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In the last few months, I have got increasingly nervous about where we are NOT going on climate change

The bush fires of Australia have been shocking, devastating, and crippling. They catalyze the concerns we all should have.

Each of us might or likely will face a shocking, devastating or crippling “event” in our lives in the next ten to twenty years. I feel it is inevitable, irrespective if we stopped all the debates and did the level of investment, we need to reverse the climate warming.

The next ten years of our investments in cutting emissions and refocusing our energy needs must go towards clean energy (renewables). Our ability to make a change will determine if these events recently will become the new norm, as our planet spins even more out of our ability to control climate-warming through greenhouse gases.

So I have to move through this shocking, devastating, and crippling effect but have I have begun to accept  the reality that our world is in a “state of climate alarm,” not just a “climate emergency.”

I have never before published one article on each of my three posting sites. This post I just had to. It is shaping me in how I look at innovation, collaboration, the power of networks, ecosystems and most of all, in our world of energy transition needed to reverse climate warming. So apologies if you see it on three separate sites but I don’t apologize for my real, underlying concern on where we are seemingly heading as a world.

So my emotions are swirling at the moment.

Shocking and devastating was the size, the velocity, and how the fires caught hold and devasted so much of parts of Australia in plant and animal life as well as the human cost and tragedies. As you read of one fire breaking out after another, you became “in awe” of the firefighters. Lacking decent equipment to fight this scale of the fires, they showed all the “Australia pluck and fortitude” they are known for. What a battle. With the intervention of some significant rains recently most, if not all of the blazes seem to have been extinguished; thankfully

Crippling has been the debate since then, and it is only just started. Australia is caught in the middle of the global and country debate on coal. Our need for it versus the need to stop using it. Asia is so reliant; at present, on coal for its energy, we are caught in a real problem.

Energy security is for everyone, irrespective, but while we have this Asian dependence on coal, we are going to struggle very hard with combating climate warming. The carbon emissions from coal are our equivalent “runaway train.” It needs stopping before the damage is beyond repair to our global planet.

Each time I return to the Australian bushfires, and all this means for them and us, I keep wondering is this the “crippling” debate we are going to have in all parts of the world? Can we afford this? The political pressures for coal to be still central to Australia’s thinking is simply staggering.

Then I heard the comment “politics, economics and climate” and the different perspectives.

Another alarm bell suddenly went off for me. I was listening to a podcast by Giles Parkinson and David Leitch “There is no new normal in climate change” (listen to the first 5 minutes if nothing else) introduced me to David’s “its the difference politics, economics, and climate.” Actually, that sums up nearly each “debate” I am reading, engaged in or listening too in recent months. It is politics, economics, and climate differences are today’s debate.

How much longer can we afford to wrangle over these? Saving our climate should be in most if not all our debates and decisions, politics and economics need to get behind, otherwise, they grow in size and scale.

Can we be so much nearer to some (horrific) tipping points?

In the last few days, I have also been reading on the nine different “tipping points” going on. This is an article from Carbon Brief on their “explainer of the nine tipping points that could be triggered by climate change”.

“ Imagine a child pushing themselves from the top of a playground slide. There is a point beyond which it is too late for the child to stop themselves sliding down. Pass this threshold, and the child continues inevitably towards a different state – at the bottom of the slide rather than the top.”

“The persistent march of a warming climate is seen across a multitude of continuous, incremental changes. CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Ocean heat content. Global sea-level rise. Each creeps up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.”

Passing an irreversible tipping point would mean a system would not revert to its original state even if the forcing lessens or reverses, explains Dr. Richard Wood, who leads the Climate, Cryosphere and Oceans group in the Met Office Hadley Centre.

This leads me to an article by Bob Watson. Does it seemingly get worse- oh, yes? In Bob’s “Nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history, but we still have time to stave off mass extinctions.”

He states, “We have all assumed that nature would always be here for us and our children. However, our boundless consumption, shortsighted reliance on fossil fuels and our unsustainable use of nature now seriously threaten our future.

Environmentalists, scientists, and indigenous peoples have been sounding the alarm for decades. Our understanding of the overexploitation of the planet has advanced with grim, sharp clarity over that time.

We have entered an era of rapidly accelerating species extinction, and are facing the irreversible loss of plant and animal species, habitats and vital crops, while coming face to face with the horrific impacts of global climate change”.

