I wrote a mini-series of three posts to introduce a radical concept that envisions the energy transition as a living, evolving entity that bridges technology and nature, sparking profound shifts in how communities generate, consume, and perceive energy.

It aims to trigger innovation engagement and activation strategies to change the energy transition dynamics within a community setting, offering decentralized community energy.

It focuses on the community in a decentralized way for its energy. It challenges established norms and prompts a complete reimagining of our relationship with energy and the environment through innovation, creativity and ecosystem thinking and design.

Imagine transforming the energy transition into a holistic ecosystem of interconnected businesses, each contributing unique value to accelerate sustainable energy adoption.

The links to take you to the sites where you can read the proposed solution are at the bottom of this post.

Introducing the Energy Transition Nexus: A Living Energy Organism” that challenges the Conventional Approach to the Energy Transition

This Energy Transition Nexus is a conceptual leap, a radical departure from how we presently undertake parts of the energy transition. It does shift ownership of the energy transition. by forming these community energy ecosystems that promote local entrepreneurship, collaboration, and business-building opportunities through innovation and learning from others. It encourages radical change simply because we need this significant shift in our thinking.

It comprises the following parts to consider shifting our thinking away from the presently accepted, more highly centralised thinking on energy provision into community enablement. It is conceptualized upon the following thoughts:

I feel it is essential to bridge the gap between the natural world and the business world in a more closely aligned way, going beyond existing frameworks or thinking but still grounding this into business-orientated understanding to relate more.

Let’s explore a business-oriented, yet still disruptive, approach that brings a conceptual leap to the energy transition with this decentralized community proposal while maintaining some degree of continuity with business practices but set in an ecosystem way of thinking and design:

Holistic Energy Ecosystem: Integrated Business Network

The ecosystem-centric model accelerates the transition while aligning with existing business paradigms by creating an integrated business network that shares resources, knowledge, and expertise. It’s a transformation that leverages collaboration, investment, and market dynamics to drive radical change within the energy industry and supports the primary community needs as central.

We begin to talk about a different energy game, a new language that reflects a living ecosystem for energy.

Energy Transition Nexus: A Living Energy Organism

Imagine an energy transition paradigm where communities create a living, self-organizing energy organism called the “Energy Transition Nexus.” This radical concept merges cutting-edge technology, biology, and community engagement to revolutionize the energy transition process:

What if we can construct a groundbreaking opportunity to reshape the energy landscape to empower your community, stimulate local innovation, and drive sustainable growth? It puts your energy future in your hands.

Innovation often emerges from pushing boundaries, considering diverse perspectives, and embracing a broader lens of potential connecting solutions to give a positive impetus to changing the energy transition into something more tangible to ourselves and our communities.

This feasibility rests on many factors, such as community interest, local regulations, technological readiness, and effective leadership.

Successful implementation requires a comprehensive understanding of local dynamics, a strong stakeholder commitment, and the ability to address challenges as they arise. While there are challenges, the potential benefits in terms of community empowerment, innovation, and sustainable growth make this concept worth exploring.

We do need a radical rethink of our energy transition. It needs to revert to communities, the final arbitrator and the consumer. That builds their energy needs and connects their growth. We still have national grids and can augment energy supplies, but the community gains a degree of independence to shape their needs and destiny.

Originally posted on www.energycentral.com as a three-part mini-series. The first post, which introduces the concept and framework thinking, links into the two follow-up posts on the Energy Transition Nexus: A Living Energy Organism and its suggested framework.

Further reemphasised on my posting site with the first post, “Envision Energy as a living, evolving community.”

The post Envision Energy in living, evolving communities that challenge conventional wisdom. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I started posting my thoughts on innovation in August 2010. I have written on this site alone, www.paul4innovating.com, by just coming up to a milestone of 700 posts focusing on innovation thoughts and opinions, so I just wanted to pause and think about all the different places I have tried to get the innovation message(s) out.

I always find the post-New Year to be a reflective part of the year of reviewing, deciding, and then setting new goals. This is a post about the sources of my knowledge that feeds my innovation passion.

Let me start. I often wonder whether the posts and articles I’ve written have been hitting the right buttons, helping solve the needs of those involved in innovation; I hope so. I have pushed out and explored various aspects, learning myself as I go. I have followed a number of great innovation thinkers and read different books on the areas of innovation.

It amazes me. How much is talked about, advice offered and sometimes that deep down nagging feeling, innovation understanding does not really change; it is the people managing it as they often seem to be simply passing through this innovation period onto other things or vanishing in pursuit of different career interests.

During this time, I have adopted and sometimes improved many innovative tools and methodologies or simply explored all the different ways to look at and investigate innovation. Reading and even contributing to different innovation books that have come out has added experience and contribution, but I do so often wonder that innovation seems not to have changed as much as I would have expected.

Innovation application and practice seem to have stayed stuck, largely due to how it is organized. The software has been increasingly proven and improved, mostly at the front end of the innovation process,but the whole innovation process or system stays in pockets of disconnected knowledge and fails to fully leverage the collaborative potential, insights or experiences of all involved if the innovation discovers to commercialization was open and supported by a clear ecosystem approach and strong, dedicated platform and technology-enabled environment.

Even with all the countless advice, ideas and concepts written by many, innovators still stay marooned on individual islands, lacking insights, alternative opinions and broader diversity in thinking. I wonder if innovation management has made the level of progress or remains still a little steeped in mystery and the big “big ah-huh” moment, often so vital to breakthrough innovation.

How can you just trigger multiple “ah-huh” moments? Having those insights are the wonderful moments of magic, and they still hold such power over our innovative thinking, sometimes unfairly judging our innovation process as “ad hoc”, but we must not deny us all to find ways to open up to a different way of innovation management through open, collaborative innovation engagement.

For me, it is necessary to grasp what Ecosystem thinking, and Platform design can do through all the connected technology and human collaboration this approach can provide. This is my primary focal point today.

I have doubled down on innovation more to prompt others.

More specifically, in my investigative travels, I developed a number of my own tools, frameworks or methodologies, or in numerous collaborations, especially with Jeffrey Phillips, a great sparring partner, the dialogues and exchanges have produced some good framing tools (in my opinion). Jeffrey has been writing articles and posts since 2005 and can be a great source of inspiration at Innovate on Purpose.

Equally, if you go to my dedicated page where I keep many of my tools and methodologies for easy reference here in this posting site insights and thinking, you get a fair amount of knowledge, collections and insights pulled together on this one tag or page. You can “search” on keywords and see what comes up.

I have with pride been constantly quoted, referenced or acknowledged as an innovative thinker and shaper, appearing for ten out of the last twelve years in the top 40 innovation bloggers, run and collated by Braden Kelley, who focuses today on Human-Centred Change and Innovation with a lot of good, helpful tools on his website.

