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.

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• 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.

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Today the International Energy Agency (IRA) released a long-awaited update on where innovation needs to be in the energy transition we are undergoing.

At their own admission, it has been three years since they (IEA) released its last Energy Technology Perspective (ETP) report. Although they argue they have been reflecting on the critical technology challenges, it is way overdue.

In this new report, “Energy Technology perspective: Special Report on Clean Energy Innovation” released today, 2^nd July 2020, they have developed some improved modeling tools to bring a higher capacity to answer key technology questions in greater detail. This is good news.

IEA will further follow up later this year with a flagship ETP 2020 publication later in the year to keep a tighter and more consistent focus on the role and need of innovation to accelerate clean energy transitions.

They, the IEA are planning an IEA Clean Energy Transitions Summit really soon to convene ministers and CEO’s to the aim of driving economic development by this more robust focus on clean, resilient, and inclusive energy systems.

The IEA is suggesting they are is in the midst of a modernization agenda to keep them at the forefront of sustainable and clean energy transitions globally. They need to become a more significant focal point for reliable and leading-edge advice.

They put it starkly, the realization is simply that the energy sector will only reach net-zero emissions if there is a significant and concerted global push to accelerate the need for the innovation part of the energy transition.

The IEA sees (a growing) disconnect between climate goals of Government and Companies that they have set for themselves and all the concerted efforts needed in the innovative efforts underway to develop better and cheaper technologies to realize their goals.

We have recently been hearing that we have “all the technologies now we need to get on with it.” This, in my view, is partly right, we know where to put the efforts, but the abrupt step change we need to scale, re-engineer and develop these technologies and the delivery mechanisms (infrastructure, policy changes) are massive. We are losing sight of this.

The “drag and resistance to change” is significant. This needs resolving quickly to deliver a decarbonized world.

If we take the example of Hydrogen. When solutions and policies that have recently been emerging around Hydrogen from a European perspective,e they have been proposing a clear focus on green hydrogen as the focal point.

Green hydrogen is based on renewables and the significant deployment and use of electrolysis that makes it the clean energy solution (vector) as the Government policy focal point, we then get significant vested parties pushing back hard.  There is the intense push back of the suppliers of blue solutions offering carbon capture and storage as equally necessary in any policy and funding from any change in EU and Germany energy policy decisions. The argument is we need bridging solutions to any transition. There is a lot of merit in this argument.

Then we get those industries established on grey hydrogen, which is a significant greenhouse emitter, pushing even further back, claiming the ability to switch hydrogen from fossil fuels to clean is many years away. We are entering the geopolitics of hydrogen, can we afford this?

The dizzy array of solutions on offer needs validating for the pathway to fast decarbonization.

What we do need is the fastest transition through all means possible the low carbon options, but the lock-in risks in investments and where we deflect our research and development take us further out into the future if we need to achieve these net-zero emissions.

The rapid evolution of the dizzy array of solutions is one that all economies, especially the emerging economies, have to be very aware of this “lock-in effect if they chose the wrong transformation pathway.

The technology mix to decarbonize each economy and industry reliant on secure and resilient energy sources is a tough one. It is organizations like the IEA that need to be turned too for the best advice, not specific solution providers pushing their solutions on a narrow pathway of their focus.

The IEA, by rethinking how they re-designate technology innovation, makes for a substantial shift.

The major shift outlined in this report, released on July 2^nd, 2020, regroups the policy measures by families of key technologies based on similar technology attributes.

To quote from the report: “Within each of these families, knowledge and application spillovers hold significant potential to accelerate innovation if linkages are exploited: against this background, the section provides some concrete suggestions for action for each family of technologies to help policymakers to integrate tailored approaches for priority technology areas into overall strategies.”

Technology families:

• Electrochemistry: modular cells for converting between electricity and chemicals.
• CO2 capture: processes to separate CO2 from industrial and power sector emissions or the air.
• Heating and cooling: efficient and flexible designs for electrification.
• Catalysis: more efficient industrial processes for converting biomass and CO2 to products.
• Lightweighting: lighter materials and their integration in wind energy and vehicles.
• Digital: integration of data and communication to make energy systems flexible and efficient.

 The list above is not intended to be exhaustive. Still, it covers the types of solutions that hold the most promise for advancing value chains involving electrification, hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels, CCUS, and bioenergy.”

Visual taken from the new IEA report “Energy Technology perspective: Special Report on Clean Energy Innovation” released today, 2nd July 2020, page 167.

To further quote from the report: “Among the other technologies that all have important roles to play in achieving net-zero emissions are large, scientifically complex technologies such as nuclear, including small modular nuclear reactors, and small-scale, consumer-led technologies such as flexible or buildings-integrated solar PV or high-efficiency motors.

In between these extremes lie geological technologies to enhance geothermal energy, hydrogen storage, or CO2 storage, as well as such high-potential areas as ocean energy, prefabricated net-zero energy building envelopes, and thermal and mechanical energy storage.”

