes an exciting business prospect

We are seeing a greater awakening of both corporate and end customers, who are recognizing that there are potential business opportunities as active energy buyers, seeking to play a more active role in the energy chain. Energy management is knowing how, when, and where energy is coming from and managing the patterns of consumption effectively.

The realization that by combining new energy technologies, such as the value of microgrids, having onsite solar or wind with software-enabled and data awareness, buyers recognize they have energy management in their hands.

Software helps better manage and visualize their power needs to the point that the local generation of energy can also offer potential excess for energy arbitrage where discharging electricity back to the grid provides a valuable new business model.

This ability to return energy is disrupting past conventional electricity generation, giving power energy options in the “hands” of the final consumer of energy.

Storage is changing the energy game.

Storage is a vital part of managing energy.  Storage helps satisfy instantaneous demand as it is helping to smooth out discrepancies between generation and load. Energy storage is well suited to provide such ancillary services.

Eventually, as costs continue to fall of storage, it could move beyond that role, providing more and more alternative options of energy solutions, allowing for a viable energy option on-site that you, as the consumer of electricity, can control.

Today Storage gives us all a very different perspective and range of options.

We see energy storage technologies’ performance is improving with new solutions and costs continually going down. Applying new applications, exploring new services and market opportunities gives confidence that storage options are increasingly safer and reliable to build into energy longer-tern solutions. We are seeing a rising competitive market where a dedicated storage focus is giving increased opportunities. The role of storage has been helped by the improvements in regulations; the more public-private collaborations are fueling the increased uptake on energy storage and uptake for providing real options and flexibility in design energy delivery and reliability.

All aspects of the energy system are benefiting.

Generation from emergency ‘black start,’ support to conventional generation, build distributed generation flexibility, and manage disturbances and curtailment issues in transmission, the frequency control, the ability to defer investment costs, and support infrastructure stability. In energy distribution, storage gives more dynamic voltage control, contingency options, smoothing out power quality, reducing upstream disturbances, and having reactive power compensation. Finally, at the consumption point, the end-user peak shaving, time-of-use, continuity of power supply, and power management closer to end-use continue to benefit from deploying storage solutions.

Recent estimates are predicting Energy Storage deployment will increase to the 7x factor over the next few years to build reliance and flexibility into the networks for energy security.

Storage certainly offers the potential to unlock your energy future.

• Updated on 26 Sept 2020

The post Storage unlocks the flexibility within our future energy needs first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Is this the perfect storm we are facing today, or does that one still lie ahead?

We are all presently caught up in a global crisis triggered by the Corona Virus (COVID-19), and the uncertainties of this and all the imposed restrictions have spread fear and levels of panic that the stock markets went into a “meltdown” mode.

Then we had the breaking up of the OPEC+ agreement of the amount of oil to be pumped with Saudi Arabia opening-up its supply to cause an oil price crash.

What will further happen in the next few days and weeks is anyone’s guess as more countries go into ‘lockdown’ to stop the spread of the virus. The response to this is governed by the protection of life and the health care systems, systems that are rapidly becoming overwhelmed.

The actions we all take to protect ourselves; and those around us will occupy much of our time in self-imposed ‘quarantine’ or company-imposed remote work. We will attempt to function as normal but let’s be honest these are not regular times, nor is the future going to go back to these. We are in new territory for where the world is going

“We are even not at the end of the beginning, certainly nowhere near the beginning of the end.”

As the societal impact weighs on us of all the restrictions to contain and deal with the virus, we also do need to think about the economic impact it brings on us as well. So many people have little or no reserve in cash or resilience to weather this period. There will be financial bailouts that will have a massive bill to pay, down the line

Countries to protect its citizens and health systems are crashing their economic policies. There is emerging talk about the bailouts of nearly every industry that is caught in highly leverage debt situations or were highly geared to cater to scale and optimization. Already industries involved in travel are putting their 1st bills into the government for bailouts.

Massive employers in Automotive, Energy, Oil & Gas, Utilities, Technology, and Consumer goods, the debt market and the sectors that have been borrowing goes on and on, will all be caught in and debt market slide at levels that has the potential that it will bring back the Banking Crisis of 2008 in very stark and similar ways.

My concern is this looming economic crisis is across the board in Europe and the United States. Certainly, where the Asian economies will be profoundly impacted is in their reliance on trade into the West. It is likely they might be in better shape than the Western is to handle the “after-effects” of this moment of global impact and social and economic upheaval.