On the academic side, I have been referenced 94 times in different papers, especially at Academia.edu. I have written for numerous organizations tailoring innovation to their specifics, be that Energy, Digital, Industrial and Software related on different length contracts commissioned. I like to equally contribute to different innovation practice references such as Future Shapers, occasionally Digital Transformation People run by Tim Ellis and consistently for BusinessInnovationBrief. I constantly feature posts or articles on LinkedIn and Medium as well. For my Energy Transition work, focusing on where innovation fits, I contribute to Energy Central, which has around 200,000 global power industry professionals visiting the site.

I run different innovation-related posting sites for my own innovation thinking, as innovation remains my core. I need to break out different parts of it to better focus a reader’s mind (and my own!)

I decided to try and separate my innovative thinking into more focused activities such as Ecosystems, the Energy transition, the Future of Work, Digital Technology, and of course, Innovation, so I can offer choice, greater depth or find a more selective place to write or clarify aspects of my work.

This one of paul4innovating.com, my core site, then one focusing specifically on ecosystems and platforms at ecosystems4innovation.com, one for where innovation fits within the energy transition over at innovating4energy.com where we are undergoing a transition in all of our lives.

I have two business advisory offerings, agilityinnovation.com, my main business offering that looks to find value creation, growth and impact from the advisory, coaching and mentoring work and hocaconsulting.com, more for the future of work or in my specific focus of work-to-be-done.

Lastly, I wanted to have (simple) reference sites to delve into quickly; these are thinking4innovators, my advocating coaching and guiding site of Guide4innovating.wordpress.com and a final one that focuses on the dynamics of innovationfitnessdynamics.wordpress.com which clarifies where individual, groups or organizations are positioned on the innovation landscape for capabilities, capacities and competences.

I see myself as an innovation journeyman, learning and sharing.

I simply enjoy innovation in all its forms. I got ‘hooked’ twenty-plus years ago. I work as a transition advocate and advisor for innovation, and ecosystems, focusing today more on those massive transformations being undertaken across the energy system and industry 4.0, requiring radical changes, new designs and innovative solutions.

I relate content to context to give greater knowledge and build the transition narratives we are all undergoing. For this, I love the notion of walkabouts for learning and testing ourselves.

The value and insights come from researching much of the need for innovation; in society, businesses and institutions need to constantly look to develop novel innovation solutions and frameworks that add new value.

My primary role is advising, mentoring and coaching within these areas of innovation needs.

For me, innovation needs to enter the DNA of our organizations and our own individual makeup. What I do is deliberately set out to help grow and extend the body of knowledge on innovation.

I have taken this pathway or learning journey around innovation as it fascinates me.

Why have I written this?

Well, It is not just my journey but yours to share and gain from. The sharing of knowledge and insights provided for others to gain makes this dedicated focus worthwhile and keeps me ticking along in business advisory, coaching and mentoring around innovation when asked for advice or engaged in work on a client’s behalf.

Are you leveraging all the resources available and mentioned here? Take a look, explore, and then ask if something needs clarification or is missing from your perspective. I learn from the ask.

Contact me, and we can design your innovation journey tailored to your individual needs.

The post Helping discover your innovation pathway first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Innovation often fails to align with strategic needs. It is a known, well-discussed fact. This is often not the fault of the innovator but the very people designing but not sharing the strategy or failing to recognize all the implications this might mean in shifting resources, investing money or simply under-appreciating the complexities that often lie with innovation to conceive, validate, contribute and deliver the contributions into that strategy.

Sadly many innovators are simply happily working away with no specific guidelines, apart from the general remit of “we need to be more innovative”, and this lack of coherence merging from the boardroom, failing to cascade down the organisation leaves this strategic part that innovation should plan as far to vague. They are not drawn into the need for change and its implications from an innovative perspective. Alignment should be a rigorous evaluation.

Building our capacity to innovate needs understanding and reflects the organization’s business activities. Innovators need to grasp the value creation aspects that will deliver the necessary capital-efficient and profitable growth and then ‘go in pursuit’ to achieve their contribution to these goals.

Even the basic questions often remain unclear: “How are we looking to grow revenue, save costs, reduce working capital or improve our fixed capital?” What is specifically being deployed or recognized needs to change and to get into the necessary detail becomes essential.

Managing our innovation activities thoughtfully and in alignment can help in all of these goals set in strategic direction or even mission purpose. Often the CFO is guilty as they want everything but are not prepared to reassess and reallocate the essential funds to unleash a new wave of innovation.

Shifting strategy always has significant implications, and the real need to understand whether it fits with what we have available generally makes deliberate questioning of the eventual role of innovation’s contribution and ability to deliver.

Then where equally does risk fit into the strategic equation for innovation?

Innovators often lack the clarity or governance guidelines to know if they can or can’t ‘push’ for groundbreaking innovation.

Risk is kept vague, often not as well articulated as it should be in guidelines or limitations deemed beyond the scope and areas to explore. Without real clarity, innovators, as with many other functions, often go beyond their imagination and explore the unknowns associated with any different innovation in the belief that this fits with the strategy. They are not deep into the strategic evaluations and are often ill-equipped when second-guessing.

Sometimes it even becomes ‘the art of avoidance’ by the person who wants innovation but not the associated risks, so the decision is “let’s not talk about it”.

Innovation is not the usual.

I recall a report some time back written by PA Consulting report called “Innovation as Unusual.” They were suggesting the innovation spend just in the UK alone is flushing some £65 billion down the drain each year, as nearly half the organizations waste good ideas, are far to risk-averse and fail to invest boldly around more ground-breaking ideas.

From my perspective, does the Strategy of Board guidelines clarify acceptable risk levels, or do they simply wait to see how the organization responds to a general idea?

So we are still seeing the majority of organizations struggling with innovation. In the process, they are losing out financially, forgoing huge opportunities in not achieve future competitive positions or foregoing the chances to alter their market position radically. It seems innovation remains incoherent within many organizations still.

PA Consulting suggested five innovation killers – fear, lack of focus, innovation engine failure, the wrong ROI and a natural reluctance to truly invest in building the right innovation capabilities. Pretty bad, I think? So we end up with costly failures.

So, where do we start in gaining Coherence?

Changes in Strategic direction or re-assessments of organizations’ goals always have significant implications. For me, a handy number of analytical or visualization tools applied to where and how the function and design of innovations fit help deepen the understanding and “bubble up” to the board the right questions they need to address in support of their decision for change.

Maybe we should all start visualizing first, all eventually arriving on the same page.

