The Global Energy Innovation System is NOT Thriving
In a very sobering report from Hoyu Chong of Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published on 10th January 2022, it is highlighted how the global energy innovation system is in poor health.
In this report, it is pointed out there are weaknesses across most indicators and the need is to rectify these by most nations.
The key takeaways: Continue reading
We have just finished the most critical COP meeting in Glasgow. It was the eleventh hour. For two weeks, nearly two hundred countries entered into discussions, finally agreeing on the “Glasgow Climate Pact” to keep the 1.5 degrees C target alive and finalize the outstanding elements of the Paris Agreement.
The President of the proceedings, COP26 President Alok Sharma, commented, “its pulse is weak, and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate commitments into rapid action.”
“Keep 1.5 alive” has been a rallying cry for diplomats and activists alike at the COP26 negotiations. The phrase refers to the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
1.5 degrees Celsius is seen as the threshold beyond which the effects of climate change become increasingly dangerous to people and ecosystems. But scientists warn that time is running out for humanity to take the transformative steps to achieve the 1.5 goals. And according to multiple estimates, the deal negotiated in Glasgow does not bend the curve enough to get there. Continue reading
I have been reading IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2021 (WEO), issued a month earlier in October, specifically because of the COP26 Climate Change
Conference meeting in Glasgow in a few weeks time.
This is the IEA flagship report, a 380 plus page report has for this year’s edition of the WEO been designed, exceptionally, as a guidebook to COP26.
It spells out clearly what is at stake.
This COP – short for the Conference of the Parties, the main decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – is particularly significant. This COP session is being held between 31st October to 12th November 2021 and perhaps is the most pivotal climate meeting to date. Why?
It is the first test of the readiness of countries to submit new and more ambitious commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is also an opportunity – as the WEO-2021 states – to provide an “unmistakable signal” that accelerates the transition to clean energy worldwide.
I wanted to “lift out” of the report a few very short but essential messages provided in this report that give the essential snapshot. Continue reading
Image: IRENA
Since I launched this dedicated posting site www.innovating4energy.com, in December 2019, specifically around innovating in energy, I have written 80 plus posts. Each post was undoubtedly a fundamental learning point for me as I attempted to dive deeper into the topic.
Within this, Hydrogen has been one of the main contributors. Including this post, I have written about different aspects of Hydrogen over ten posts, but most were during 2020.
Posts (with links) have covered Hotter Shades of Hydrogen, Tensions and Bottlenecks and Concerns, Show me the Electrolyzer, Hydrogen is the Big Ticket Needing a Landscape View,
Also, Has Hydrogen got the necessary gas, Massive Doses of Hydrogen Reality, Hydrogens Promise, Believing in Hydrogen and how Plug Power is the Apple of Hydrogen?
Then I suddenly “went off the boil” on Hydrogen. I felt a sense of hijack from the Oil & Gas Majors and the Equipment Suppliers, all pushing hard the interim solutions blending different gases for offering blue Hydrogen as the necessary bridge, over the next ten years or so.
I felt a sense of “lock into” as the investment to purchase gas generating assets and infrastructure can run for thirty or more years. That’s not interim or intermediate and is likely to stay blue as CCUS will get added on at the later stage as the logical option to complete a ROI on this “interim” decision
Clean energy, growing the potential of Electricity – Image rights RethinkX
I have been absorbing a couple of interesting research reports from RethinkX, an independent think tank that analyzes and forecasts the speed and scale of technology-driven disruption and its implications across society. They produce impartial, data-driven analyses that identify pivotal choices by investors, business, policy and civic leaders to stimulate thinking and promote avenues of disruptive change.
Firstly on Rethinking Climate Change on how Humanity can choose to reduce emissions 90% by 2035 through the disruption of Energy, Transportation, and Food with existing technologies.
Secondly, the Energy Report – Rethinking Energy 2020-2030 100% Solar, Wind, and Batteries is Just the Beginning states we are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century. Like most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies.
Both of these reports are well worth the time to really read and absorb. This is some “sterling” work by Tony Seba, James Arbib, Adam Dorr and other members of the RethinkX team.
So where do you “sit” on this report and the acceptance and realities of the proposal in time, consequences and complexity?
Following my last post, “Putting innovation into energy, sparking transformation“, I want to outline why I am focusing increasingly on this front end of the energy transition (FEE) within my innovation work.
For me, it is the ability to apply the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation that accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.
Today, we are all trying to piece together the Energy Transition.
The claim is that there are solutions abound to move us towards the Energy Transition we all need of clean, reliable, energy built upon renewables, but I honestly don’t share that current optimism; we actuaölly have an awfully long way to go in discovery, application and adoption. Continue reading
I see the front end of energy as the critical feeding-in point for the energy transition. So what does this mean exactly?