This report is a timely update as our new technology innovation focal point.

Without a major acceleration in clean energy innovation, the net-zero ambitions on emissions will simply not be achieved.

The mix of many technology innovative solutions needs not just further discovery, it needs translating into scalable solutions. The “stark disconnect” of the “walk and the talk” around net-zero needs significant resolution. The IEA, through updating and giving innovation the central focal point for our need to deliver clean energy technologies.

Do please find time to work through the report.  It is critical to grasp the role of innovation within the energy transition. What is certain is we have been not giving this the appropriate attention it needs in resourcing, exploring, and maturing present as well as future solutions, we will clearly need to get us to a decarbonized world.

We need to accelerate transitions towards clean, resilient, and inclusive energy systems, and that comes from putting integrated clean energy innovation into the heart of energy policies and solution needs.

**This post was first published on my paul4innovating.com site today.

The post A sharp acceleration towards Clean Energy is required. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

There is a real urgency that we transform our energy systems.

Where can innovation help within the Energy Transition to rapidly advance it?

The opening answer is everywhere within the energy system. Technological and systemic innovation is critical to the end-user sectors of transport, industry, and buildings and replacing and upgrading much of the overall system design and operation to generate increased electrification.

We need to digitalize our grid services, provide new concepts for the grid and local storage, provide improved smart charging for electric vehicles, add different ways of building into the energy system the idea of mini-grids.

Each day there seems some level of innovation development, but my aim here is not to list these or where they need to go in future but to take a broader view of where and how innovation can help in general terms within the energy transition. We all need a sense of bearing or a compass that shows us the way. Our job is is “spark” and ignite innovation within the Energy Transition. To give innovation more resources and support.

Innovation has a central role to play in the energy system.

Our need is to keep pushing for discoveries, for experimentation, for demonstrating. We must nurture innovation, and we must continuously look for ways to facilitate its pathway. Innovation is made up of many enabling technologies; it needs to be built highly systematically. The need is to continually re-imagining new market designs and business models to stimulate the changes and solutions for our future energy transformation.

Energy is a vital part of any country’s ability to be competitive. Today half the world’s capital is invested in energy and its related infrastructure as it is the backbone of any industrial and urbanization strategy.

Our economic prosperity will be determined by transforming the energy sector, and it is through innovation we will achieve this.

Innovation is vital to the integration and operation design of the energy system, and we need to recognize its crucial role.

Innovation needs to be at the top of its game, to be accelerated.

The energy transition that the world is undertaking is one of the most critical areas where innovation needs to be at its very best, that top of the game to make the level of change necessary. We need to deploy every innovative tool to leverage ideas and discoveries and then accelerate the validation into a commercialization path, sooner than later.

Innovation needs to get out of the laboratories, moved from theory to application, and off the desk of those executives who fail to see the urgency of change we need to achieve the energy transition. Innovation has risk always associated with it but that imperative to push the boundaries does need always to be constantly in our minds; global warming is our “burning platform”, and we need to ramp up our need for solutions that can reduce greenhouse gases, redesign energy generation, transmission, and distribution.

Solutions that evolve them and allow them to manage their energy solutions in a rapidly decentralizing energy system. We need to keep pushing for more innovation from the existing solutions found in wind and solar solutions jockeying to replace oil, gas, and coal. We need to discover different methods of storing and distributing electricity. We also need to keep exploring new business models to radically alter the engagement with the final consumers.

Pushing our present understanding, looking beyond the knowns

Today the solutions are centred on decarbonization, applying digitalization, and switching to an energy system that is more decentralized than at present. It is finding imaginative, innovative solutions that become essential to achieve this climate change through the energy transition we are undertaking.

We must find innovative solutions to reduce local air pollution, strengthen energy security, and develop a more significant energy system that is resilient to minimize the shutdowns and power outs. We need to find solutions to reliable and sustainable energy solutions that deal with heating, lighting, cooking, and cooling. Any change needs to find a way to create local economic value and jobs, as others will be displaced in any change of this magnitude.

If we are to meet the mandated Paris Agreement of 2015, where member states agreed to limit global warming to 2 degrees C versus pre-industrial levels by 2050, we have to look at every climate change mitigation we can find. We have to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 to 95 per cent of the 1990 level by 2050.

We have an awful lot of innovation to do

We need to switch from fossil fuel to renewables. The whole shift of significant invested assets for power generation and distribution has to accommodate an energy mix that provides us electricity certainty 24 x 7.

As we switch from conventional power to renewables or we look to upgrade the distribution grids, we need to look towards innovative solutions.

Everything we are looking at in energy solutions faces a scalability challenge.  We must continue to de-carbonize challenging industry sectors like steel, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, or our transportation systems if we wish to achieve any positive outlook of curbing carbon emissions and moving onto a pathway towards a zero-carbon future.