XPLANE, visualization thinkers who apply a design thinkers approach, produced brilliant visualizations of the organizations needs. They suggested visualizing the Cost of Confusion and the other as the Value of Clarity. Imagine having these as your starting point for establishing the innovation direction, resourcing and contribution directly in engagements with the board

Leveraging the power of the three-horizon methodology for innovation

I greatly favour the three-horizon methodology to work through to achieve this coherence in understanding. The three horizons offer an excellent framing technique to bring this ‘coherence’ that we need from our ‘here and know’ activities and future innovation efforts.

Dedicating time to knowing your innovation capability fitness

I have constantly been working away at what constitutes the dynamic capabilities for innovation that are needed for new innovation and those, shall we say, as more static and simply in place for the repetitive innovation renovation. It is identifying and seeing the difference and then knowing how to apply those that are dynamic and highly valuable to obtain against those that require a little dampening down. A significant resource calibrating can be taken by knowing the essential differences.

Take a look at www.innovationfitnessdynamics.wordpress.com. for some triggers

The question is, which are critical, which naturally occur when others begin to be put into place, which seems to have limited or no real effect on changing the dynamics of innovation?

The need to diverge and converge to reshape innovation activities

The alignment to the strategic direction (and importance) with any capabilities available needs to be understood. What present activities diverge away from the new strategic core and identify those that are converging?

The diverging ones need to have a real emphasis on improving performance or be “junked,” to question how they are managed for cash or releasing of precious investment capital to sell or be .disposed of eventually. Then those that are converging onto the new ‘known’ core of the business to grow and expand have potentially more capital and resource ready to be put to work on new concepts that fit.

So by recognizing these, and that is not easy in itself, you are beginning to know and identify the capabilities you need to have in place to fix today to make it as healthy as possible, alongside those new capabilities that will create a new winning set of growth and value propositions that give the ‘promise’ of what can come by applying different mindsets, resources and thinking.

Deciding that capabilities can be better leveraged requires separating exploitation and exploration.

Then we need to figure out the future core and start moving towards it. We should leverage the two dynamics of exploitation and exploration for our innovation and future growth.

Today we need to exploit and explore, and our capabilities need to be built fit for one of these two purposes.

Exploiting is today’s business need to leverage and improve on the existing business and simultaneously explore for tomorrow’s new business growth.

We certainly need bolder investments in knowledge and insights to begin inquiry that leads to the changes around the make-up of innovation capabilities and those shifts.

I certainly believe there is a real call for fresh and bolder investments in knowledge in infrastructure that focuses on activities that spur new approaches that lead to innovation. These are not just the traditional ones based on managing today’s core.

It is finding those innovations that provide the necessary new value. This new generation activity is occurring from recognizing how we can build, yes build for further exploitation (extending the life of valuable contributors that enable a better-financed transition) and exploration (new understanding) and manage each as separate risk evaluation exercises with different metrics of progress.

Identifying and finding new capabilities has potential hiring implications, the ability to fit with the existing, providing the tools and environment, and spelling out the future of where these capabilities fit.

We also need a deeper innovation grounding of internal workings and alignment.

What I feel we need is a deeper grounding in what is happening inside organizations within their innovation activities, how these align with the needs of strategy, and what is clearly missing. We start here as it gives us all this clarity and coherence, missing in much of our existing understanding.

Dialogue is essential

It is mastering this new ‘black box’ of actual innovation activities, exploring and exploiting the necessary innovation capabilities that are required to be ‘going on’ in organizations to achieve a closer coherence, one that can radically improve innovation performance.

We have a real opportunity today to find new ways to combine the four emerging forces of knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship and innovation, which will drive the growth models of tomorrow. It is these that are forming the new innovations ‘black box.’

I have plenty of ideas, frames and methods built up to help you make innovation fit and be more coherent in its contribution in times of strategic change.

I strongly advise not to carry on as usual, or innovation becomes the drag to strategic change and reinforcing the image that “our” innovation is a drain on capital, not the NEW source of growth, capital renewal and the key to changing strategic direction through supporting its delivery.

The post The needs of Innovation Coherence first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Innovation has a very tough job of attracting the necessary money to take a concept or idea all the way through to commercialization. There is always that constant asking about the economic return and the associated risks.

Financing game-changing investments, replacing something existing or simply providing something new have tough financial questions always to be answered.

Here I am taking an innovation need in a different way than most are used to reading about. So what are right conditions to invest and realize innovation?

The Energy Transition is one of the toughest innovation challenges ever. We must remove fossil fuel as a source of energy, decarbonize our planet and replace it with clean energy alternatives of solar, wind, hydropower, nuclear and green hydrogen solutions. To make the transformation in just under 30 years is a massive task. So far, we are doing a poor job of this as markets, solutions, opinions, and financial support are all highly fragmented.

Tacking emerging and developing markets is even harder to achieve an energy transition.

Can you imagine what it is like in a developing country that lacks sufficient energy and infrastructure yet is faced with the sizable task of expanding its economy to meet growing population expectancies and the need for rising incomes to give that essential potential for growth that having energy available can provide?

I re-visited an excellent report from IEA, “Financing Clean Energy Transitions in Emerging and Developing Economies“, written in 2021, and I have sustainably drawn down from this report in this post.

Today most developing countries are facing the real challenge of finding the development models that they are increasingly required and encouraged to find, to avoid high-carbon choices, locking themselves on a path that conflicts with the pressing global need for solutions that are built upon clean energy. They are caught as the needed financial support is not provided at the levels needed.

Choosing lower emission pathways for growth and prosperity has great opportunities in Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Middle East to avoid significant decarbonizing like the Developed countries. Today developing and emerging economies account for two-thirds of the world’s population but only one-fifth of investments in clean energy and one-tenth of global wealth.

Global economics, moving towards a global recession, the war in Ukraine and higher energy prices today are undercutting the prospects of any substantial shift being well-funded due to these economic changes and those providing more evident returns on projects are more likely to achieve financing. How can developing countries raise their equal priority to achieve a more sustainable path towards building clean energy solutions?

The need for deliberate, stronger action to contain future emission growth and transform the energy systems in these developing and emerging markets is essential. They come in different forms or challenges and need strong financial support and governance, often with higher risks and uncertainty.

It is estimated that to put developing counties on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the need is for at least an annual spend above USD 1 trillion. Today we spend USD 150 billion per year.

With Electricity consumption growing by around there times the rate of advanced economies in developing countries, the urgency of investing in clean power (wind, solar, etc.) gives energy efficiency and electrification the best chance to avoid emissions and decarbonization caused by replicating the path of developed countries and their reliance on fossil fuel and the higher costs of change.

To achieve this, access to finance becomes essential.

