Considering the design of the Energy Ecosystem through Partner Ecosystems
Partnerships are becoming a very effective way to build the Energy transformation. There are a awful lot of challenges in the energy sector where the complexity becomes to much for one player and they need to partner. There is actually a significant interplay between technological, regulatory and market-driven challenges
Lets just take a look at six of the most significant issues that require Partner Ecosystem thinking and design.
Partner ecosystems in the energy sector face a complex interplay of technological, regulatory, and market-driven challenges.
Powering the Future with Advanced Energy Solutions
The World Economic Forum Advanced Energy Solutions Group is the catalyst for bringing together outstanding change makers, entrepreneurs, financiers and innovators from across the world and recently had one of its meetings to stimulate and encourage this initiative further. Why?
There are enormous opportunities in the clean energy transition but also so many current barriers and pitfalls.
Taking the WEF’s objectives with this group I quote from their website:
“The World Economic Forum’s Advanced Energy Solutions community aims to accelerate, from decades to years, the deployment at industrial scale of advanced solutions such as clean fuels and hydrogen, advanced nuclear, storage and carbon removal. It engages leaders in frontier segments of the energy system that drive the energy transition”.
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.
How do we accelerate the Energy transition? What contribution does fresh innovation provide? If we do not learn to share and collaborate more, we will fail. Simply put, the Energy solutions will not scale or resolve the changes and complexities we have in designing a new Energy Structure with radically different designs and capabilities.
I have been revamping my www.innovating4energy.com offering in a more focused way. So besides “latest posts” I raise relevant issues and offer solutions to help traverse differences and individual company needs by suggesting a more open, ecosystem thinking and design in different structured ways to assist in the energy transformation we urgently need.
Questioning the need to change how we approach the Energy transition.
I always determine the end of a year to be a highly reflective one to build out the future rationale, passion, and beliefs in what I do within the Energy transition. You evaluate what you have achieved, missed out on, and built upon all the new understandings and knowledge that constantly “flow” your way.
What really triggered me to go even deeper this year was the outcomes of the CoP28. I wrote a piece “dealing with the raw emotions of the CoP28 event“- it really did “push my buttons”. So much advice and pursuit of making the Energy transition changes seem to be tackled from narrow perspectives, and for me, this needs a very radical rethink and designed approach.
We do seem to be missing out on broader community engagement for this energy transition– I want to change that.
During this year, I felt we were in a growing need to significantly alter the accepted practices of managing the Energy Transition in a new, more innovative, ecosystem-thinking way. Why? We need to engage more broadly in community approaches related to energy. We need a broader energy transition movement.
The goal is to create a more dynamic, interconnected, and adaptable strategy that builds on having a more collaborative mindset on how we approach the transition to shifting energy sources and finding more creative solutions. We must infuse and interact with the community’s thinking to accelerate the energy transition to gain identification, adoption, and change.
So, let’s think of a more “Innovative Ecosystem-Centric Energy Transition Approach”.
We are about to have the CoP28 event in the UAE from 30 November 2023 to 12 December 2023, which is crucial for the energy transition. I feel this is an actual watershed event. Those representatives attending must push for substantial agreements on what needs to be done to reduce carbonization and other polluting gases, seek ways to provide clean air and a more equitable share and conserve resources, or we will forever say goodbye to achieving anything like the 1.5 C degree.
Many experts predict that our planet is presently heading for warming to 3C. If we continue this trajectory, we will enter many unknowns in how the planet reacts and responds. If we have climate extremes, the cost of human life, upheaval and damage will continue to confront us.
This is why I think the energy transition is one of the most essential areas of necessary focus, as it is one of the most complex changes from fossil-burning fuels to clean renewables powered by solar, wind and hydro.
Here, I want to provide a view summarising the Energy Ecosystem, offering some strategic steps of underlying approaches to change and where I attempt to fit into contributions supporting solutions.
The report will be a central debating feature of the CoP28 meeting, to be held between November 30th to December 12th, 2023, in Dubai, the UAE. This report aims to inform and gain consensus on how to move forward.
For me, the Energy Transition is a complex, multi-headed beast that always provides more challenge rather than less.
We seem to be faced with Hydra. The Hydra was Hercules’s second labour. He attempted to cut off the heads of the beast, but every time one was cut off, two more would grow back in its place. Another challenge in killing the Hydra was that its’ breath was poisonous to all who crossed its path.
The weakness of the Hydra was that only one of its heads was immortal. In the energy transition world, I worry that this one immortal head might be fossil fuel, challenging to slay.
I don’t slay beasts; I try to shape the behaviours of clients. Renewables feature front and centre. Getting engagement is hard work; adopting different thinking and application solutions is even more challenging. The level of engagement determines the ability to allow a different way to permeate and take hold. You need many tools, ideas, visuals, promoters, discussions, etc.
Finding the time for clients to get into these types of immersion is not easy; it has to be really “mixed” up. Do I have this “cocktail” right? Frankly, no, but tackling. Individuals or teams need to find their reactive points. They need to want to open up to change. I love the word “catalyst.” if it gains the type of reaction you are looking for, you are the agent that provokes or speeds action or change.
Is the needed path to the Collaborative Energy Transition ApproachthroughGrand Challenges?
I have to admit that I am sceptical of individual energy organizations’ pledges to move toward a carbon-neutral future. They argue that there is a limited amount of time to make this transition, yet it is broadly recognized that individual organizations cannot achieve this alone. Are energy organizations open enough to alternative suggestions for overcoming the resource and knowledge constraints working alone can bring? Are they exploring alternative thinking enough, such as organised collective challenges? We need to bridge the gap through collaborations at multiple firm levels.
I believe there is a weakness in the energy ecosystem that deprives it of more significant collective action and innovation to achieve a more accelerated pathway to the energy transition. My argument is that while many energy companies are working on solutions within the energy transition, they often work in isolation and struggle to get out of their “self-made” islands of knowledge.
I suggest that applying ecosystem thinking and platform solutions could bring together many organizations to work in broader, more ambitious innovation ecosystems of collaborations or even work through grand challenge-designed approaches.