Now I do not want to get into a bragging right position, but I have known Bob Watson since our teens. I stand in “awe” of him and all he has achieved in the years. He is now Sir Robert Watson and has been chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has influenced my thinking a lot on all of what matters on climate. How he crystalizes the issues is impressive whenever I have bumped into him or in what I read.

The other part of my past few weeks has been the “sense” the climate debate is shifting.

The message is we must take action”. It needs to be decisive and immediate as it is vital.

We need nature conservation and energy change.

In an article written in May 2019, John Vidal, a former Guardian environmental editor he wrote: “Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?”

This extracted from the article sums up our need to address and resolve:

“Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would clear up air pollution rapidly and save billions of pounds a year that the NHS must currently spend dealing with heart attacks, asthma, strokes, and respiratory illnesses. Cities would become more liveable, the countryside more attractive. Instead of being regarded by the government as a costly imposition, action on climate and nature regeneration could be easily recast as visionary politics offering huge public benefits.

But what happens when the voluntary measures run out and the warming is not seen to slow because greenhouse gases are so long-lasting? Really addressing climate and biodiversity collapse means rationing carbon. It means no more free ride for extractive industries such as mining, palm oil and forestry companies who profit from environmental destruction. It means heavy penalties for polluters, the axing of food and aviation subsidies, and taking a torch to vested interests. It means addressing the indirect causes of the crisis, such as population growth and consumerism, even rethinking the whole idea of progress and wealth.”

We are facing a crucial point in time; this decade is our last stand

How do you put together and explain the devastating effects of the Bush fires of Australia and put them into the context of where we live and what climate change will mean for each and every one of us? It is floods, crop failures, deteriorating air, fires, global epidemics, loss of habitat, loss of jobs as we increasingly live in a world of dealing with disruption and dislocation.

“What we’re seeing are the effects of climate change. Sometimes, it’s said that Australia is the canary in the coal mine with the effects of climate change being seen here most severely and earliest… We’re probably looking at what climate change may look like for other parts of the world in the first stages in Australia at the moment,” said Professor Dickman from the Faculty of Science.based in Australia.

If this comment is the reality then what this really will mean in any global action on climate, what will happen if we do pass a tipping point, how much more can we afford to lose in nature, in plants, in animals in our air we breathe before we face something that becomes “catastrophic”?

Do we have any alternatives? Is this too dark for you?

I come back to what made me sit up and realize. Today’s evaluation of anything we do is going to be based on “Politics, Economics and Climate” in what it costs, what it means, and its impact on us.

Which one dominates the others is not the issue; it is we need to make sure all three are of equal importance, yet we need to recognize climate action ‘determines’ the other two in bringing global warming under control. We have nowhere to hid in decades to come and if we do, it is only going to get a whole lot hotter.

I close by quoting Bob Watson “As policymakers around the world grapple with the twin threats of climate change and biodiversity loss, it is essential that they understand the linkages between the two so that their decisions and actions address both.

The world needs to recognize that loss of biodiversity and human-induced climate change are not only environmental issues but development, economic, social, security, equity, and moral issues as well. The future of humanity depends on action now. If we do not act, our children and all future generations will never forgive us.”

The post Economics, Politics and Climate need to come together. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Infrastructure enables people and what they need, so as to function and thrive, to provide the structures to get them from place to place, to provide sustaining residence and prospects.

If we make this infrastructure “smart,” what will that give us?

“Smart” as a concept is not just supplying the connectivity but also delivering the sense-making capability from what it offers, through the data provided. We can model, use big data analytics, apply analysis and data mine, to make this set of connections, to improve our intelligence.

As we build the smart infrastructure, we are developing intelligent infrastructure; where we learn, improve decisions, and advance our abilities to connect and improve the essential functions that infrastructure offers. ‘Smart’ can potentially connect all the parts of the city.

Infrastructure sets about to provide all these essentials to allow us to function and have a higher chance of growing in our ways of living. We not only recognize that infrastructure is the “hard” physical asset we can touch; it is also integral to the “softer” aspects, places where we can enjoy community spaces, parks and meeting areas, where we can connect and share.

Infrastructure provides the environment for us to give new ‘form and function’ as it offers a digital component that provides us with knowledge and understanding, to improve on what is already in place.

The connections within infrastructure today are making us smarter.

We are fusing the physical with the digital to create Smart Infrastructure. Smartness is not just installing digital and physical interfaces; it is about how we set about to understand and use it in data and yield.

