“Making something harmonious” often means we have to reconcile differences to balance out the tensions and issues to enable and make them compatible to work.

“Fusing” human engagement with technology enablement involves creating a harmonious integration of human collaboration and technological tools to enable an ecosystem’s successful development and operation. Is that possible?

How do we go about evaluating all the possible needs of customers, as they are mostly our success arbitrators? We must gain insights and refer through multiple information sources- digital data and direct human responses – than ever before; these insights are becoming essential to our businesses.

Calibrating the right way to use technology to create mutual benefit is an increasing theme across businesses, which means we need high levels of interdependence.

We must strive towards this “harmony.”

What do we need to consider? Leveraging the strengths of both human creativity and technological efficiency needs a pathway to follow that can enable an ecosystem through this fusion of making the human and technology sides work.

I loved this quote: “Two companies could roll out the same technology, but one might be a success, and one might fail,” says Nick Bouch, data and analytics partner at PwC UK. “The difference comes down to culture, communication, trust, and understanding—all human qualities. You need those things before technology can add any value. You need a balance of humanity and technology.” So it seems one seemingly comes before the other.

We need to work through the following, not in any specific order, as it depends on independent assessments. Still, all these shown below have their place to be considered or determined, especially if you are building out an ecosystem of collaborators.

Identify Ecosystem Goals and Stakeholders: Clearly define the goals and objectives of the ecosystem. Identify the different stakeholders involved, including individuals, organizations, and partners.

Human-Centered Design: Begin with a human-centered approach. Understand the needs, preferences, and pain points of the stakeholders. Design solutions that resonate with them and address their challenges.

Select Appropriate Technologies: Choose technologies that align with the ecosystem’s goals and the needs of stakeholders. Consider tools for communication, collaboration, data sharing, and decision-making.

Collaborative Platform Integration: Implement collaborative platforms facilitating communication and collaboration among ecosystem participants. These platforms can include project management tools, shared workspaces, and virtual meeting spaces.

Training and Skill Development: Provide training and support to ecosystem stakeholders on effectively using the chosen technologies. This ensures everyone is comfortable with the tools and can maximize their benefits.

Open Communication Channels: Establish open communication channels encouraging transparency and active engagement. Use technology to facilitate ongoing discussions, updates, and feedback loops.

Co-Creation and Ideation: Use technology-enabled platforms to engage stakeholders in co-creation and ideation. Encourage sharing ideas, feedback, and suggestions to foster a collaborative environment.

Virtual Collaboration Events: Organize virtual events, workshops, and hackathons that leverage technology to bring stakeholders together for brainstorming, problem-solving, and innovation.

Data Sharing and Analysis: Employ technology to enable data sharing and analysis. Collect and analyze relevant data to inform decision-making, identify trends, and measure progress toward ecosystem goals.

Feedback Integration: Continuously gather stakeholder feedback through surveys, polls, and interactive discussions. Use technology to process this feedback and iterate on ecosystem strategies.

Innovation Challenges and Competitions: Host innovation challenges or competitions that encourage stakeholders to develop solutions using technology. This fosters engagement and generates fresh ideas.

Digital Storytelling: Utilize technology to share success stories, case studies, and updates within the ecosystem. Digital storytelling can inspire participation and showcase the impact of collaboration.

Empowerment and Ownership: Empower stakeholders to take ownership of their roles within the ecosystem. Use technology to provide them with tools to contribute, collaborate, and lead initiatives.

Regular Assessments and Adaptation: Regularly assess the effectiveness of the technology-enabled strategies. Adapt and refine approaches based on feedback, data insights, and changing stakeholder needs.

Cultivate a Collaborative Culture: Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning within the ecosystem. Technology can support this culture by providing the means for constant interaction and knowledge sharing.

By integrating technology as an enabler of collaboration, communication, and data exchange while keeping human engagement and creativity at the forefront, you can create a dynamic ecosystem that thrives on innovation, inclusivity, and shared goals.

The post Fusing Human and Technology to Enable Innovation Ecosystems to Thrive first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Renewables that give us greater sustainability and clean energy and dramatic reductions in carbon emissions.

I wrote twelve dedicated posts over this period, including this one, to highlight the important place innovation has within the energy transition that we are undertaking. View all the opening introductions on the “home page” and scroll down.

To have any chance to reverse these temperature rises there is an increasing emphasis on innovation solutions within the technology that is required for the Worlds energy system. Solutions are needed to shift from the world’s present reliance on fossil fuels to renewable cleaner fuels to stop the growing pollution and harmful effects of greenhouse gases (GHG) that carbon-emitting fossil fuels are causing to our planet and giving us global warming issues that are deeply worrying.

I drew down on many different resources to get my more in-depth understanding of an area that is partly passion and partly a business focus, but one resource has stood out for their detailed work on innovation and the energy sector’s needs.

IRENA is an excellent resource on the energy transition, especially innovation within renewables

IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and its Innovation and Technology Center, in Bonn, Germany is an intergovernmental organization that is expressly set up to support countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future. IRENA serves as the primary platform for international co-operation, be a center of excellence and a repository of policy technology, resource, and financial knowledge on renewable energy.

IRENA promotes the widespread adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy in pursuit of sustainable development, energy access, security, and especially low-carbon growth and prosperity. It facilitates knowledge sharing and technology transfer, and here, with its emphasis on innovation’s contribution, IRENA is an excellent source of innovation understanding in the solution needs for our energy transitions.

Exploring the IRENA Innovation Landscape for Energy Transition

If you are interested in exploring the enabling technologies in different innovation landscapes, these links below will take you to specific briefs released in September 2019 on different parts of the energy system undergoing change.

IRENA’s Innovation Landscape report highlights innovations in enabling technologies and explored explicitly in the following briefs, where you go automatically to the download:

• Utility-scale batteries
• Behind-the-meter batteries
• Electric-vehicle smart charging
• Internet of Things
• Artificial Intelligence and Big Data
• Blockchain
• Renewable power-to-heat
• Renewable power-to-hydrogen
• Renewable mini-grids
• Super grids
• Flexibility in conventional power plants

Also, IRENA produced a substantial main Innovation Landscape report.

My focus on understanding the innovation needs of the energy transition

Why did I choose to exclusively focus on different aspects of innovation within the energy transition was a simple one for me.  It needs understanding, trying to encapsulate aspects of it, to raise attention and greater understanding.

We have such a real threat of climate change and any pathway to meet the Paris Agreements is going to be a very difficult one, where all countries pledged to keep the rise of the global temperature below 2 degrees C by 2050 and ideally try to work towards the position of 1.5-degree C above pre-industrial levels. These target goals mean bringing our temperatures down dramatically.