In the parts of the world where extraction of essential minerals, coal, oil and gas takes place, fossil fuel is entrenched in infrastructure, achieving lower cost extraction returns, and the ongoing reliance on hydrocarbons conflicts with the “need” for replacing this with renewable solutions, primarily untested, immature, needing variable scaling options for ‘right sizing’ or yet to be fully commercialized or tested in different environments and conditions. This is where fresh financial thinking needs to be applied to recognize the different issues and seek to find imaginative solutions.

Affordability, Reliability and Sustainable must be embedded in any modern energy solution. We need to solve the estimated 800 million people who still have no access to electricity and often water. 2.6 billion don’t have access to clean cooking options and rely on charcoal or wood, which exposes them to potential health issues.

We have a world where 15 out of 25 most polluted cities are in emerging, and developing countries and air pollution often is dangeruôusly high and a major cause of premature deaths.

So we need to mobilize capital on a massive scale.

We need to find a private sector role alongside a more enhanced one for international and development financial institutions. Clean energy investments need to come far more from private sector finance. In contrast, the public sector, including state-owned enterprises, must focus more on taking the financial lead of grid infrastructure and kick-starting emission-intensive sector switches.

We need imagination and creative and innovative solutions.

Global investment capital is available but needs the (magic) mix of sound projects, incentives and adequate returns to balance the risks. Today many emerging or developing economies do not yet have a clear vision of a clean energy pathway and a comprehensive road map of supportive policy and regulatory changes that can provide the environment to drive and catalyse rapid energy transitions.

Many promising projects fail as the risks associated are not well-underpinned or clarified enough, and the concerns for the ongoing creditworthiness of the parties and all the enabling resources these need remain unattractively too high. Many concepts don’t fully consider all the essential parts of the infrastructure and support mechanisms or the very real political struggles and local constraints.

There is often institutional weakness, licence and acquisition constraints, foreign direct investment restrictions, currency risks, less than robust local banking, and a lack of local capital avenues. The debt burdens of those operating today of (government-owned) utilities, the chronic under-investment in network infrastructures and sheer difficult economic and resource conditions of limited fiscal and mobilizing the understanding and limited specialised resources are significant barriers.

We need to mobilize the capital to finance clean energy solutions or transitions.

Cop 27, held in Egypt in November 2022, had a breakthrough in getting developed countries to recognize the loss and damage built up by the pollution from these countries. The impact and future risk are to minimise severe floods and overcome droughts, rising sea levels and harsh storms. This recognition needs “hard” cash, not just pledges. I hope that negotiators from developing nations don’t spend valuable time looking back but put their creative energy into looking forward.

The IEA stated in a report two critically important areas of forward-looking focus.

“The focus should be building imaginative and creative solutions that include measures to enhance financial markets, improve the visibility of public policies, remove distortions from energy markets, enable grids to integrate renewable power better, empower local entrepreneurs to develop smaller-scale clean energy solutions, as in energy efficiency, and build models for universal access to modern energy” (IEA)

“The massive scale of the challenge requires rethinking how we approach it – and major efforts from international financial institutions, their donors, multilateral development banks and many other actors. Many institutions are already seeking to do more, which I (Dr. Fatih Birol, CEO IEA) welcome. But when we look at the numbers globally today, it is clear that we are nowhere near mobilising the level of funds that will be needed. This is why one of the most urgent recommendations is that governments give international public finance institutions a strong strategic mandate to finance clean energy transitions in the developing world“. (IEA)

It is the suggestion of IEA in collaboration with the World Bank and World Economic Forum to build a suggested framing of how to bring developing markets up to a better market-ready condition, based on a growing awareness and understanding of technologies that are both mature but equally at adoption stage for renewables and energy efficiencies that lay the ground for the necessary integration of new technologies.

Finance models need to be highly adaptive and innovative to individual needs.

The suggested priorities are ten broad areas of scope. This list, drawn from exploring case studies from Brazil to Indonesia and from Senegal to Bangladesh, offers the potential pathway forward of finding innovative solutions based on new technologies emerging or fully validated understood in cost, return and necessary infrastructure and local policy support to attract capital and institutional support.

Innovative projects that need to be housed or grouped in a (universal) structured approach

This grouping allows for the beginning of collective investment accordingly. It allows metrics and standard criteria to be established to become global in selected focus areas, emerging into comparable standard practice and making financial assessments more systematic. Categorizing, giving focus, expertise and emerging financial models that tackle the groups mentioned below:

*Harness the readiness of investors to back renewable power
*Ease the delivery of reliable and clean power by expanding and modernising grids
*Enhancing the financial performance of utilities
*Build equitable and sustainable models for universal access to modern energy
*Embed high efficiency and connectivity into all new buildings and appliances.

*Leap ahead to invest in more efficient and electrified mobility solutions
*Recast the development model of producer economies
*Lay the groundwork for scaling up low-carbon fuels and industrial infrastructure
*Boosting innovative strategies to transform emissions-intensive sectors
*Accelerate the shift away from coal while ensuring a people-centred transition

The list above begins the Priority actions for financing clean energy transitions in emerging and developing economies. These can be summarized as providing the necessary frameworks and activities for the investment communities to “pull together” and begin to structure their financial risk, reward and mobilization around the need to achieve global agreement.

– Redouble international support
*Give international public finance institutions a strong strategic mandate to finance clean energy transitions.
*Boost and improve the delivery of international climate finance.
*Enhance the deployment of blended finance to mobilise additional private capital.
*Incentivise international capital markets to fund a broader range of clean energy investment opportunities in emerging and developing economies
–Tackle cross-cutting issues that affect investment risks and returns
*Make it easier and cheaper to develop viable new clean energy projects.
*Improve domestic access to capital through more robust banking and capital markets.
*Remove distortions in markets and prices that work against sustainable investments.
*Put state-owned enterprises, especially utilities, on a firmer financial footing with sustainable strategies.
*Empower local entrepreneurs and small/medium-sized enterprises to drive change.
*Harmonise sustainable finance frameworks and improve reporting on climate risks.
–Scale up private capital rapidly for clean power, efficiency and electrification
*Build equitable and sustainable models for universal access to modern energy.
*Harness the readiness of investors to back renewable power.
*Ease the delivery of reliable and clean power by expanding and modernising grids.
*Embed high efficiency and connectivity into all new buildings and appliances.
*Leap ahead to invest in more efficient and electrified mobility solutions.
–Focus already on the hardest aspects of transitions
*Recast the development model for major producer economies.
*Lay the groundwork for scaling up low-carbon fuels and industrial infrastructure.
*Develop innovative strategies to transform emissions-intensive sectors.
*Accelerate the shift away from unabated coal while ensuring a people-centred transition.