The digital infrastructure is made up of what we own or have placed around us. In the use of our devices, in the “apps” we can use and the use of multiple sensors that are embedded in the physical assets all around us, we can feed networks with “raw data” connected up into the internet of things (IoT). This data we are sharing is becoming smarter by all these connections by the information it is providing. The better the platform and the analytics, we can explore the potential value to improve on what we have and build into new smart infrastructure solutions.

Our transport, energy, water, telecommunications, and waste infrastructures are under increasing strain to cope with the continued influx of more people moving to the city. At current estimates, 68% of the global population by 2025 will be living in a city. The Infrastructure within Cities has a significant job to cope with this sort of influx. Connecting up the usage, the flows, and physical movements through having that data will enable planning to be closer to real-time and be “modeled” to smooth out peaks and improve the reliability and service.

Managing all that is old and aged, we need to fuse it with the new

Many of our cities today have aging infrastructure, showing chronic problems of breaking down. Many of our existing buildings were constructed years ago, even centuries ago and lacked the levels of sustained investment they needed.

Today we are facing up to this lack of continuous investment. We will continue to build new assets, but it is the extension of existing infrastructure assets that need increased attention so they can be updated and connected.

We need to push designs to increase the value more out of the current operating asset base as so often they can’t be replaced as many of our buildings offer a real legacy and identification with a specific city, that has become iconic or just essential.

Smart technologies can help us monitor conditions, make us more aware by anticipating when an item needs servicing or maintenance, focusing more on preventing failure. Data, provided through new technology like sensors on equipment deployed can collect, inform and manage demand, their peaks and surges to offer a new “lease of life” to existing assets by managing them more thoughtfully.

Today we can design solutions within any new infrastructure through having a “digital twin” so they are better planned, conceptualized, and designed, more “upfront,” before they are even built and then used to make scenario’s of “what if?” and explore concepts that build on the existing infrastructure to see how they integrate and function.

We are exploring new ideas through innovation and technology solutions that are helping us to extend and improve our environments and benefit all existing and future infrastructures. Technology is opening our minds and our cities, to new possibilities and opportunities, far more difficult without becoming a connected ‘smart’ city.

We are becoming better informed about the city’s performance and that is good for those living and working in the city as it can offer improvements to improve our lives.

The Expected Value of Smart Infrastructure

Smart infrastructure can significantly improve intelligence from all parts of a city. Data can improve decisions in real-time, in the daily life of a city and help form the digital backbone to plan out the future based on this collected, dynamic data. We can predict, take action, and manage in “real-time” from the flow of data and how we visualize the movement of people, goods and essential services.

As we enhance both our physical and digital understanding of smart infrastructure, we achieve increasing value. We are consciously building value into our infrastructure, in customer or citizen awareness and appreciation, in informing value on where it makes the connections and increases the integration, for all involved in city life to make their own “smarter” decisions.

The knowledge comes in knowing about traffic, air quality, where repairs or events can disrupt our daily routine, or prove us tools to plan accordingly and save us time and lost productivity. Having these insights makes us more aware and ready to anticipate and take proactive action

This value can build each time we invest in the infrastructure process and design in its use, operations, maintenance, planning, and feasibility. We can achieve the increased realization of design and execution from technology, in any assembly or building, in logistics or movements, and through a greater understanding of changes in materials used in smart infrastructure designs, in the manufacture and application into intelligent solutions. Technology and innovation are pushing out the boundaries of Smart Infrastructure.

Smart Infrastructure raises expectations as it can provide us growing intelligence and reliability

Smart Infrastructure is a rapidly growing new industry, requiring new skills and replacing old ones. Estimates suggest we have $50 trillion of mature infrastructure to be retrofitted in the coming years.

A citizen expects the essential services from our infrastructure, like consistent energy and water to connect their homes and businesses. The infrastructure gives us the physical assets as well as the digital backbone of communications, so distance and connections are not barriers anymore to “conduct and undergo” our daily lives.  Those living in our cities expect the solutions offered will deliver on the promise of better outcomes and a better quality of life for them as citizens.

Smart infrastructure can offer our cities so much. Smart Infrastructure brings together many of the connections we need to improve the functioning of a city, of the assets or physical infrastructure that is necessary to provide us the services we expect and allow us to function economically, effectively and increasingly in a connected society, that is increasingly dependent on each other.