We are presently at a very critical decision time; there is the level of investment needed to achieve this,  the current estimate to create a safe climate system is a need to invest USD 110 trillion of new investments in the energy sector by 2050.

Much of the investments need to be directed away from fossil fuels (the primary carbon emitters) into clean technologies. It is renewables, including most power generation and end-use applications that need to invest mostly through generation sources of wind, solar, hydrogen, and biofuels. This level of investment commitment will radically alter the job landscape, where energy is generated, by what means, and how it is going to be distributed, stored and consumed by us all.

Presently we are not making the essential investments we need to make. We are far to slow in Government policy in providing incentives and organizing the capital markets to raise, distribute and commit to investment levels that are necessary to make this transition.

The period 2020 to 2030 is absolutely critical for investments not just to be pledged but effectively deployed on the ground in the physical solutions and effective operation needed to make this energy transition required on track to reach the climate goals.

Innovation is critical in this energy transition.

We need to move from research and development, through engineering validation but into (multiple) pilots and then scaling solutions at speed. We do not have the luxury of evaluating these over standard lifetime returns or observing others over the years, there is the need to raise validation and take higher risks, than in more stable times. We need to be more pioneering. Without a coordinated effort, the risk is always treated cautiously without some form of guarantee or point of crisis. To date, we have not generated co-ordination in policies, collaborations, and commitments to shared risks. We have yet to fully place in the minds of everyone what the crisis is and where it is heading if we do not respond with a real sense of purpose.

Take a look at the way IRENA is breaking down the innovation dimensions in this visual that covers 30 key innovation dimensions that will drive energy transitions across enabling technologies, new business models, different market designs, and system operation.

The Emission Gap is getting bigger, not smaller

I was reading a recent report, Emissions Gap Report 2019, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently releases. The summary findings are bleak. Countries collectively failed to stop the growth in global GHG emissions, meaning that deeper and faster cuts are now required.

The Emissions Gap Report has been produced annually since 2010. This is the UNEP flagship report that assesses the gap between anticipated emission levels in 2030 and levels consistent with a 2°C/1.5°C temperature targets that are was fully agreed as the goals in the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The 2019 report provides the first-ever estimate of annual cuts needed to stay on track with the Paris Agreement. The report emphasizes that the levels of ambition in the Nationally Determined Contributions must increase at least fivefold for the 1.5°C goal and threefold for the 2°C goal.

The report concludes “that, while challenging, climate change can still be limited to 1.5°C if sufficient momentum can be generated to take advantage of technologies to support the energy transition; increased understanding of additional benefits of climate action in terms of health and the economy; and abundant examples of ambitious efforts from governments, cities, businesses and investors, “and the pressure and will to implement them”

The UNEP report states emissions have to fall now and drop 7.6% every year from 2020, and that needs a fivefold commitment in by all involved. So if we do not accept this growing crisis and start now, we will not achieve a world where temperatures take us beyond

The G20 countries emit 78% of all emissions; primarily, it is in their hands to make these deep commitments. Also, we must not lose sight of those developing countries. These countries need to look to “leapfrog” into renewables and all the associated technologies of storage, batteries, and power generation (hydro, hydrogen, wind, solar, and biomass) that gives them not just energy security but energy potential to advance their economies. The G20 countries has huge legacy issues to tackle; many will end up as well described in this article by Joel Makower, Chairman & Executive Editor, GreenBiz Group on  “stranded assets.”

In Summary

We require bold leaders, policymakers, institutions, researchers, engineers, and innovators to combine, coordinate, and commit to making the energy transition happen.

So for me,  the energy transition is at the forefront of “cutting edge” innovation to deliver. For this reason, it is why I have given this my 100% attention in the past few months to understand, investigate, research, and become even more fully immersed in it.

Coming out of this intense period, I feel really far more conversant in the energy transition and its complexity. This understanding covers both its issues and barriers but also its opportunities and magnitude. It raises even more where I can contribute wherever possible through my focus on innovation, as it is pivotal to future energy transition solutions.

I firmly believe the energy transition needs all the help and attention it can get from all aspects and contributions. For all of us, being aware is a vital step to the recognition we are in a race against time to reverse the climate damage occurring, on a seemingly daily basis. Energy solutions, based on renewables and carbon sequestration are critical to this.

The post Understanding the Innovation Landscape needed for Enabling Technologies in the World’s Energy Transition first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

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.

The existing solutions found in wind and solar solutions jockeying to replace oil, gas, and coal, in our present electricity distribution, as well as our current customer solutions for managing our energy, will only take you so far in our need to change our energy systems.

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 percent of the 1990 level by 20150. Today the solutions are centered on decarbonization, applying digitalization, and switching to an energy system that is more decentralized than at present and it is finding imaginative, innovating 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, strength the energy security and develop a more significant energy system that is resilience 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 in any change of this magnitude will be displaced.

We need to switch from fossil fuel into renewables, and the whole shift of significant invested assets for power generation and distribution have 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 decarbonize challenging industry sectors like steel, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals or our transportation systems if we wish to achieve any positive outlook of curbing carbon emissions and move onto a pathway towards a zero-carbon future.

Where can innovation help?

The opening answer is everywhere within the energy system. Technological and systemic innovation is incredibly important to the end-user sectors of transport, industry, and buildings, as well as 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

Innovation needs to resolve different parts of the energy transition

Any discoveries are unpredictable, but if there are sound well-established innovation systems in place, you can pursue solutions that have both short-term medium-term and longer-term approaches to advancing the understanding of a solution.  For example, improving battery technology, improving charging efficiencies for an electric vehicle, or exploring different storage capacity for longer times.

Any energy transition takes a long time, and it requires a highly collaborative and multidisciplinary approach. For example, wind solutions have continued to evolve as we learn to explore new materials, improve the integration of advanced technology development,  improve the blade technology, as well as a gaining a greater understanding of weather conditions for strength and resilience. From the first wind turbines of less than 30 KW, we now have 9MW or more today. Wind turbines have evolved for over forty years. Wind turbines are just not seen on land, but we have floating wind farms out at sea.  Innovation takes a long time to push existing knowledge and find new solutions.

We are seeing discoveries that come from the interface of different areas where imagination sees possibilities and experiments in applying the principles to a completely different field or problem.

Innovation is a long hard task of iterative improvements and some rare breakthroughs, and this requires increasing collaborations between public, private, and research institutions to pursue together ideas and concepts. It is their combined disciplines and understanding that can push design and solutions in a continued, innovative way.

Innovation inspires action; it can focus on efforts and drive synergies if set up correctly. It is having a well-established innovation process or a clear, transparent one you can engage, communicate, and build shared understanding. That sense of collective identity has a more significant chance of generating new innovative solutions.