It will be the ability to harness the existing with the new. This is the role of innovation, to deliver the changes by being the bridge and being the catalyst of change with new technology and innovative solutions.

Innovation must be at the forefront of the energy change; otherwise, we will fail to deliver on the 2050 commitments and goals, and that will have consequences for our very existence as we know it.

The post The spark of innovation to connect the energy transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Sources FT Guide: The Energy Transition https://www.ft.com/reports/energy-transition-guide

The post The Energy Transition we all need to undertake first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Image credit: Harvard Business Review

If there is one report you have to read in the absolute disruption we are undergoing in the Energy Transition, it is one just released by Carbon Tracker entitled “Decline and Fall: The Size & Vulnerability of the Fossil Fuel System.

It stops you in your track at the enormity of the changes that will occur in the Energy System in the coming years. What we are witnessing today is only the tip of the Energy Transition iceberg.

Firstly, we must recognize the assets involved are huge, and as the energy transition continues in its switch from fossil fuels to renewables, the entire energy system gets increasingly disrupted.

Secondly, the implications investors and policymakers can lead to a choice between financial instability or begin to have a very clear, orderly phasing down of assets than trying to prop up unstainable assets. How are we going to manage such a transition to keep it fulfilling the energy need expected, all of the time?

To get the total picture provided in this report I have taken Carbon Trackers Executive Summary and reproduced it here with full acknowledgment this is their work, and all my intention here is to present their story.

The Carbon tracker executive summary tells the story unfolding and the full report you can download here gives the validation and thinking behind it.

Please read this, it presents a massive transition.

Executive Summary of “Decline and Fall: The Size and Vulnerability of the Fossil Fuel Systems” by https://carbontracker.org

The entire energy system is being disrupted by the move to the cheaper renewables from existing fossil fuels

Just grasp the magnitude of disruption this switch away from fossil fuels to renewables and what assets are under threat from this report.

“The three main assets are the 900bn tonnes of coal, oil, and gas, valued by the World Bank at $39tn; supply infrastructure of $10tn and demand infrastructure (electricity, transport, and heavy industry) of $22tn; and financial markets with $18tn of equity (a quarter of the total), $8tn of traded bonds (half the total) and up to four times as much in unlisted debt.”

Of course, you can argue this is Carbon Trackers opinion as a team of financial specialists making climate risk real in today’s markets. Others will see it or argue it differently.

The existing Fossil Fuel lobby is a powerful one that has many supporters. It is like the climate debate there are so many “vested interests” but we are in need of facing some clear realities.

A short background to the existing energy system

The existing energy system is responsible for really high carbon emissions and releases of other harmful greenhouse gases. Our planet is getting warmer as a consequence. This need for as deep decarbonization is essential and an urgent move to low carbon or even net-zero energy system.

Carbon dioxide emissions represent three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, two-thirds of the remainder is methane, with energy-related Co2 (combustion of fossil fuels) and industrial process emissions making up over 80% of Co2 emissions and the remainder coming from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

Our challenge is can we change from fossil fuels as the main sources of energy in hard-to-abate sectors?

Almost 45 percent of industry’s CO2 emissions result from the manufacturing of cement (3 GtonCO2), steel (2.9 Gton CO2), ammonia (0.5 Gton CO2), and ethylene (0.2 Gton CO2). In these four production processes, about 45 percent of CO2 emissions come from feedstocks, which are the raw materials that companies process into industrial products (for example, limestone in cement production and natural gas in ammonia production).

Feedstocks are really hard-to-abate by a change in fuels, they will require a more innovative approach to changes in the process. Fossil fuels generate high-temperature heat where some processes need to achieve 700 degree C to even over 1,600 degree C. The design of the system and the industrial processes are highly integrated and due to considerable investments have long lifetimes, perhaps up to 50 years. All of these hard-to-abate sectors are also commodity products and traded globally. The willingness to pay more or to change is a difficult one, it is not external financial considerations alone.

Another 35 percent of CO2 emissions come from burning fuel to generate high-temperature heat. The remaining 20 percent of CO2 emissions are the result of other energy requirements: either the onsite burning of fossil fuels to produce medium- or low-temperature heat and other uses on the industrial site (about 13 percent) or to drive machine  (about 7 percent) (Source McKinsey)

Will external pressure bring about the required changes?

This research and report from Carbon Tracker will open up the debate further on how to align the financial system in the transition to a low carbon economy as the catalyst to bringing about change. To make this orderly change or face a series of disruptions unplanned or faced at points of crisis.

“Today we are witnessing the degradation of this one vital ecosystem we are all utterly dependent upon, our planet“

This energy transition is genuinely an ecosystem of epic proportions.

For me, the energy transition is the largest transformation we must undertake in decarbonizing the planet for achieving our reduced climate warming.

*updated on Monday 8th June

The post The Size and Vulnerability of the Fossil Fuel System Disruption 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

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