The front end of energy for me is the point of discovery and validation. It is the place I feel I can make the best contribution within the energy transition. The discovery is where the stimulus and catalyst point to take an idea to commercialization.
This capturing, evolving, exploiting and exploring needs a clear management process and understanding of how to undertake this. This needs a focused innovation specialist or a systematic approach to building those innovating capabilities and capacities.
I believe there is a real gap for many organizations involved in the Energy industry; often in the recognition, they lack a real lasting, robust innovation capability, capacity and competency, as the sustaining way to help accelerate the Energy Transition journey. Continue reading
Providing a digital twin solution in the manufacturing environment is becoming a critical part of managing the complexity of those environments that many companies have to increasingly operate within.
As digital twins become critically important, entities are beginning to adopt this “twinning” concept dramatically, and within the Energy Transition we are undertaking, it will be no different.
A digital twin enables a Utility, for example, to visualize its assets, track the constant changes occurring consistently, and make better decisions on performance optimization. Continue reading
We are currently locked into a ‘battle of energy ecosystems.’ Our very existence requires one side to win; it simply must not just survive but rebalance the planet ecosystem, the only one we have.
This current ecosystem battle is between those highly vested in today’s fossil-based energy supply system and those forcing change into a more renewable reliant energy system as quickly as possible.
We are pushing so much of the principles and theories of ecosystems to the maximum test in the outcomes we wish to achieve in the energy transition we require. We are combining technology, science, engineering and design through the network effect.
Much of what we do in the future is to find solutions that determine our future planet and what defines and achieves a healthy ecosystem in a very ad-hoc, self-determining and self-interest way. The ambitions of so many vested interests need fresh evaluations in any new socio-economic structure. Continue reading
image credit: Changing Alisa Singer, Used by IPCC for 6th Climate Report
On Monday 9th August, 2021 saw the release of the 6th Climate assessment by the IPCC. It is a grim, sobering read. Also, it is a staggering 3,949 pages long!
So in a short simple summary.
If we continue to not stop our carbon omissions then it will lead to devastating lives and disrupting nearly all of us humans, in one way or another.
Simply put, if we do not get Carbon Dioxide out of our energy mix as fast as we can we are, I quote from the report:
– facing increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost”
– I go on in another quote “Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events”
– Then “increasing CO2 emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere”
– Finally, to really make my day, “Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level”.
This leaves you grappling with what the consequences will be and what the responses of all those in a position to make the dramatic level of changes we need to irradicate all human-created carbon dioxide.
My immediate reaction is, can we honestly support extracting fossil fuels and Oil and Gas companies need to “front up” to what they need to do to make massive, effective and fast changes while they have some of the control still in their hands.
Can we continue to debate gradual shifts?
How can we recognize and mobilize real sustainable energy transitions based only on clean energy?.
Do we start calling this the Climate Emergency, which is what it actually is?
We are caught in a pandemic today, we need to learn some hard lessons from this but as the IPCC states it is “unequivocal that human influence has (and is) warming the atmosphere, ocean and land”
The scale is unprecedented these extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, will continue to strengthen until we ADDRESS climate change.
We really need to look for deep, deep reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions in the coming years, perhaps not decades as we have previously felt
A first reaction upping the fight to bring about real change.
I read one view: If they, the Governments and Policy Holders and the Fossil fuel producers don’t act quickly enough and COP26 ends in an unsatisfactory fudge, then the courts might become more involved.
“We’re not going to let this report be shelved by further inaction. Instead, we’ll be taking it with us to the courts,” said Kaisa Kosonen, senior political adviser at Greenpeace Nordic.
“By strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme weather, the IPCC has provided new, powerful means for everyone everywhere to hold the fossil fuel industry and governments directly responsible for the climate emergency.
“One only needs to look at the recent court victory secured by NGOs against Shell to realise how powerful IPCC science can be.”
I also draw some comfort from this, Scientists being scientists are usually on the side of caution.
In the last report, in 2013, this ranged from 1.5C to 4.5C, with no best estimate.
This time around, the range has narrowed and the authors opt for 3C as their most likely figure. That is the bad and sad news as it is DOUBLE where we must be, aiming for 1.5C!
Why is this important?
“We are now able to constrain that with a good degree of certainty and then we employ that to really make far more accurate predictions,” said Prof Piers Forster from the University of Leeds, and an author on the report.
“So, that way, we know that net-zero will really deliver.”
Well there you go, simply deliver net-zero and we all will be saved. Has anyone seen the master plan yet?
Is this the beginning of the RIP of our world? It seems devastating?
No, but the likelihood that perhaps Humans in the form we are, how we live and function might.
So will we need to gear ourselves up for another “for and against” debate polarizing and neutralizing the urgent efforts needed? We can’t afford to wait, we need to act.
The price of inaction affects us all but to mobilize the World in today’s environment- I really feel a little helpless in seeing the way forward as the world stands in the hands of human behaviour.