Collaborative working needs a system that offers a portfolio approach to ideas generated, concepts investigated, and potential solutions in the innovation pipeline, so the portfolio provides a common purpose and that shared understanding.

Innovation is often made up of novel solutions. As energy has significant areas of complexity, the better the understanding in standards, in the harmonization of approaches, in recognizing “universal” performance, there is this potential, of burden share. Investments in any new energy solution need to work through validation to commercialization in established ways. It builds mutual learning that adds more momentum to solve the problems and improve the designs.

Sharing the best ideas allows for more significant open exchanges. Governments, institutions, and the private sector each have roles to play in any transition of this size. The Private sector mostly brings innovations to market, yet all parties are involved in sharing risks or can be supportive and mutually re-inforcing. Through collaborations, they can jointly validate, promote, and clear the pathway for new innovations that require regulations to adapt to change when new solutions are being explored, tested, and commercialized.

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 in a highly systematic way. The need is to continually look for 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.

The post Focusing on Innovation for our Energy Transition we are all undertaking first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have been looking at those Hard-to-Abate sectors for reaching Net-Zero Co2 Emissions like the cement, steel, plastics, aviation, shipping, and heavy road transport within our need for a global energy transition. These are the really big carbon emitters and it is argued that they could achieve, using known technologies already under development a pathway to complete carbonization over the next decades. It is going to require significant public policy will and private investment to drive both the present incremental solutions and push for the breakthrough ones. Innovation is really needed here.

There are six innovation areas of electrification, hydrogen, biochemistry and synthetic chemistry, material efficiency and circularity, alongside new materials and the ability to carbon capture and carbon use that need to have innovative solutions. Working on the innovations within these six critical areas does have a real chance of fully decarbonizing these harder-to abate sctors of the world’s economy.

Yet, let’s step back just a little and get some clarifications out of the way. They help frame this story.

In understanding the energy transition that is well underway, there are many companies and countries all proudly claiming dates for achieving their carbon neutral targets. Most of these centers around 2030, but where I keep coming back to is the discussions around Net-Zero carbon emissions. Is this a mission impossible? For me, all I hear about are the cities and companies all proudly announcing their target goals for achieving carbon-neutral, yet is this good enough in this rapidly warming world? I think not.

So let us define the two: Carbon Neutral is a term used to describe the state of an entity (such as a company, service, product or event), where the carbon emissions caused by them have been balanced out by funding an equivalent amount of carbon savings elsewhere in the world. These savings are generated through helping to support renewable energy projects and energy efficiency projects, many of which bring additional social and community benefits in developing countries as well as reducing greenhouse gases.

There is an increasing number of businesses claiming to be carbon neutral. They recognize that being carbon neutral can play a crucial part in their sustainability and Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy while enabling them to do their bit for global climate change. They also realize that individuals and corporate customers prefer to buy products and services from environmentally conscious suppliers. Source Carbon Footprint. It seems this aim, although transformational to parts of a business or a city, is not addressing the essential one of achieving a net-zero emission state.

The other is Net-zero carbon emissions The IPCC demonstrates in its most recent report of 2018 that net emissions must be reduced to zero to stabilize global temperatures. The report also states that any scenario that does not involve a reduction to zero will not stop climate change.

Since the Earth already reacts strongly to small changes in the amount of CO₂, methane, and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emissions of these gases must be reduced until the whole system is back in balance again. Net zero-emission means that all man-made greenhouse gas emissions must be removed from the atmosphere through reduction measures, thus reducing the Earth’s net climate balance, after removal via natural and artificial sink, to zero. This way, humankind would be carbon neutral, and global temperature would stabilize. (Source: My Climate Org.)

Then what is hard-to-abate mean when it comes to difficult sectors of the economy?

There is a myth In the sectors that are termed hard-to-abate industries such as petrochemicals, cement, steel, trucking, airlines, and shipping it is not possible to find non-fossil alternatives, and demand keeps rising.  Therefore, there will be no energy transition. Actually, this is well-argued as not valid. It is merely just really hard!

I think this summary below nicely sums up the hard-to-abate issues coming from Carbon Tracker under their myths, written by their New Energy Strategist, Kingsmill Bond.

Carbon Tracker offers these Mythbusters

Hard-to-solve sectors are an endgame problem.  All transitions take place in stages, and the hardest segments can be solved last.  Long before we get to the last 21% of primary energy supply required directly by the hard-to-solve sectors, the market will have reacted, and incumbents will have changed strategy.

There is plenty of room for progress in other areas.  We have already started on the path to decarbonize electricity and to electrify light industry, buildings, and light transport.  With today’s technology, we can already increase the share of cost-competitive non-fossils from 20% of the primary energy supply to 30%.

Technology keeps raising the ceiling of the possible.  The continued fall in the cost of solar, wind, batteries, and electrolyzers means that there will be cost-competitive renewable solutions for half of the primary energy by the mid-2030s.

Hard-to-solve sectors already have solutions.  Electricity, heat, and biomass already make up more than a quarter of the total final energy consumption of heavy industry. Technology is chipping away at the easier parts of the hard-to-solve sectors such as light trucking in transport or low-temperature heat in industry.

Hard-to-solve sectors are smaller than ones where we have solutions.  Cars use four times as much oil as planes.  Electricity uses ten times as much primary energy as iron and steel.  And meanwhile, the world is electrifying so that electricity will make up most of the growth in energy demand.  It is not credible to argue that growth in these small sectors can outweigh the decline in the large ones.

Reality

The hard-to-solve sectors are islands of enduring fossil fuel demand, but no impediment to a transition.  And as renewable energy sources become increasingly prevalent, so each of the islands will be overwhelmed by the rising renewable tide.  Meanwhile, financial markets react during the peaking phase of the energy transition, long before the last sources of fossil fuel demand need to be replaced.

Turning mission impossible into mission possible for Net-Zero and the Hard-to-Abate debate

The most comprehensive report I have read through on this net-zero carbon emission set of problems, tackling those hard-to-abate sectors has been written by the Energy Transmission Commission and released in November 2018.

The report Mission Possible: Reaching net-zero carbon emissions from harder-to-abate sectors by mid-century outlines the possible routes to fully decarbonize cement, steel, plastics, trucking, shipping, and aviation – which together represent 30% of energy emissions today and could increase to 60% by mid-century as other sectors lower their emissions.

The “Mission Possible” report was developed with contributions from over 200 industry experts over a 6-month consultation process. Its findings show that full decarbonization is technically feasible with technologies that already exist, although several still need further investment to reach commercial readiness

The “Mission Possible” report concludes that the most challenging sectors to decarbonize are plastics, due to end-of-life emissions, cement, due to process emissions, and shipping because of the high cost of decarbonization and the fragmented structure of the industry.