As our understanding grows on how to build sustaining cities, there are so many future possibilities known or still to be discovered. Embracing  Smart Infrastructure can create a more reliable and sustainable place to work and live in, one that allows us more moments to enjoy our precious time they way we want too.

The post What lies at the core of Smart Infrastructure is connectivity. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Each of the barriers to achieving a Smart Infrastructure that is outlined below will be hard in its own right to resolve but all of these will need tackling to provide the momentum we need

Addressing these fifteen issues lies the resolution we need to have, to overcome many of the barriers to Smart Infrastructure. Within these ‘barriers’ I offer some initial suggestions on solutions that can help in overcoming or resolving them

• Technology- with its consistent change, cities have the risk of buying something not thoroughly tested in a sustaining environment. If technology is not fully proven, this creates uncertainty in decisions that are highly difficult to make, primarily where infrastructure may involve a ten to twenty years before it comes on stream. Part of our solution is to overcome this with a far more a collaborative mindset from multiple organizations across all stakeholders; public, private, investors and citizens, to determine best available options to make decisions, having open and full access to data, results, and clarity of what issues have occurred from installations to date.

• High Investments – How do we bring down the cost of smart infrastructure in different, imaginative ways? The immense financial pressures faced by authorities require joint public-private investment. A collaborative solution is required so as to have financial institutions that look for joint collaborate investments that have as the clear intent to innovate, and build the investing ecosystem, where any cost curve show increasing attraction and social and economic return, due to scale and growing adoption by those involved in the infrastructure solutions, seeing the benefit.

• Truth vs. Hype –So much of technology is often over-hyped, so can we trust what is often claimed? How can we separate the realities when each city has a unique vision or different set of priorities and timescales, for its needs, does the solution fit the need?? Reflecting a “reality” requires an equal understanding of technology-related solutions, their limitations, constraints, and their possibilities, and then at what cost compared to perhaps some imaginative alternatives? Future solutions need to be more open, so decision-makers getting access to all possible options? Are business cases well documented in the detail necessary? We need a smart infrastructure clearinghouse of proven or emerging technology and what it can really deliver.

• Interoperability of things – Infrastructure has so many different systems talking to each other, how can we bring all key systems components together in one central management command and decision center based on a platform approach? Managing smart infrastructures that are collaborative, built on ecosystem principles and based on robust, connected platform solutions, needs greater transparency and validations so investments are made with increased confidence of seeing clear returns

• The need is having a clear story of “building the Use Case” for all stakeholders worked out. This justification is especially essential for a citizen to relate too; they need engagement and increasing dialogue mechanisms that make citizen participation and inclusion very central. We often forget the use case is not just for the buyer but the end customer as they need to buy-in as much.

• Privacy and security – How do we address concerns over personal data privacy and security as smart systems become more pervasive? Today councils, businesses, and all involved parties struggle to understand the value and benefits of the data they can generate, the business case to collect citizens’ data and securely manage it. Privacy and security requires a ‘citizen chart of trust’ built on a highly advanced security system to protect this data and the party who provides this, will gain from the investment

• Resilience – How vulnerable are our cities, what becomes critical to reinforce, to make more robust and build out as more resilient, making the investments part of a conscious set of transitioning ones, bridging today’s needs towards sustainable solutions within the solutions for new smart city ecosystems? Are resilient city systems, both reactive and shockproof? Resilience should always be thoroughly tested as part of any new smart infrastructure investment.

• Sustainability- are our decisions today the right ones to lead to more sustainable solutions? The more we can plan a city’s future on “their” data and forecasts, the more you can evolve on a sustaining, progressive plan. Modeling a virtual smart city that is a “digital twin” of the real city, allows for a real-life simulation of building out the future. The investment in having a digital twin of your assets allows for multiple options to validate, test and explore options and have the “safe” environment to build out your actual assets based on the digital twin.

• Cities have limited influence over many essential services. They equally continue to have difficulties in working across departments and boundaries. Utilities are usually in private hands. Sometimes city management often remains remote and defensive. How can we tackle the need to open up systems where the more you exchange, the more you can benefit in exchanges of knowledge? Today with the concepts of platforms and ecosystem design, Smart Infrastructure can become more “open smart infrastructure” to help break down these barriers and silos, it can progressively build the roadmap, identify the ‘players’ and engage in conversation that allows for mutual solutions to be found for all concerned.