We can all speculate, gossip, debate, and react as the impact of this period hits home. One area we must also think about is the energy transition we are at the critical stages of managing, and this needs “enormous” sums of money to bring it about. It must have a high level of intensity in these coming years to achieve the climate transition we require.

So why my  early alarm bells? Our utilities and the oil and gas industry are in the highest debt leveraged groups, so are we going to go from a boom to a bust here, and if so, how does that impact the Energy Transition we are undertaking?

A future of uncertainty might be hitting us for any energy transition

We need to ask how will renewables and all of the future investments fair when we have a cratering of oil and gas prices for some months (or even longer)? What will get pushed back, as the worry over emission will be further kicked down the road? New investments at a time we need them so is the ambition for the energy transition going to change. Can we afford to let it, irrespective of what we all about to face in economic recessions, possible bankruptcies, etc.?

Even in this ‘moment of crisis’ we must not actually stop investing in the Energy Transition- we simply must not. We have a world loaded with carbon, and we need to do something about this, really, really quickly. Take a look at this visual provided by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment below.

This Global Carbon Project and Future Earth animation show the atmosphere as a “bucket” filling with greenhouse gas pollution, from 1870 to 2019. Concept by Rob Jackson and visualization by Alistair Fitter and Jerker Lokrantz. Read more: https://stanford.io/2rYnNI8

To quote from this, “The runaway train that is climate change is about to blow past another milestone: global fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions will reach yet another record high. Driven by rising natural gas and oil consumption, levels of CO2 are expected to hit 36.8 billion metric tons (40.6 billion U.S. tons) this year, according to new estimates from the Global Carbon Project, an initiative led by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson.”

Once the animation gets to 2019, we see that the bucket is almost full; we have 9% of our global carbon budget left. That’s about ten years to go to our current emission rates. Does this year get written off due to the serious events we are presently facing?

We are at such an inflection point in our history

We have a runaway train that has increased its speed to a carbon world, that we will find is increasingly uninhabitable. Today as we “crash our economies” to deal with the Corona Virus and see the OPEC+ war, where cheap Oil floods the market, with gas prices equally trending (or nose-diving) down, we face a very stark future of where we need to invest and radically alter our habits and regain a new perspective.

How will investors in renewables take another look at the “return on new investments” and then attempt to go out to form coalitions for raising the new capital? When they will be facing some highly stressed capital markets grappling with some massive restructuring issues. I would argue bigger than the Financial Crisis of 2008.

We are in a time when Governments and the lending institutions are grappling with much of their current energy and utility portfolio to continue to finance in their belief of making the energy transition. will that political and institutional ‘will’ evaporate?

Many of these existing energy and utility players are heavily leveraged and they will be busy looking for bailouts. They will be forced  to “re-engineer” their current debts.

Choices of expediency by the market sentiment or Governments, the lenders of last resort,  will rule over much of the next months of investments,  of what to merge, right off, or cut loose.

What happens to the longer-term Energy Transition in all of this potential chaos? Presently are all those energy giants possibly thinking, is it time to think about “how to row back” on announcements, recognizing survival is the name of the game in the coming 6 to 12 mnoths period.

Energy players and the utilities  face a harder position to justify fresh investments, struggling to justify to their existing or new potential shareholders to move from its existing infrastructure invested in fossil fuels to the alternatives requires more significant investments and possible lower returns for extended periods. Shareholder appetite ‘growls’ at these times. The risks of the energy transition being pushed back are real in this time of unprecedented crisis.

We are naturally so caught up in the present, can we cast our minds out to those even more important things, the future for the environment that we live in when we are all caught up in life-threatening decisions now, under threat from this coronavirus?

We are facing a very, very chilling time that is indeed upon us.

We certainly are only at the beginning of a very volatile time for our own safety, as much of our everyday life gets shut down. Yet we do seem to be in the “perfect storm” ( a well-used phrase) of a global virus threatening us, a crash in Oil followed by gas prices, and our financial markets in meltdown but on top of this with the Governments of Europe at present “crashing our economic position.”

We are in a time where there will be a new normal. Can we change our behaviors, our collective ones, will the fear and panic we are presently facing be overtaken by what lies ahead?

Our lives seem to me, to be in a massive transition, as our world is even more in a repeating daily crisis that might actually get worse.

Do we have the resilience and ability to manage this short-term crisis and recognize there simply does need to be different world orders to deliver us back to a planet and environment we can recognize as necessary?

We have to think and act differently in our future world. Now is the time to reflect as well as worry.

The post Has the pace of ambition in the Energy Transition suddenly vanished? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.