For me, the sector in the report (Chapter 8) that discusses the innovation agenda was the place I automatically went.  The two crucial slides from the Mission Impossible Report for innovation were highlighted in the chapter, discussing bring critical technologies to commercial-scale deployment, addressing engineering complexities, and driving down costs.

Exhibit 8.1 presents a summary of critical domains where incremental performance and cost improvement of existing technologies is essential to facilitate commercial-scale deployment. It provides a roadmap to explore identified innovation solutions.

Exhibit 8.2 presents a summary of key areas where innovations are further away from the market, and require significant development, demonstration, and piloting over the next 15 years to bring them to market readiness by the 2030s or 2040s. Again, the innovation concepts are known, it is the validation and scaling-up that needs time.

The Energy Transmission Commission rightly points out we will be discovering other innovation alternatives in the years ahead. The state:”Unforeseeable technological breakthroughs will significantly change the optimal pathway to decarbonization over the next fifty years.”  The driver of the real change must come from a very forceful public policy set of decisions that makes reaching net-zero carbon emissions from the harder-to-abate sectors non-negotiable.

The point is unless we push for these hard-to-abate heavy industries,  such as cement, steel, and plastics, along with solutions to overcome the heavy-duty transport ones of heavy road transport, shipping, and aviation, we will improbably not achieve the global warming goals of well below 2c.

To achieve this, the leading four decarbonization technologies of electricity, biomass, carbon capture, and hydrogen all need to have innovative and scalable solutions.  Along with these are a consistent improvement of energy efficiency and a constant determination to reduce existing demand for carbon-intensive products and services.

Winning the climate war

If we want to win the climate war, these demanding hard-to-abate (decarbonize) sectors must have viable solutions emerging in the next ten to twenty years, otherwise achieving carbon neutral will be the end game, and that is not enough.

The post The Hard-to-Abate sectors need innovation solutions to reach Net-Zero Co2 Emissions first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Sadly he only had ten minutes. It would have been good to have this opening challenge expanded out so we can all recognize many of the areas that we are not doing enough in our need for the necessary energy transition.

Mr. Neike spoke of the battle we have in the energy and urbanization transformation, the need to accelerate the transition.

So his question sparked my thinking here that in my view, there are four parts to any Urban Transition.

Today 55% of the world’s population resides in urban areas; in2050, that will be staggering at 68% of the world population will be living in cities. We are heading for an urban crisis unless we recognize the four parts of the urban transition and bring them together.

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

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.

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.  A set of solutions that simply improves on the existing. 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, but others are perhaps going backward, take the case of Delhi in India. After the initial reaction to do something, we are 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.

So we are not doing enough, but in Mr. Neike’s closing, he struck a highly collaborative note.

So, returning to Mr. Neike’s closing remark was, a call to action: “do it together, do it fast.” This “fast and together” is needed to be highly collaborative energy and urban transition; it involves all of us and requires all of us to come together to resolve the multiple reasons for these transitions I am suggesting go together.

We have highly complex energy and urbanization transitions ahead of us. All I can say is we live in a polluted world, we rely on our energy to power our lives, and we, need to function individually and collectively. We live in a highly connected world, and, it is our “energy” source that makes it happen.

So today we are doing something but tomorrow we have to really learn to work even harder. Why?

Sadly, yesterday, the United States began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, notifying the UN of its intention to leave. The notification begins a one-year process of exiting the global climate change accord, culminating the day after the 2020 US election.

That presents even more significant challenges to the battle of achieving the energy transition.

Please visit my post for reflecting on this decision by the US administration:  “A dark day for the climate and the fight over global warming?” that is over on my ecosystem and platform posting site.

**Disclosure: Part of my work in research and advising in the energy transition is due to being engaged in the #SiemensInfluencer community or #SIEx. I want to emphasis the opinions and views expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of Siemens.

The post So are we doing enough in the Energy and Urbanization Transition? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

In recent months I have become totally “wrapped up” in the energy transition occurring across the world. The whole transformation we are undertaking is not just for our energy sake; it is for more for our climate sake and having a sustainable future.

Energy is one of the critical drivers of our well-being, providing one of the essentials to survive and thrive. We need water, food, air, shelter, and sleep, and our source of energy underpins all of these as the energy transition in its solutions are aimed at cleaning up our climate and environment before it is too late and give us more energy to power the next growth cycle.

We are suffering increasingly from polluted air; we need increasing intensive farming. We are living in a very crowded planet where our shelter (home) becomes our “place to be or simply survive” Our water supplies need consistent refiltering as freshwater is increasingly growing in shorter supply. Humans need their sleep, and it is the environment that enables that, and as 70% of the world’s population by 2050 will live in cities, all are becoming  “highly dependent” on energy to fuel the system.

We are becoming highly dependant on one of the key outcomes of energy, electricity. It “powers” our lives in connectivity; heating, cooling, data, and much, much more, in industry, communications, health systems, etc. Many people today argue we are losing our battle for survival as our planet is heading towards a real crisis in global warming making it a place that will increasingly be a tough environment to thrive without a major intervention or evolution.

Energy holds one of the most powerful “keys” to change the path we are on, one where we stop polluting the world, threatening so much of what we know. The need is to move significantly away from a reliance on fossil fuels that are the main polluters and energy source into clean energy, harnessed from renewables of the wind, sun and the use of water and effective use of biomass, such as purposely grown energy crops, wood or forest residues, waste from food crops, horticulture, food processing, animal farming, or human waste.  We need to move away from extracting minerals that have a finite source; we need to focus on extracting energy from all the sources of renewables.

To undertake such a colossal change in our energy system there is the need to undertake a radical shift in the “upstream” part of the energy system. We need to move from coal, gas, and coal and switch to wind, solar, hydro, or hydrogen is a massive undertaken, driven by science ‘informing’ us of this urgent need and by innovation to get us there.

This “triggered” wholesale need to change also applies to the transmission and “downstream” infrastructure within the energy system. This is not just to adjust to renewables but to resolve the antiquated power systems that have been in place, sometimes for a century or more. Equally monopolies of energy suppliers needed to change, and we also see the opportunity to move towards a more consumer (prosumer) relationship where each of us increasingly determines our own energy needs, that we consume and feel comfortable in using. We are moving towards a new energy system and energy market.

The catalyst to this wholesale energy change was the Paris Agreement

To quote from Wikipedia: “The Paris Agreement was an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016. The agreement’s language was negotiated by representatives of 196 state parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Le Bourget, near Paris, France, and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015.^[4][5] As of March 2019, 195 UNFCCC members have signed the agreement, and 187 have become party to it.^[1]”

“The Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels; and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C, recognizing that this would substantially reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.