• It is turning “Smart” rhetoric into reality for all concerned to understand what this means. Any smart future is dependent on people, technology, and data coming together and being committed and engaged in the solutions these might offer. Today citizens still don’t know what a smart city or what “smart” means in infrastructure solutions, or even the benefits it can bring. Today the concept of a smart city still seems worrying, and citizens continue to ask is technology going to solve our daily problems? By providing access to reliable and trusted knowledgable resources, dialogues and information will help educate all involved. We need to focus continuously on a clear narrative of what a “smart” city is going to provide, in benefits that the beneficiary can understand.

• To raise consumer awareness or citizen engagement needs investment. Will it save citizens time, money, and provide peace of mind? Does it offer clear and obvious benefits to daily lives? Will citizens relate to smart infrastructure implementation as they see the value and be prepared to contribute more through taxes? The need is to connect the “smart” story to the emotive needs of the citizen, is simply paramount, otherwise implementing technology or solutions not understood becomes a very frustrating exercise, blocked by public concerns. Smart is engaging the citizen constantly and in multiple ways. It is time-consuming but essential.

• To invest in Smart Infrastructure needs a Smart vision. Technology developments will be continuing to evolve. The innovation pipeline will require a level of collaborative participation, as experimentation, scaling up and full-scale innovations that “add” to a city or its infrastructure will need a more collaborative model. Game-changing technologies and harnessing the potential will require different models of design. We come back to collaborating, innovating and investing will be more in partnership but it is constantly providing this vision and linking it to value, benefit and return that makes any new design compelling.

• Smart Infrastructure Business Models – Cities are recognizing the need to build more sustainable business models that show clear value propositions, by clarifying who benefits, what are the cost and returns and, what is the impact these will have. A Smart Infrastructure Validation model designed and conceived, similar to the Business Model Canvas, on its ability to articulate the full proposition, would be useful to outline the impact of disruptive technologies and what radically different solutions will provide within a Smart City?

• Innovation and Invention– recognizing that innovation and inventions are continually evolving; we need to build out the necessary space to factor this into our future thinking. Often it is hard to choose the right solutions. This demands a constant awareness of technologies, materials, solutions, alternatives as they evolve to be considered and evaluated. Having access to a register of breaking technologies, of accessing new designs, not only aids the city planner, it speeds up the identification of all the stakeholders and the eventual decision-making process. To look towards the leading Smart Infrastructure advisors and ‘Smart’ solution providers will help partly bridge that knowledge gap and allow for greater collaborative exchanges for knowledge building..

• Finding attractive funding models – With cities and local authorities often highly cash strapped, the sacrifice of the long-term to service the immediate will be a constant dilemma. Imaginative partnerships between stakeholders need further exploration and validation. Raising awareness, matching public and private funds will require exploring. Collaborations with research institutions, private and public sectors will need to find the right platform for engagement. We need to develop those centers of expertise and financial modeling that are “energy transition” rated.

Cities cannot tackle these issues in isolation; they should only commit to this in an ecosystem of partnerships. These include investors, other cities, research and institutions, financial investors, central Government and public funding, with a variety of private companies coming together in a constellation, with the citizen being clearly at the center in dialogue, informing and in educating them on ‘why’ the smart future is the way forward.

There are many roadblocks for smart Infrastructure to overcome. Is this a prize worth going for? At the heart of this, if cities are going to embrace and invest in a connected smart city, it will require a deep sustaining commitment, overcoming many barriers to progress.

Translating a smart vision into a workable set of solutions for cities and infrastructure is hard, demanding work. There are arguably many different positions on the value of building ‘smart’ into our infrastructure.

What one needs is leadership, not just in technology solutions but in understanding and building a holistic understanding of “smart Infrastructure” and all the needs to reduce so many current barriers and impediments as today, there is far too much-siloed thinking of only thinking about my contribution.

We need “big picture thinking to gain the growth and impact Smart Infrastructure designs can bring in collaborations

The post Tackling the Barriers to Smart Infrastructure? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Image credit Paweł Czerwiński
@pawel_czerwinski via Unsplash

Energy is in a massive state of change, truly global in its transition. There is a power sector transformation going on, towards a low-carbon, reliable, affordable and secure energy system.

The need is to manage the transition from the old, more reliant on fossil fuels (gas, oil, coal) into the renewables /wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and biomass). Turning to innovation in new solutions is making this all possible.

For me, the interesting thing is that innovation is the engine powering the energy transformation and that the pace of discovery, exploration, and solution is beginning to happen at a rapid rate of demand-driven need. As someone engaged in innovation, the energy transformation story is getting really exciting.