The key here is to mobilize funds by providing the basic framework and desire for financial capital to find higher visibility for enabling investment returns in innovative solutions in a stronger institutional design.

We need to begin structuring investments in developing and emerging countries. Each country needs a plan and a recognition of what it is clearly missing and the constraints, nationally, locally, and at a district level, to begin the ‘honest’ assessment of all of what needs changing, preparing and then exploring so support at Government or International and development institutions alongside the role of private sector investment and what each needs.

Clean power is central to the development and any transition strategies but needs transparency of all those investing and realistic time scales and return expectations and that is extra hard in many political, social and current environments facing economic constraints and qualified people to deliver.

The major resource for this post IEA, “Financing Clean Energy Transitions in Emerging and Developing Economies“, report written in 2021.

The post Innovation comes in different forms and problems, all requiring financial support. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Today’s challenge for me is not only to be building the innovation capacity but also to be establishing clear ways on how we should set about sustaining it. Increasingly, organizations must have the capability and capacity to sustain innovation to provide the stimulus for lasting growth and resolve the complex challenges we face today and in the future.

To get there, though, it does seem this must be through continued learning. Hence, your capabilities become stronger, evolving and more unique, thus making them more difficult for competitors to understand and imitate.

Let me outline an innovation framework that builds capability through a sustained approach.

When you set out to build capability to be sustaining, you need to consider there are two types of capabilities, distinctive, which are the characteristics of the organization which others cannot replicate and reproductive, which can be bought in by the competition but always need to need to be appropriate to any objectives you are trying to achieve.
Focusing on improving the capabilities of your people needs, in my opinion, five essential elements and applying these through consistent application and measurement and sustaining this within your activity leads to a greater potential to sustain innovation and lead to sustainable competitive advantage.

To achieve greater sustainability, I believe the five elements within this model can provide this path.

SCA = II + EE + MLC + OC + RNE

So what is within this framework?
Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA) comes from the combining effects of the following:

• II Innovation Intensity– it’s the degree of adoption, uptake, the commitment to the investments made and explored, the how, what and where. How all the multiple levels of activities and the focus of the intensity given to building capabilities to innovate come together, wanting to innovate.
• EE Entrepreneurial Energies– this is more on how you set about, promote and generate the internal environment as entrepreneurial to enable innovation in all its different forms to take hold and be seen as a learning environment people want to get involved can readily identify with.
• MLC Market Learning Competence gives a clearer awareness of what and where to acquire from and then take the market lessons from. The key need is to orientate always towards, and generally get to the heart of, where innovation occurs in the marketplace and with your customers, knowing their real needs and figuring out their unmet ones also!
• OC Organizational Learning– knowing the differences in the different ways of learning by linking the different intellectual capitals and combining the complementary assets needed to make them more dynamic.
• RNE- Relationship & Networking Effects– the supporting and enhancing aspects of making greater connections, collaborations and exchanges to speed up the process of innovation, reduce or contain costs and enhance your understanding through these external relationships and getting closer to knowing where latent knowledge lies, to assist and share this internally for greater impact and result for all.

The make-up of each of these five elements has a significant set of activities to structure around but can deliver a clear set of benefits. These provide the necessary intensity of purpose.

What is the result of adopting the SCA framework?

ROII = Investment x Activity x Change (learning environment)/over Results Impact

It is applying this ROII that can measure this investment. The sustaining impact can be measured as continued investment across this framework pays off over time.

I would argue this organizing framework is a good starting point to build your Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

The post Sustainability is central to innovation’s future progress first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We clearly need to find ways to navigate ourselves back into some (new) order, to stabilize the chaos we are in, or beginning to feel we are finally moving out of the crisis and chaos of the last 18 months..
What we first need to do is make sense of what is going on around us.
Then, we need to determine what actions to take and the level of action, resource and support each part needs.
For this we need help, we need collaborators wanting to not just navigate back but more to navigate forward.
We are in a period of (great) change. How are we thinking about adjusting, not just to the immediate challenges but the greater ones that are certainly heading our way?
Within business, the present crisis offers a chance to make significant changes to how we operate in the future. However, I am not sure many of you feel the same; it seems disruption is in everything we need to undertake in what is coming towards us in change.

We are going to be challenged more today and in the future than ever before. To deconstruct and then reconstruct the Energy System is a massive complexity challenge. To switch from fossil fuels to energy generated by “clean” renewables is a daunting task.
Energy needs to “perform” as we “transform” it. That balancing needs significant collaboration and cooperations. No one company or country can undertake a change of this magnitude without undertaking the work-to-be-done with partners. This is not a time to sit on the side; it is a time to work together.
There is so much in need of disruption; we must learn not to fear it but embrace it differently.
Disruption actually has a common purpose, often far less sinister than promoted or we suspect, it requires us to re-equip and open up, as we learn to deal in this changing world where connections can emerge from anywhere at any time, offering a new ‘line of sight’ onto an existing problem to begin to break down the barriers and find new fresh ways forward. It calls for greater innovation and ingenuity, as we replace what might still work but is not a solution that is “fit-for-purpose today or tomorrow.
We need to utilize technology, digitalization, AI and machine learning with all the great human ingenuity. The ingenuity of the people at the centre of the design enables this more intelligent, rapid and lasting innovation that derives from applying all these tools and techniques at our disposal.
These will be through different approaches to designing and extracting the potential value gained. These, in my opinion, will form around ecosystems and their management through technology solutions provided by platform providers.
We need to respond quickly and in very different, highly collaborative ways. Digital offers unique, new ways to address many of our challenges everywhere. So our need is to explore and exploit, and we have to harness ourselves, our organizations, through these new technologies and collaborative concepts, to take advantage and leverage all that is possible.
Partnerships abound, not just within a specific industry but in cross-industry collaborations. Ecosystems need to form to take advantage of many rapidly emerging market opportunities. It is not just “welcome to a world of ecosystems“; it is learning to change from being exclusive owners into open collaborators that build ‘greater value’ from the common need of working together. Many of these are increasingly cross-industry ecosystems.
The combination of extracting synergies, of combining expertise, of seeing and recognizing common goals opens up greater possibility. Combining ecosystem thinking and innovation offers a very different proposition if we want to embrace a different world that shifts us away from simple consumption to better utilization, greater recycling, and saving the precious resources that the planet offers. We need new imaginative thinking, which comes from listening, collaborating and learning more from each other.
Just recognize the changes we are undertaking in cross-industry collaborations are significant.
If we recognize what it takes to build new transportation business models, it needs an ecosystem of public authorities, automakers, component suppliers, software providers and infrastructure builders to come together to make this happen.
Many of the changes that will emerge in the next twelve to twenty-four months will become more cross-industry and service ecosystems. In addition, collaborations are set to accelerate as we need to tackle growing issues that are greater in complexity, such as global warming, deprivation and moving and adjusting through a different crisis confronting us in the coming decades.
The search is for synergies, for economies, for speeding up solutions and scaling them in a connected global world. It requires a host (platform provider), different apps, weblinks and consistent ways to integrate these so those using the airport or train station can navigate their way around their personal needs. It needs an ecosystem and platform management to bring this together.
We have new ecosystems that are building new value in offering mobile commerce, building digital into all that we undertake increasingly in retail, banking, and entertainment. We see new energy solutions emerge in Agriculture, Energy, Utilities, Healthcare etc. etc. We see a ‘connected difference’ emerge in the Automotive and transportation by land, sea and air.
Services are changing as we can make greater connections. For example, our postal services offer us electronic transfers, blockchain transactions, purchasing most of our goods online, both in person and in business. We are looking to exploring concepts in Health solutions, Living, Where and how we work that require increasing cross-industry collaborations.
The connections we form are beginning to be reshaped by everything through the data; communications, public services, responses to crisis and opportunity. We want to become far more aware and alert. The smarter use of what we use to find out from our digital world gets increasingly channelled, as this increasing flow of data needs to be better analyzed, filtered, targeted, and coordinated in our lives to function at different levels of response.
This is a very different potential in the new business models for all involved. The period ahead will be a huge “reset” within ourselves, within the way we organize work. A world built on increasing collaboration, cross-industry cooperations with technology, digitalization, human resolve and innovation at its core.
We all need to learn to collaborate and not confront the world we are heading towards.