“This should be done by peaking emissions as soon as possible, in order to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases” in the second half of the 21st century. It also aims to increase the ability of parties to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, and make “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”

Under the Paris Agreement, each country must determine, plan, and regularly report on the contribution that it undertakes to mitigate global warming.^[6] No mechanism forces^[7] a country to set a specific target by a specific date,^[8] but each target should go beyond previously set targets”

So why am I writing something we should all already know?

Simply because we are not doing enough, our pace of change in the energy transition is not happening as quickly as it is needed. We are not biting the bullets of changing regulations and policies, adopting carbon omissions targetted on the polluters to change, and within the “vested” industries there is a consistent blocking of change to suit their interests.

We lack leadership here. We need inspirational leadership. John F. Kennedy made one of the most famous “call to actions”

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

We do need a call to “collective” action on solving our rapidly warming climate, but it is through our “connection” to energy, and especially electricity, we need this moment of inspiration to contribute to making a change.

What would be your inspirational statement of “We choose to make our energy clean and sustainable”?

The post The energy transition we are undertaking first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We are on the cusp of a new digital era in energy.

What is new, is the pace of digitalization occurring through technological innovation, providing solutions that enable the energy system to be transformed?

Digitalization across the energy landscape is determining the system-wide changes of connectivity; it is linking, monitoring, aggregating, and controlling assets to cause a fundamental “blurring” between who supplies and who consumes energy.

The old paradigm of central grids will undoubtedly continue to provide the energy infrastructure backbone and keep balancing the electricity transmission network, but there will be significant differences at the local level (final point of supply) to trade energy through different grid edge designs and services.

Digitalization brings us closer to the end-user – knowing your grid edge and how to respond

The closer in proximity to end-use (homes, business, vehicles) is the grid edge as the hardware (things we can touch and see) such as solar panels, meters, energy storage systems, thermostats, appliances, and building controls. These “things” are being designed to connect and combined with grid edge software that triggers demand and optimization. Software that builds data analytics or planning information that allows for a new form of aggregation that gives us all a greater engagement in managing our energy consumption and begin to sell surplus electricity through the management of their own personal energy system.

The digitalization and innovation of this grid edge will transform the electricity industry as it can give a choice to the end-user on preferences, what they chose to connect into (power consuming connected devices), and give them a greater awareness of what makes up the energy chain. The end-user can begin to demand electricity sources that are fuelled by renewable energy; they become more interested in their carbon footprint and become prosumers where they achieve higher interactions, growing expectations they are in reliable systems, and offered protection and security in what they engage within.

Digitalization is the catalyst for engagement and connectivity within the energy system. Its value is to provide safety, productivity, accessibility, reliability, transparency, and offer sustainability? It is the new architecture of the energy system that interconnects our energy solutions.

As more and more deployment takes place, providing new connected technology, we see autonomous cars, home systems, and connected smart buildings offered as new end-user solutions. It is the data that is allowing AI and machine learning that are giving us this new form of digital intelligence.

The application of digital technologies is widely impacting end-use.

Today we are seeing increased sensors and use of devices that are optimizing process controls, providing industrial automation, give us smart thermostats, autonomous cars, and trucks, for example.

We see new services on providing greater security and comfort in intelligent street lighting, occupancy, and personal relationships with our buildings. We are beginning to work through the prospects of mobility as a service, remote control, unmanned drones, shipping, and possibly driverless cars, offering the potential for new business models. All of this comes mostly from digitalization being part of the final solutions to connect “it” to us.

Digitalization is about to reshape transportation, and its energy design and consumption need to be redesigned to adapt. The whole smart, digitally-enabled charging devises of electric vehicles where recharging can be more optimized at “off-peak” times

In our buildings, undoubtedly we can predict and respond to changes in weather, occupancy, and understanding the ‘connected’ parts of a building, so our energy consumption can improve operational efficiency in lighting, predicting, and managing heating and cooling.

In industry we can continue to advance our processes through digitalization coupling sensors and analytics to predict potential equipment failure, repair them remotely, allow AI and machine learning to improve productivity through the use of robotics, 3 D printing and provide connectivity both within the plant and to other locations, to manage and monitor production in new digital ways.

Traditional fuel providers are equally applying digitalization solutions

Within traditional energy consumption areas of the oil and gas industry, in coal and the power sector, the value of deploying more imaginative digital solutions can enhance operations, build-out more modeling options on the data gathered, provide a more significant opportunity for automation and predictive maintenance.

Digital assessments of physical plant and networks can reduce downtime and extend the operational lifetime of assets through monitoring and deploying solutions that rely on their digital component (drones, tele-remote equipment, driverless trucks controlled by a control room due to harsh conditions). Applying more digital applications enables these industries to optimize and stay competitive with the alternatives in renewables.

We need to be digitally smart in renewables

The other significant gain from digitally connected systems within the energy system is the new opportunities that the new connecting points between generation and consumption will bring. Smart appliances will enable intelligent demand response; digital can integrate variable renewables  (ones that rely upon the sun and wind) to match energy demand response.

For this integration to happen we need to design a more decentralized energy system that can facilitate distributed energy resources, so we can store energy and have it available on demand. Blending different energy sources needs a different digitally smart energy system to optimize options and provide electricity in more flexible and adaptive ways.

Digital solutions will need to draw more energy than before

As we build out the new energy systems, there will be a need for more data centers, building data networks, and the massive proliferation of all the connected devices. The challenge is, as digitalization solutions consume more energy, we need to continue to drive devise and designs to be more efficient and have higher standby capacity.

As we become increasingly reliant on this digitally connected, the energy-hungry world we are heading towards, it is one that needs managing in new ways as we become more climate aware and expect clean energy to be made available 24 x 7.

Cross-cutting risks of Digitalization

As we rely increasingly on digital solutions, we will become more vulnerable to digital threats, and we need to build more significant protection measures built into our energy systems. We need a robust, comprehensive digital resistance to prevent or reduce cyber-attacks or the growing effects of geomagnetic storms that can effectively “knock out” our energy systems.

We need to consider the privacy and data ownership questions increasingly, that balance for the benefit with the “trading off.”

Finally, we will continue to go through such an upheaval in the energy sectors, in job and skill changes. Whole work patterns, tasks, and requirements needed to effectively manage the new energy system will have significant disruption and radically alter how we undertake its management.

Digitalization Of Energy 

As digital becomes increasingly persuasive and part of our lives, we will undergo a real change in how we view our energy consumption and contribution to the system. In many ways, digitally is offering us an incomplete or undefinable future, in energy, in our overall reliance on digitalization solutions.