You sense the future is changing, gaining unstoppable momentum. The difficulty for us all is this sort of transformation is at such a scale of complexity, rapid pace and variability; it is highly complex to relate too.

Here I am wanting to focus on one part of the energy transition taking place; solutions that are unlocking the energy systems flexibility.

Key changes happening to give us new flexible energy options:

Generation. The present large inflexible thermal generation is being replaced by renewable generation. The hard part is these renewables are weather dependent, so the innovation solutions need to become more flexible, deliver faster ramping up capacity to react to increasing volatility of net load occurring far more.

Sector coupling /demand. As the shift continues to electrification at the end-user continues the load on the distribution networks will increase. It is the ability to bring the sources of power together; it’s about the integration of the energy system in other sectors so that it can be inherently flexible. (The technical term for this is sector coupling.) This smooth’s out the demand patterns and aims to optimize the distribution grid.

Energy Storage. Battery technologies have been a massive set of innovation breakthroughs in recent years. The prices have fallen, and we have seen the consumer are installing batteries at a scale to maximize their solar PV system has become energy players. Distribution grid operators are turning to mid-scale batteries to avoid network upgrades, and finally, the power-to-x application that is supporting sector coupling (power-to-heat and power-to-hydrogen) are emerging offering the potential to store energy in different forms

Distribution grids. The ability to predict the load and provide the capacity to balance supply and demand has given rise to different distribution system operators, opportunities to change the regulatory frameworks and give rise to specialized grid stability management. The expansion of power grids and intelligent grid management are critical here because everything is becoming connected to manage energy differently than in the past. It is rapidly decentralizing control

Aggregation / demand response. With greater investment in technology, to some degree, this is driving different market design and business models within the system operations, all further innovation within the energy system. More active energy users, called prosumers as they both consume and produce energy are challenging the dynamics of the sector. They can unlock the potential for more demand-sided flexibility. A real innovator’s business model change opportunity space.

Renewables within the Energy Systems require significant innovation

Part of the energy drive in innovation activity is for integrating high shares of variable renewable energy (VRE) into power systems by the focus on increasing flexibility in the system while reducing the costs of system operation. The flexibility of a power system, the extent to which the system can adapt the pattern of electricity generation and consumption to keep supply and demand in constant balance is directly related to its ability to accommodate VRE generation at the lowest possible cost.

Innovation is at the heart of the energy transition.

It is driven to achieve a cost-effective global transformation that results in low-carbon, sustainable, reliable and inclusive energy systems with the emphasis on emerging flexible solutions that changes the energy equation.

Innovation is enabling technologies, offering new business models, market design and system integration options in focusing on flexible solutions to overcome solar and wind variability, provide increased system flexibility and allowing for reduced total system cost. Innovation is playing a significant role in facilitating the integration of the emerging new renewable energy system providing new opportunities to explore and evolve:

1).  For new business models, where new services, enhancing the system’s flexibility and providing the incentivizing of further integration models can play there part.

2). Then we have the consequence of any innovation change, in energy source and deliver, and that is in market design innovation. Regulations, policies, new incentives for value-adding services are building new business opportunities, that give a new breed of energy players, including a new set of infrastructure investors opportunities to support and gain from.

3). Lastly, the innovating models for operating in the electricity system can give a different way to share the value out of managing this VRE generation and it opens up the market to a whole new range of energy providers, including, you as a net contributor back to the energy grid with the right approach to usage, storage, and generation from your renewable technology stack of solutions.

Innovation solutions are both supply-sided and demand-sided

Innovation is working on both the supply-side in finding the new flexible solution but on the demand-side as well.

The Grid is offering a growing range of flexible solutions to reduce the dependencies on large centralized grids to closer to final demand, match closer generation and variable demands, provide increased flexibility in storage and new grid operations and provide solutions that interconnect the systems to be more flexible.

Storage through advancing battery-scale solutions and the power-to-x solutions is also offering a completely different range of options for demand-side management, optimization distribution closer to the markets and the ability to aggregate distributed energy resources to match and design the grid services for giving the need consumer that flexibility by taking out the variability of renewables.