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• Overview
• Renewable power
• Solar PV
• Onshore wind
• Offshore wind
• Hydropower
• Bioenergy power generation
• Concentrating solar power (CSP)
• Geothermal
• Ocean power
• Nuclear power
• Natural gas-fired power
• Coal-fired power
• CCUS in power

Tracking Fuel supply- Equally not on track
Considerably enhanced policy ambitions and regulatory efforts, better measurement and reporting, strong industry efforts and investor-led support are needed to meet SDS targets for 2040
Tracking Industry- more efforts needed
Greater energy efficiency, the uptake of renewable fuels, and research and deployment of low-carbon process routes, including CCS, are critical. Governments can accelerate progress by providing innovation funding and adopting mandatory CO2 emissions reduction and energy efficiency policies.

• Overview
• Chemicals
• Iron and steel
• Cement
• Pulp and paper
• Aluminium
• CCUS in industry and transformation

Tracking Energy Integration
Greater energy efficiency, the uptake of renewable fuels, and research and deployment of low-carbon process routes, including CCS, are critical. Governments can accelerate progress by providing innovation funding and adopting mandatory CO2 emissions reduction and energy efficiency policies.

• Overview
• Energy storage
• Hydrogen
• Smart grids
• Demand response
• Direct air capture

Tracking Transport
Road vehicles – cars, trucks, buses and two- and three-wheelers – account for nearly three-quarters of transport CO2 emissions, and emissions from aviation and shipping continue to rise, highlighting the need for greater international policy focus on these hard-to-abate subsectors.

• Overview
• Electric vehicles
• Rail
• Fuel consumption of cars and vans
• Trucks and buses
• Transport biofuels
• Aviation
• International shipping

Tracking Buildings
Enormous emissions reduction potential remains untapped due to the continued use of fossil fuel-based assets, a lack of effective energy-efficiency policies and insufficient investment in sustainable buildings.

• Overview
• Building envelopes
• Heating
• Heat pumps
• Cooling
• Lighting
• Appliances and equipment
• Data centres and data transmission networks

Direct Air Capture & CCUS

Direct air capture is a technology to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. The CO2 can be permanently stored in deep geological formations or used in the production of fuels, chemicals, building materials and other products containing CO2
CCUS is one of few technology options available to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in many industries, its deployment is woefully below the SDS level. . Greater investment in CO2 transport and storage infrastructure will also be critical.
THE IEA suggest seven possible uses for energy innovation indicators to drive energy policy

Conclusion comes from the five insights for building technology innovation into policy and future work to track and keep the focus on the critically important Clean Energy Innovation we need to develop, scale and implement.

1. Innovation policy should be a core part of energy policy.
2. There is no single indicator for tracking clean energy innovation progress.
3. Strategies for tracking clean energy innovation are long-term commitments that evolve over time
4. Policy evaluation remains underdeveloped, but embedding indicators in policy design can start to address this weakness.
5. Innovation system mapping and best practice sharing are ways to get started quickly, especially for emerging economies.

Simply put, without a major acceleration in clean energy innovation, net-zero emissions targets will not be achievable. Our innovation processes need to be dramatically ramped up to enable a clean energy future within the timeframes we as a world have committed too and need.

The post Are we losing the Energy Transition Battle? Innovation to the rescue? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Sustainability is rising to be top or close to the top of a boards agenda. The growing concerns of several intertwined issues need addressing as they will initiate a significant change to the Business and how it operates and presents itself to the world.
Boards are asking where our business fits within and alongside society, both in who we serve and society in general, coupled with realising that the planet is heading towards a critical crisis and what we can do to reduce these pressures?
Not just sustainability forces a sharper need for strategic choices but the ability to undertake the product reinvention. A reinvention that concerns itself with reducing waste, minimizing carbon emissions, valuing the full life cycle and the ability to show the increasingly important end-of-life part of the lifecycle model. To extract precious, rare earth minerals and recycle parts reduces the demand for future mining or heat intensive materials.
Any products need to have a clear understanding of all their stages for the clarity of sustainability.
A clarification that the materials were sourced from green energy or sustainable sources to build, deliver and dispose of the product in this new truly sustainable economy approach is needed. Green credentials are going to become super important to the consumer’s decision to buy or not.
To embrace sustainability, you embrace a new set of principles of governance that bring the planet, people and prosperity far more into the thinking. What would that mean in the magnitude of change? How do you assess if your current business portfolio is sustainability proof of not just what is required or needed for today but also in the future? Different scenario thinking needs a constant mindset and evaluation.
Sustainability is becoming hugely critical for a business to build out its pathway.
I have been writing about sustainability in several posts recently over on my ecosystems4innovators posting site. If you want to think about how sustainability will affect you, the three posts tackle different aspects of sustainability. I firstly looked at the Environmental, social and corporate governance in “Looking beyond ESG“, then followed up with the need for finding a “Sustainable Value Creation“, and finally, in this mini-series “, Sustainability is the new growth core.”
The argument is to envision today going forward and the future working back for framing the different scenarios.