The goal needs to be that the digital technologies we introduce need to help us become more connected, intelligent, efficient, by having, resilience, reliability, and sustainability built into the energy system we are designing. Energy is changing significantly; we are all becoming plugged into a progressively digitally renewable world.

The post The Digitalization of Energy first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This week I have had one of those most intense periods of researching and then absorbing the material around different energy issues.

Everywhere you turn, you stumble across reports on one aspect or another of the energy transformation we are undertaking.

I am looking at this energy transition through the eyes of the innovator, as it offers so much in new solutions and designs that any innovator would love to be part of.

Energy is tackling one of the world’s toughest tasks, turning our existing energy system, reliant on fossil fuels into one based on renewables, is an enormously complex set of challenges in its goal of decarbonizing it.

There is such an innovation landscape of solutions that are contributing to the world achieving a more renewable-powered future. Technology innovation, suggested new business models, outline proposals for changing policies, processes, and market design all are being “sketched out.” It is overwhelming, but innovative solutions need to be continuously refreshed to reflect this consistent inflow of understanding, relating to the energy transition that is being undertaken. It is evident innovation must be way broader than just technological RD&D.

During this past week, I have been working through specific aspects of the energy transition model.

Firstly, I have been looking a little more at the emerging focal point of Grid Edge. The Grid Edge includes the innovative solutions of hardware, software, and business innovation that are enabling smart infrastructure to be installed at or near the “edge” of the electric power grid. So things that you can touch or see, such as solar panels, metering infrastructure, local energy storage systems, smart thermostats, appliances, and building controls, are in Grid Edge Hardware solutions. The software is automating this, more demand-responsive, real-time data, data analytics, and planning systems to extract the value out of the data. Business innovation is turning that knowledge (data) into value for aggregation, trading, and supporting whole communities with managing their energy needs, for example. The Grid Edge solutions are on the rise.

My second area of focus was on the contribution digitalization is giving energy. The ability to connect everything up, to collect its data, to communicate it, and analysis it is changing the nature of how we are managing energy. Transport is becoming smarter and more connected through onboard computing power, the use of sensors, and the tracking, and the whole world is redefining this as e-mobility as the cars become electric. The value is in reducing vehicle emissions and Co2 levels. Buildings are also going through a digital revolution for managing heating, cooling lighting, and occupant movement. Having a more connected building also allows for increased security, maintenance, and safety. Thirdly Industry is undergoing so much automation, enabled by the digitalization and technologies where AI, Robotics, 3D printing, and machine learning are all ushering in entirely new ways to operate and manage plants. The impact of having digitally interconnected systems is revolutionizing energy management, let alone the control of the assets these digital solutions are built into.

My third area of more in-depth investigation has been Hydrogen. Clean hydrogen has been enjoying unprecedented political and business momentum. To achieve a low-carbon transformation, to decarbonize the energy world and meet the targets in the Paris Agreement (2015) from electricity through renewables, then it needs to substantially increase its share of all energy supply. Today gas, coal, and oil still dominate the energy supply. So many sectors require high-grade heat such as transport (aviation) or specific heavy industries (cement, pharmaceuticals, chemicals), and it is difficult purely through the means of electrification.

The promising solution is 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. 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 electricity. This way, we can balance loads on a grid through more effective storage and industry or city demands. 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. Today hydrogen is produced from natural gas in refineries, ammonia production, and bulk chemicals, and hydrogen from renewables can replace fossil fuel-based feedstocks, where we have high carbon emissions today.

My fourth area was checking back on the tracking of clean energy progress by technology in the different energy sectors or subsectors. These progress report cards come out regularly, but the one I wanted to work through was from the OECD and IEA ones. This clean energy report tracks 26 technology classified areas of energy, covering energy supply, energy demand, and energy integration. The approach makes sense as it is the ability to deliver the WHOLE energy system will give us the climate, renewable, and energy transition benefits. Managing this transition across the globe is a complicated task.  At the time of the report, 2016, only 3 of 26 tracked technologies were on track towards a sustainable energy transition by 2050. Eight are seriously off the track, including how coal is still dominating global power generation, advanced biofuels solutions are still lacking take up to scale and fully validate them, and we still have a staggering two-thirds of countries that do not have building energy codes in place.

I have also been reading we are way off track on hitting the 2-degree target for global warming, agreed at the Paris Agreement (UN-related reports), and the growing consensus is we are at 3 to 3.5-degree mark. That is accounting for the level of commitments being made today to tackle climate warming, where our energy is such a significant contributor to emissions. So in tracking the essential technologies within the energy transition, you get a clear sense of our progress or lack of it on a global scale. This 30,000-foot perspective is sometimes sobering to all the activity that seems to be occurring at energy events or within the companies dealing in solutions. Yet the gaps, in reality, need addressing and fast.

There are so many promising technologies lagging the commitments dues to lower funding, more significant technical difficulties, or not being able to be exploited due to political, regulatory, or business constraints. Innovation solutions can only advance so much, but without the political or business will, resources or capital can only progress far slower. It does seem we do not have the momentum we need to undertake the transformation of our energy systems yet.

Drawing some interim conclusions

Coming to the end of my specific focal points from this week, the cost of this energy transition needs to run into trillions of dollars. One account is around $20 trillion up to 2030. In the context of global GDP, this is running about $80 trillion a year, and the global annual investment is at $20 trillion. Our capital markets are presently not geared to this, but it is argued these additional investments in energy towards the 2-degree pathway should not be a major macroeconomic challenge, but at individual levels, it is daunting. Energy does need to change from high to low carbon technologies, but we are still glossing over one of the biggest challenges within this transition journey; how we pay for and finance the energy we use and who in investors, industries, governments, and companies will share the burden.

There is a hard reality we are failing to make in the energy transition. Making any move wholesale from an existing energy system to a future low carbon system has disruption, competing forces and vested interests, it has huge risks and the methods to manage this transition needs new types of investment portfolio’s to diversify risk and build investment concept models to manage this change, fund development and put a significant repowering into the projects, big and small, we need to undertake.

Next year, 2020, the world leaders meet, I think in China for a review of past agreements, progress and make their next assessment around the warming climate. Much as there is a lot of hype and industry activity, the reality is the level of capital, commitment, political and business determination, and necessary momentum for an energy transition is still not in place; we are lagging badly, and we need a global commitment to engineering the energy system as part of the recognition that our energy systems are a principal cause of global warming. We are approaching this in “piecemeal, ad-hoc ways, and not through structured and institutional agreements to bring this together.