Innovation has the power to unlock the Energy Transition

The energy shifts undergoing in the energy transitions today are allowing real innovation opportunities when you survey the innovation landscape. There is complexity in all the energy transitions going on, but it is the ones that can see the possibilities and ‘energize’ the innovation solutions hold the future in their hands. All we can predict; the pace of innovation and energy transition will scale up to meet the needs of a world rapidly wanting to decarbonize and the innovator is in a very healthy position to capitalize on this

The post Placing context into the Energy Transition-part two first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

We are heading for an urban crisis unless we recognize the four parts of the urban transition and bring them together.

Urbanization needs to take the idea of smart, through data, and make the city intelligent.

Urban transitions are both physical and technology solutions combining. The solutions need always to change the current performance and delivery of a different sense of hope. 

So we have Four Parts needed for Urban Transition?

The recognition that there were four parts comes from a piece I was reading a while back was to recognize that Urbanization has four urban transition aspects, outlined by the Urban Transitions Alliance.

First, we need a significant Infrastructure transition, as much of the existing infrastructure is not fit for purpose. We need comprehensive infrastructure plans, ones built on flexible and renewable energy.

Secondly, we need a Mobility transition. Our dependence on vehicles needs to change. We must accelerate the e-mobility thinking, in trains, buses, motorbikes, and cars. Many of our cities are choking on pollution from hazardous air quality and congestion. Our mobility does not necessarily need to be our own

Thirdly we need this all-important Energy transition. We need new energy solutions; we need to deliver sustainable electricity, powered by green energies, not carbon-based. Cities can only become attractive places to live if we make this energy transition and that will require new physical systems that meet the needs of expanding cities

The fourth and perhaps the most important to manage, and manage well, is the Social transition. We have constant tensions in cities, and it is through social engagement, building a shared identity can we successfully manage any change. We need to be fully inclusive, so all living in a city or its urban area can share in any economic and societal gains.

So the urbanization needs a real connected narrative that should connect these four parts.

A set of solutions that simply improves on the existing is not good enough, we must seek to transform. These always come from applying innovation to these four transition needs of the urbanization story, so it becomes a “fertile” place for dynamism, ideas, and where social cohesion can thrive.

We are seeing pockets of progress occurring in many cities After the initial reaction to do something, we are now well past the point of picking off the low hanging fruit; we need to dig deeper into undertaking the urbanization transition.

Many of our cities are in real crisis or lacking the transformational plan to take them through their changes required. The hard part of this transition is ahead of us.

We are a point of needing to manage our Cities in a more comprehensive way where Urban Transition is seen in a ‘holistic’ way, not in opportunist ways that may be good messages we are doing “something” but are not sustaining, lasting solutions to growing pressures in our cities.

The post Managing Urban Transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Abstract Sandy Dessert credit: @USGS

The energy transition we are undertaking is highly complex, and it is multiple ecosystems interacting, some parts being replaced, others introduced. It has a significant “layering effect”.

We have to strip away some parts and equally add new layers but we need to maintain the integrity of the energy system (supply) at all times.

Providing energy is as embedded as deeply as you can get into the socio-economic system we are all part of. Changing the energy-generating composition is critical in reducing climate warming but it is incredibly hard to manage the transition. It is as complex as it can get.

A sustaining, dedicated effort will take us twenty to thirty years to make the “basic” transitions. To maintain it, strength it and reinforce it will be well beyond all our lifetimes, actually all of the 21st century, to (fully) reverse the global warming effect we are experiencing, and return our planet into a more balanced one where the “human effect” gets fully mitigated.

We need to bring it back into a natural balance as we are the primary cause of its present “unhealthy” state. For this planet to be sustaining and all the demands we place on it, in how we want to live but EQUALLY, in harmony with nature and other living species, our job is to return it back into balance, this becomes crucial. Otherwise, we will live in a very different world, bereft of much of what surrounds us in natural beauty and what we see as ‘earth’s wonder.’

We are facing the most significant challenge of climate warming where our planet is getting progressively warmer; we see disasters, crises, flooding, droughts, and living conditions that will become highly challenging in the next ten to twenty years for most of us. Our planet is growing increasingly unhealthy, and our reliance on fossil-related energy is causing this with a serious build-up of the greenhouse effect.

Reducing the greenhouse effect

“The greenhouse effect is the process by which radiation from a planet’s atmosphere warms the planet’s surface to a temperature above what it would be without this atmosphere. It traps the heat. Radiatively active gases in a planet’s atmosphere radiate energy in all directions”. source: Wikipedia

Since the beginning of industrialization, the presence of long-lasting greenhouse gases has been increasing dramatically. We need to reverse this and quickly as the build-up of these gases is unhealthy for us and all living species on this planet.