Each of these different approaches to framing future challenges requires different thinking. The two perspectives, predicting forward, working back, give insights into alternative positions and build out required milestones for the next 5,10, and 20 years. The annual business plan has become increasingly adaptive to meet today’s operating conditions.
These different scenario plans are essential for the business to manage a sustainability pathway, navigating in increased uncertainty, challenge and complexity and become the dynamic strategic document for moving towards a sustainable future.
I wrote an article on the Art of Back Casting that needs care earlier this year. In this, I was suggesting, backcasting is not concerned with predicting the future: The major distinguishing characteristic of backcasting analyses is the concern, not with likely energy futures, for example, but with how the desirable futures can be attained in this future working back approach.
So In this clean and green future, the consistent moving towards a desirable position for the planet, people and prosperity from only using clean energy, having fully decarbonised plants and supply chains, managing more efficiently and reducing waste. Are the products or services we sell environmentally friendly, easy to dispose of and made from sustainable sources of material or raw materials? So for knowing the future we need to achieve, we move back to achieving it over a given period.
“The concept of “backcasting” is central to a strategic approach for sustainable development. It is a way of planning in which a successful outcome is imagined in the future, followed by the question: “what do we need to do today to reach that successful outcome?”
The 3H methodology enables us to look out into the future across different horizons.
It allows us to gauge the challenges, adding aspects we are beginning to gain a sense of, transitioning from one position to another. It requires us to reflect and possibly make the change, then we can move forward to meet the new challenges within this emerging vision of the possible futures.
I have focused for many years, teaching, advising and building the-critical-value-propositions-of-the-three-horizon-methodology (3H- pdf download). Envisaging what we know and have today, we can begin to “plot” a pathway, here a Sustainability pathway, into the future in clear steps moving and supporting the existing and traversing to the seen future. For me, the value of the 3H has been one of my primary areas of focus for my innovation and change work for many years. It has a contributing value to any sustainability thinking. An example of explaining this might be worth the click: “Navigating of the three horizons framework- an emerging guide.”
The Three Horizon Framework for Managing.
The 3H can help tackle complex problems and draw out the future intent on sustainability; in its planning, resource allocations and skill gap identification to build capabilities and capacities to be ‘future-ready. We need to map the sustainability pathway across the three horizons. There will be constant disruption along the way.

The three voices that are to be hopefully found in the same board room when you undertake this

The different voices involved can be highly engaged; you have the voice of today, more concerned with managing the existing, maximizing returns and keeping the organization going efficiently and effectively. Then you have the second voice, the voice of the entrepreneur, the one eager to experiment, try out new things, explore and extend, accepting some aspects will not work. The third voice,  of the aspirant, who is looking to build a different vision, believing in different, more pioneering ways and visualizes things in their ‘mind’s eye’, far more aspirational, that can seem on first ‘take’ look to be totally incompatible to the reality of today.
A critical assessment of the present business and how it will “project” into the future is needed.
To embrace sustainability requires a no-holds-barred assessment of the present business and what is required in resources, shifts in strategic design and stakeholder dialogue. The journey does need a robust level of quantifying the disruption, for not just better-informed decisions based on fact-based or at least best assumptions.
The value of applying BOTH framing techniques to determining a sustainability pathway is to begin to make the connection’s, shifting individual thinking into team actions and decisions. Building multiple scenarios helps bring strategy, vision and innovation into greater alignment of thinking through diverging and then converging and then selecting the determined pathway from these alternatives.
Sustainability will drive the future of business. The evolution of innovation will come from increasing alignment. Any journey like this needs to commit to moving forward, learning, pivoting where needed, recognizing what and why that has been seen and understood and now needs changing, and re-affirming the moving forward again in approaches that continue to build future scenario’s built on evolving understandings.

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• Most of the global reductions in CO2 emissions between now and 2030 in the net-zero pathway come from technologies readily available today.
• But in 2050, almost half the reductions come from technologies currently only at the demonstration or prototype phase today.

This realization and reality demand that all global governments quickly increase and reprioritise their spending on research and development and demonstrate and deploy clean energy technologies – putting them at the core of energy and climate policy. Progress in advanced batteries, electrolysers for hydrogen, and direct air capture and storage can be particularly impactful.
The report emphasises that the energy transition required is of such scale and speed it cannot be achieved without sustained support and equally significant engagement and participation from citizens, whose lives will be affected in multiple ways.
The IEA also highlights the ratcheting up of global ambitions, both by leading governments, financial institutions and corporates.
To quantify the needs of this energy transition.
Total annual energy investment surges to USD 5 trillion by 2030 in the net-zero pathway, adding an extra 0.4 percentage points a year to global GDP growth, based on a joint analysis with the International Monetary Fund.
Within this decade, the needs of innovation have to focus on finding solutions that deliver energy efficiency, renewable energy, electrification of everything, electric vehicles (EVs) and reduced both carbon and methane emissions. Innovation has a critical role in delivering new solutions to drive this energy transition we are undergoing.
The IEA models that RD&D investment needs to treble to US$90bn annually vs current levels. For advanced batteries, this pathway to commercialisation is being funded by capital markets. For others like CCS and hydrogen, serious investment rather than talk is required.
Beyond 2030, the IEA notes that technology breakthroughs might allow advanced batteries, hydrogen (particularly via heavy industry demand precincts), bioenergy, CCS and/or direct air capture and storage to each play a role if research, development and deployment (RD&D) is invested in at scale.
The report also points outs from a known innovation perspective that the actions, investments and deployment required by 2030 will be predominantly driven by technologies known and in operation today, the IEA models that 55% of cumulative emissions reductions will come from initiatives linked to consumer choices, assisted by enabling policy frameworks, e.g. moving to EVs, retrofitting housing with energy efficiency technologies and installing heat-pumps to clean cooking.
What does this all mean for innovation?
In the IEA opinion, they believe and understand that technologies available on the market today provide nearly all the emission reductions required by 2030 in the Net-Zero plan to put the world on track for net-zero emissions by 2050.
However, reaching net-zero emissions will require the widespread use after 2030 of technologies that are possibly unknown yet, or to be discovered, or are still under early development today. In 2050, almost 50% of CO2 emission reductions in the pathway to Net-Zero come from technologies currently only at the demonstration or prototype stage.