The need is for robust, comprehensive energy transition paths

As we move towards a world of more electricity based on renewables, we do need to have well defined and executed transition paths. We need full energy market designs and not, as we presently see piecemeal solutions. We are tackling a global need to reduce global warming, to reduce carbon and all greenhouse emissions, and have more renewable, stable, and flexible solutions that reflect the needs and demands of the 21^st century, where we are highly dependent on a steady, sustainable source of energy supply.

Let the innovator’s energy transition journey continue…………………..

** the Investment numbers quoted in my interim conclusions are taken from a paper  released by www.energy-transitions.org. in their Better Energy, Greater Prosperity report supported by the ETC Secretariat, here in Europe.

The post Continuing the Energy Transition Journey first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

What fascinates me presently is the energy transition currently being undertaken, due to the enormous amount of innovation options being considered and applied. New technologies are changing the very nature of how energy is going to be produced and delivered over the next ten to twenty years.

When you consider how vital energy is to society anywhere in the world, you realize what a significant time this is to curb the carbonization and radically resign the system based on renewables and green electricity. It might sound obvious, but having access to energy is crucial to our daily lives; it powers everything we do. Not just in the home, in our business lives, in our ability to function, it enables us to be productive or simply “plugged-in.”

We are undergoing such a revolution that will have an impact on all of our lives. During the next ten to twenty years, we are in a race to transform our energy system, one that moves from fossil fuel reliant to clean fuels based on renewable energy. We need to decarbonize and make energy greener.

The other part of the energy transition is to provide a reliable, sustainable energy system by exploiting all possible efficiency out of the existing system. Also we need to radically apply new technologies for electrification that will be transforming the generating, transmitting, converting, storing, and utilizing energy, in entirely new ways.

We will pass through many different parts of this energy evolution through a complete change in the infrastructure, termed today as smart infrastructure, as its solutions are focused on delivering the decarbonizing, decentralizing, and digitalizing of power generation to provide system flexibility and greater end-user involvement.

Undertaking such a transformation will require four essential aspects to happen:

1. A real political commitment to make this change to reduce the dangers of global warming and power outages.
2. A radical redesign of the energy system in the supporting policies, regulations, and subsidies in existence today and needed to make this a fully greener energy system
3. Public awareness and engagement in the sheer size of these changes, their impact on daily lives and their social, economic and environmental benefits in eventual outcomes
4. The dependence on innovation to transform the system through technological solutions, market redesign, and new business models.

The magnitude of realization of achieving deep decarbonization of our energy systems, the upending of fossil fuel reliance into renewables, and this undertaking of a complete energy system redesign is hard to comprehend within the time scales set. What we do in the next ten years will determine if we can achieve the goals of reducing global warming by 2 percent by 2050. The cost of not achieving this will be significant for its impact on our lives if we do not attempt to undertake this.

Allow time for new technologies to commercialize.

To undertake something like a global energy transition, you need time; time to figure it out, validate the options and pathways and then provide the necessary time to pilot, learn and then commercialize the (multiple) solutions to be scaled and applied. The cost of this transformation will eventually run into trillions of dollars.

The innovation aspect needs to gather momentum. Technologies are emerging based on several solution needs:

• Ones that are grid edge in design, meaning more customer-facing and power-flow controls
• Radically different storage technologies that can handle the variances in renewable of holding the supply of solar and wind generating energy as well as converting energy through electrolysis, hydrogen and synthetic fuels that serves the needs of mobility, heating, agriculture
• The present gas and steam turbines need to be upgraded, optimized, converted and have applied hybrid solutions that combine different energy sources, various technologies that combine to provide mixed energy source power plants
• The advancement of carbon capture techniques and carbon removal
• Exploring next-generation nuclear fission and fusion
• Finding different solutions that allow high-temperature superconductor transmission and solid-state transformers to be introduced increasingly into the energy system
• Finally, putting to use digitalization for machine and device connectivity, managing growing complexity in overall systems, increasing the transparency, reliability, and resilience through the application and use of sensors, monitoring, analytics, and self-learning systems to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Each of these “demands” new technology design.

They need to be economically viable and scalable and need to drive a clean energy transition and provide increasing systems flexibility

These new technologies need to break into the existing lifecycle of energy design to substitute incumbent solutions. The speed of development and deployment will be unprecedented for use to meet the climate goals, decarbonize the system, and change the fuel source. Fuels that are based on renewables or green alternatives that can continue to use existing fuels of coal, gas, or oil that allow for carbon capture or removal.

So we need to blend much of what we have seen coming or emerging from technology solutions based on the internet of solutions, artificial intelligence, and in the future, blockchain. We need to find innovation within energy as a service, in peer-to-peer trading and localized generation of energy so individuals and communities can become active participants. As we increasingly use low-carbon electricity we have to begin to decarbonize our transport, buildings, and industry.

Lastly, we need to find innovative solutions for flexible power generation sourcing, establish multiple interconnections of fuel supply that is more related to demand response through different storage and distribution designs, and enable these to be fully digitalized to capitalize on these effects and in sustaining ways.

The need of innovation solutions could not be greater in demand

The role of innovation in the energy transition is critical to delivering the new solutions outlined above. It is a fascinating time to be involved in innovation and all the changes that are undergoing within the energy sector.

The post Accelerating Innovation in the Energy Transition Journey first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

When you investigate and research the energy transition that is underway, the higher focus to date has been on the progress to replace fossil fuel with renewable power generation technologies. As crucial renewable energy solutions (wind, solar) are falling in price comparison, we are beginning to see clean energy solutions for industry, for the environment, and society, as a whole. Energy transition and moving to renewable power generation, though, it is not happening fast enough.

We need to focus more on the active implementation of renewable energy solutions sooner than later. We are in an increasing race to work towards achievable goals to reduce global warming in the very ambitious time scales of the UN Paris climate agreement in 2016. This comprehensive agreement is to keep the global average temperature rise remaining below the two-degree Celsius agreed by 2050.

Presently we are failing behind this “two-degree pathway” deemed as essential, and we are currently forecasted to release more carbon and gases into the atmosphere, and that has severe repercussions for our planet.  Governments will need to introduce more substantive policies to meet the emission targets they signed up too and society, industry and us, as individuals will have to undergo adjustments to accommodate this in our habits, consumption, and usage.

It is not just replacing energy sources; it is all about solution renewal end-to-end

We also have to focus on the broader aspects of “energy transition” by re-engineering much of the existing infrastructure to create smart grids, the electrification of many industries and the ability to introduce e-mobility across the transport sector.

The nature of the energy landscape will require the transformation of businesses, the push to find and develop new market dynamics and embrace government policy and regulations in an orderly and planned way. This “transformational mix” gives rise to different innovation dimensions to explore, be these enabling technologies, new business models, different market designs, and changes in the methods of system operation that make up a broader innovation ecosystem of solutions.