What makes up Greenhouse gases?

Mostly we talk about carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and methane (CH₄), and these trap heat in the atmosphere. With higher-than-natural concentrations, they lead to unnatural warming and increasingly unhealthy air conditions or air pollution that is making it uncomfortable to live “normally” in many of our cities or in many places across the world.

The enormous impact of fossil fuel-based reliance within our industrialization period has caused increasing harm to the ecosystem of the planet. Fossil fuel usage (burning) requires a profound restricting within any future energy system.

The new energy system does need to be based on clean energies, or renewables, as we know them. Most of the existing solutions currently being offered to replace existing energy sources are wind and solar solutions; these are expected to replace the fossil-related ones.

Understanding a complete energy transformation requires us to urgently find other solutions where there still is some level of dependency, based on the conversion of minerals that might still be carbon-based into new energy solutions as they extract the carbonization. Such solutions are seen today as hydrogen conversion as well as carbon capture techniques.

Deep carbonization needs to be our mantra

If we are going to complete the energy transition, the future energy systems must be all about “deep decarbonization” solutions must come from new solutions and technological innovation breakthroughs but at a pace of unprecedented speed and scale.

This “deep carbonization” means to eradicate the use of fossil fuels that generate so much of our emissions and rebuild our energy needs on renewables of solar, wind, hydrogen and biomass.

The other need is to capture and extract existing carbon levels where we still will have some dependency on carbon emissions.

There are emerging promising solutions to achieve carbon capture but to scale this at a global level is presently regarded as today’s hunt for a holy grail. We need to accelerate this concept as soon as possible and see if we can turn this from mystery and fascination into tangible solutions.

The alternative offered of simply planting trees will only take us so far; we need a technological breakthrough that captures, contains, and reduces carbonization.

” Carbon capture and storage (CCS) (or carbon capture and sequestration or carbon control and sequestration) is the process of capturing waste carbon dioxide (CO 2) usually from large emitters such as a cement or chemical plants with the concept of transporting it to a storage site, and depositing it where it will not enter the atmosphere, normally in some form of underground geological formation. The aim is to prevent the release of large quantities of CO 2 into the atmosphere. “

Hydrogen at scale needs realization

There is a lot of promise in the scaling up of Hydrogen solutions, from renewables. The argument is that hydrogen is the missing link in the energy transitions we need to make. Dealing with variable renewable energy (VRE) from Solar or Wind requires storage, and solutions like electrolyzers can help integrate VRE into power systems and grids by using this renewable energy sourcing.

The use of an Electrolyser is a device that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity and becomes the carrier of renewable energy and complements the ability to deliver electricity.

The hydrogen produced through this method is very pure, it can be based on location, it can be stored or “injected” into the energy system required and can become a much cheaper method than the use of gas shipped in. If ‘finished hydrogen’ is shipped in then the cost equation radically differs and if this solution is considered needs some fairly radical resign of the supply chain to make this price competitive with the alternative fuels.

Many hydrogen technologies are maturing at present and are at the point of scaling up that will help accelerate the substitution of fossil fuels that have this higher heat attribute required by industries like cement, pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, foundries and glass manufacturing.

Today hydrogen is produced mostly from natural gas in refineries for ammonia production, and hydrogen using solutions like electrolyzers, based on renewable resources, that splits a water molecule (H₂O) into hydrogen (H₂) and oxygen (O₂). can replace fossil fuel-based feedstocks, where we have high carbon emissions today.

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

To achieve any energy transition needs a sustaining effort over twenty to thirty years just to reverse where we were going, towards an unhealthy planet, using increasing levels of fossil fuet that are a primary cause of our planet warming.

We are moving towards a crisis due to the over influence we as a human has imposed. We are facing such far-reaching change and well-being, in industrial and rural regions, in the way we live.

If we do not tackle our energy system by replacing the current carbon-driven economy we will pay the price of this in providing an environment we will find it increasingly hard to exist in ways we currently know. If we continue to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, it will not only become unhealthy but for much of our living as we know it today will radically alter, for the worse.

So to understand the energy transition we do need to break down the parts of the ecosystem that the change in its management forms around. This is an opening part, no more, no less.

As I stated the energy transition is a complex “beast” to understand and then attempt to describe or redesign, so we can all relate to the changes that are needed to be undertaken.

The post Placing context into the Energy Transition-part one first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.