Engagement within the Energy Movement

Engagement in the Energy Transition Movement

How do you encourage engagement? How do you create the conditions that enable collaboration and cooperation to occur? How can we combine all the forces that make up the Energy Transition?

In the past week or so, I have gained a growing belief we are building the momentum to bring the different sources within the Energy Transition together. The conditions are being created.

Let me briefly provide a few stand-out ones that give encouragement

Firstly in Brussels a Clean Tech Investment meeting took place, nicely summarized by Ann Mettler, the Vice President at Breakthrough Energy. Ann posted “Clean Tech Investment: Top of Mind in Brussels 🇪🇺

💨 What a whirlwind: In less than 24 hours, I had two opportunities to talk investment, at a ‘Clean Transition Dialogue’ hosted by EVP Maroš Šefčovič, in the presence of EC President Ursula von der Leyen and a ‘High-Level Investor Dinner’ with Commissioner Iliana Ivanova.

Briefly she noted the significant talking points:
⬆️ More project finance
💶 Mobilize institutional investors
🤝Double down on public guarantees
🆕 Innovation Fund +++
✅ EU Climate Bank Needs Laser Focus on Clean Tech
📑Better planning, guaranteed contracts
✔️DG Competition reality check

That set of bullet points gives only the top layer of an incredible amount of work going on in support of clean energy tech to give it momentum and shows just one of Ann’s incredible personal energy and commitment to getting the Clean Energy underway (Link to post)

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Considering the design of the Energy Ecosystem

Designing the Energy Transition with Ecosystem Thinking and Design

By fostering greater collaboration and co-creation within the Energy Industry, it is becoming crucial to consider Ecosystems in design and thinking. Ecosystems designed well are robust for navigating the complex landscape of any Energy transition.

The Energy transition we are all facing has such high levels of complexity and challenge. We are undertaking a radical redesign of our energy systems where renewables based on clean energy, decarbonization or low carbon, new distributed business models and rapidly growing demands for electricity are all compressed into a thirty-year agenda to achieve net zero. Collaboration, cooperation and coordination will be paramount, and this is where Ecosystems and Platform technology will become essential to manage these “multiple” transformations needed.

Here in this post is a structured argument for promoting Business Ecosystem thinking and design for those involved in the Energy System, emphasizing the benefits of sharing IP, knowledge, research, market insights, and general improvement potentials when it comes to considering Ecosystems within the Energy Transitions, where collaborations are growing in importance and need. I outline ten areas of consideration.

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Working through a proposed Energy Transition Evaluation

I often wonder about the rigor of assessments and the lack of a common approach when evaluating or assessing the contributions of new concepts or innovation solutions in any Energy Transition and the broader impacts these can have. So does this 18S framework provide this?

So what makes up the 18S framework to assess any change and innovation in the Energy transition?

I feel this framework can apply to any energy transition and provides a common point of evaluation with consistency in each part of the 18S to evaluate for efficiencies, affordability, reliability, accessibility, availability, dependability, abundance, and effectiveness.

The elements and dimensions of this 18S can determine what we need to work through and understand to gain a more “holistic” overview, especially coming from any changes and new innovative solutions.

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Building an Inspiring Energy Narrative

I struggle increasingly with individual energy organizations’ pledges of moving their solutions towards a carbon-neutral future. The mixture of reports, initiatives, and viewpoints all move towards the transformation of the energy system but they all admit or fail to address TWO crucial aspects.

Firstly the limited time we have to make such a transition in their offerings of new and different imaginative ways to change the current dynamics within our energy systems. Secondly how each organization alone cannot achieve it with limited or no alternative suggestions to how to overcome this “constraint”. Well, this post is about one alternative well worth considering.

One area of potential to bridge is the collaborations at the multiple firm levels. There is a weakness that deprives the ecosystem of a greater “collective action and innovation” to achieve a more accelerated pathway to the Energy Transition.

The Energy Transition has a rich network of complimentary ecosystems all keeping the energy transition change moving at a ‘certain’ level of momentum but is it good enough, I don’t think so.

The sheer number of Energy companies working on solutions within the Energy Transition is vast, varied and geographically spread. Each is struggling to get out of their (self-made) islands of knowledge to grow their business value through mostly individual innovation solutions.

We then have an Ecosystem of Governments and intergovernmental organizations providing policy suggestions and directions, offering sources of analysis, central data collection and interpretation along with proving reference and exchange points and forums. Then you have general and highly specialised Consulting firms, and investing institutions that are all constantly providing insights and supporting solutions.

We need to find new ways of collaborating and that means applying ecosystem thinking and platform solutions. Let me suggest one as an opener to this thinking.

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