Innovation can accelerate progress, especially at the user-end point.

A very critical piece of the energy transition puzzle is the necessary focus on the end-user sectors of transport, industry, and buildings. Here, it is the combination of new system designs and ways to operate, combined with technological innovation. We need to achieve the most pressing need to undertake greater energy efficiency and effectiveness at the consumption end of energy.

The increased electrification of these end-user sectors of transport, buildings, and industry are providing new designs for energy systems to operate.  The solutions offered are placing increased emphasis on digitalization so that the system design is managed on a  more decentralized and democratized participation. These solutions are breaking up previous monopolistic providers in power generation. The changes are transforming energy management.

The end-user market of transport, buildings, and industry must shift their primary energy supply from the present 15% of renewable energy to 65% by 2050. The share of Renewable power is expected to rise to 85% by 2050 (source: Irena 2018 “Global energy transformation report”)

The role of innovation within these end-user sectors of transport, buildings, and industry will involve changes in system designs to digitalize grid services, build more local and grid-scale energy storage, deploy significant charging solutions for electric vehicles. The design of energy systems needs to bring closer to the end-user the utilization of mini-grids to enable greater flexibility and participation in energy co-operation between transmission and distribution system operators. These designs are building the two-way flow where excess energy can be delivered back to the grid.

These innovations are galvanizing change, but the vital part of any innovation change is managing the lifecycle design and transition, innovating end-to-end.

The level of investments in the existing energy system needs staging for significant change.

There is a compelling need to design a roadmap for changing the energy system in nearly all cases. Each energy roadmap needs to build a business case, one that starts by asking where are the efficiency increases going to come from to pay for any change? Why are these changes needed, and what advantages will be achieved from undergoing these changes? How long would any orderly transformation take?

Where are the opportunities to invest when we undertake system design shifts that capitalize on all the leading practices taking place around energy consumption? Where can any design accommodate to take advantage of a mix of fuels (hybridization)? How will it be designed and operated, to help in gaining from the new innovative solutions emerging, ones that utilize and deploy decentralized storage, smart grid designs in transmission, in distribution, to advance commercial and industrial solutions that can lead to new energy solutions that provide increased flexibility, agility, and adaptability.

Critical industrial users of fossil fuels need extra special attention

Most of the energy change is through the greater electrification of these end-use sectors, to gain the value of moving to variable renewable energies as prices of alternative energy become increasingly attractive in price and supply.

Equally, as fossil fuel usage becomes increasingly unattractive, both politically and by society concerned with global warming, each industry user will need to find alternative energy sources. The most significant problems presently are in the end-user industry of iron and steel making, cement production and chemical and petrochemical production, as well as aviation. They are currently highly reliant on fossil fuel. Innovative solutions here will require far more government intervention and incentive shifts and significant research and development to find solutions that are both competitive and compelling enough to make the change.

The answer, it seems, that can change the reliance on fossil fuels is a balanced reliance on bioenergy for process-heat generation and a mix of on-site and grid electricity solutions. Relocating industry will also be part of the solution over time and incentive design.  Tackling these industry-specific problems is critical for reducing global carbon emissions and pollutants by offering solutions that are attractive as alternatives, as these industries contribute critically to our present solution needs of their end-product output.

The increasing investment in Bioenergy

I have been focusing on wind and solar mostly for renewables, but the focus on bioenergy comes more into solution focus for end-use applications. I want to investigate this more but in summary here:

The ability to accelerate solutions in bioenergy, in improving heat pumps and focus more innovative solutions on managing the need for high-temperature heat keeps this energy source as key for many of the end-user sectors.

Bioenergy is a versatile resource that can be converted into the final energy for heat, power, and transport fuels. Bioenergy also can be stored in the form of solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels. The solutions through bioenergy are a real source of renewable energy solutions for modern buildings, industry, transport and power and district heating, but the challenges and solutions will come from technology innovation and increased R&D.

In many developing countries, the source of energy for cooking and partial heating needs changing. The use of coal, gas, or wood needs replacing. The application of Bioenergy solutions can make a significant contribution here, although Hydrogen solutions seem to be receiving the current publicity and are suggested as quickly approaching economic competitiveness. I think by all accounts both Bioenergy and Hydrogen are complementary solutions but can target specific application, important to consider.

Buildings have a significant potential for redesigning based on renewable energy

Buildings have a huge potential to be a substantial part of the energy transition story. We cannot expect new buildings, designed for the need for energy efficiency to simply replace the old; we must look increasingly to be retrofitting the old, or renovating existing buildings in transiting them through imaginative, innovative solutions. To facilitate this, the innovation options will be highly variable to the “state of the building” and the ability and economic returns. I feel those within building solution redesign need to be far more imaginative and offer a more coherent story to convert commercial and residential buildings to a higher renewable energy share.

The “ solution fit” needs a reasonably comprehensive solution portfolio, in my opinion. What solutions can be achieved in retrofitting or renovating buildings over a building roadmap design concept? Can district heating and cooling be part of the building solution, can hydrogen or further bioenergy as heating fuels, what and how can seasonal heat storage come into play? The solution mix around heat pumps, solar-assisted water/ space heating, the ability to clad a building (the envelope solution), the application of more efficient appliances, the ability to heat and cook from renewable energy all needs imaginative design and solutions.

The building re-design for renewable solutions is a massive test for the energy transition we are undertaking. The energy-related Co2 emissions from building need a dramatic shift. In 2015 building energy consumption was 36% from renewables. Presently estimates are that three-quarters of energy consumption in buildings could be supplied by renewables with solutions in hand or solution design by 2050.

It is going to be the solution that can expand the biomass use, combined with electricity usage based on power generated from renewables, that will combine up with innovative solutions inside and alongside buildings, to deliver on the need to reduce buildings’ carbon footprint dramatically.

Are we up to the job of renewing buildings today at an accelerated pace?

I do not think so; we need a more comprehensive overall system solution design and operation approach, that continues to accelerate the uptake of solution designs by the infusion of technology innovation. Today we are not telling that compelling story.

We have many exciting ways to accelerate the energy transition through innovative design. Today I do not see the compelling case that this is being well-communicated in solving the growing gaps in designing the end-user markets of industry, building, and transport in cohesive ways.

The building solution story of renewable energy solutions within buildings, is, in my opinion, underbaked, we do need to turn up the renewable-heat story. It requires a more comprehensive storyline that achieves the changes we need and demonstrates energy efficiency but increasingly in location-specific ways

We need a robust design of the end-user market for the energy transition, in my opinion;  that comes from telling the emerging innovating story for energy solutions in exciting and effective ways based on offering clear roadmaps of energy design.

The post Increasing innovation focus on the end-user segments within the energy transition story first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.