Now that is good news that we are moving the innovation needle, but it is the demonstration globally only point today in many possible solutions. We need a magnitude of multiple solution configurations and in a different application context in various regional and country contexts. Innovation needs to move out of the labs into commercial application pathways.
An acceleration of this magnitude in innovation discovery to commercial implementation is clearly ambitious.
A good point mentioned in this report was: The energy transition requires technologies that are not yet available on the market or are yet to be demonstrated at scale in multiple configurations and in various regional contexts, they are in prototype phases. In most cases, these demonstrations are run in parallel in the NZE. This is in stark contrast with the typical practice in technology development: learning is usually transferred across consecutive demonstration projects in different contexts to build confidence before widespread deployment commences.
In present-day reality, this doesn’t happen.
This parallel approach makes sense as long as global learning can be freely exchanged and built into final solutions to accelerate understanding and application. That is in direct conflict with present approaches of the commercial practice of IP and investment held by one party, not shared. We are facing this sharing dilemma in our present race to vaccinate the world.
The acceleration that is needed also requires a large increase in investment in demonstration projects. Most of these projects are concerned with the electrification of end‐uses, CCUS, hydrogen and sustainable bioenergy, mainly for long-distance transport and heavy industrial applications. Increased public funding helps to manage the risks of such first‐of‐a‐kind projects and to leverage private investment in research and development (R&D) in the NZE and needs greater collaboration with private investors to spread the risks.
The big innovation needs of the Energy Transition
In the NZE, electrification, CCUS, hydrogen and sustainable bioenergy account for nearly half of the cumulative emissions reductions to 2050. Just three technologies are critical in enabling around 15% of the cumulative emissions reductions in the NZE between 2030 and 2050: advanced high-energy-density batteries, hydrogen electrolysers and DAC.
Many of the biggest clean energy technology challenges could benefit from a more targeted
approach to speed up progress

Again, quoting the report: Bringing new energy technologies to market can often take several decades, but the imperative of reaching net‐zero emissions globally by 2050 means that progress has to be much faster. Experience has shown that the role of government is crucial in shortening the time needed to bring new technology to market and diffuse it widely (IEA, 2020i).
The government role includes educating people, funding R&D, providing networks for knowledge exchange, protecting intellectual property, using public procurement to boost deployment, helping companies innovate, investing in enabling infrastructure and setting regulatory frameworks for markets and finance.
Knowledge transfer from first‐mover countries can also help in the acceleration needed and is particularly important in the early phases of adoption when new technologies are typically not competitive with incumbent technologies.
The report uses examples of solar PV.  National laboratories played a key role in the early development phase in the United States, projects supported directly by the government in Japan created market niches for initial deployment and government procurement and incentive policies in Germany, Italy, Spain, United States, China, Australia, and India fostered a global market.
Also, another example in the past has been Lithium‐ion (Li‐ion) batteries. These were initially developed through public and private research, mostly in Japan. Their first energy‐related commercial operation was made possible in the United States, and mass manufacturing today is primarily in China.
The scope of innovation required. A three horizon timeline.

To quote the report, the top-line innovation clean energy technology challenges to be resolved and outlines the different focal points and timelines.

• To 2030, government action focuses on bringing new zero‐ or low‐emissions technologies to market. For example, in the NZE, steel starts to be produced using low emissions hydrogen at the scale of a conventional steel plant, large ships start to be fuelled by low‐emissions ammonia, and electric trucks begin operating on solid-state batteries. In parallel, there is rapid acceleration in the deployment of low‐emissions technologies that are already available on the market but have not yet reached mass-market scale, bringing down the costs of manufacturing, construction, and operating such technologies learning‐by‐doing and economies of scale.
• From 2030 to 2040, technology advances are consolidated to scale up nascent low emissions technologies and expand clean energy infrastructure. Clean energy technologies that are in the laboratory or at the small prototype stage today become commercial. For example, fuels are replaced by electricity in cement kilns and steam crackers for high-value chemicals production.
• From 2040 to 2050, technologies at a very early stage of development today are adopted in promising niche markets. By 2050, clean energy technologies at the demonstration or large prototype stage become mainstream for purchases and new installations, and they compete with present conventional technologies in all regions. For example, ultra high-energy-density batteries are used in aircraft for short flights.

We can’t delay or wait for unproven scalable technology. We need to drive down emissions all the time.
What we cannot do is “bank “on technologies that we don’t have yet or not at any commercial proven point. Governments can’t delay the actions they are required to do pending a possible technology breakthrough fix.
We must recognize that there is no scope for new fossil fuel developments for the world is to get on the right and only trajectory of achieving the net-zero goal by 2050. Just think, no scope and what that means in Asia, in China, India, Japan, Australia or in the USA, rich in coal, oil and gas.
Carbon accumulates in the atmosphere takes years to dissipate, and simply waiting makes cutting carbon emissions even harder to achieve later down the road. I presently cannot buy into BioEnergy and CCUS concepts; these do not seem commercially feasible or capable of taking theory into scalable solutions and able to have global adoption.
We need to both deploy when a solution is proved and innovate where it needs to be validated. The innovation mantra needs to be “invent, invest and implement” globally and with ever-increasing speed.
Please view this groundbreaking report, “Net-Zero by 2050: a roadmap for the global energy system“, by the Internation Energy Agency (IEA). All visuals are taken from this report shown here.

The post Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have been consuming the latest flagship report, released today, 10th September 2020, by the IEA called “Energy Technology Perspectives 2020

The report’s comprehensive analysis maps out the technologies needed to tackle emissions in all parts of the energy sector, including areas where technological progress is still lacking such as long-distance transport and heavy industries.

It shows the amount of emissions reductions that are required from electrification, hydrogen, bioenergy and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. It also provides an assessment of emissions from existing infrastructure and what can be done to address them.

Within the work going into this report, the IEA has identified over 800 technology options that need to be further examined, explored, validated, and accelerated for the World to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. That is an awful lot of innovation to get us to a clean energy transition from where we are today.

The report is over 400 pages long and is framed as a guide book for all involved in the energy transition. The report not only shows the scale of the challenge but also offers vital guidance for overcoming so many of the issues and challenges identified today. As anyone knows the more you explore innovation and what it is trying to resolve, the more complex it becomes.

To cover the whole energy system what we have been identified today in technology options will multiply, adapt, change, and build out different solutions as we continue to learn and advance.

If nothing else do read the press release for this report HERE “ Reaching energy and climate goals demand a dramatic scaling up of clean energy technologies – starting now”

Accelerating Innovation through rapid innovation adoption cycles

There are so many aspects of innovation need within this report but one part I felt was worth highlighting as it suggests eight innovation approaches of rapid innovation cycles for the Energy transition. These are ways to look to accelerate a more rapid innovation cycle within the energy transition. I wanted to put these into a simple table as they make real sense of how we can tackle innovation within the drive towards a clean energy transformation

You can download this as a PDF Table of rapid innovation cycles for the Energy transition

Different approaches to more rapid innovation adoption cycles

This rapid innovation cycle approach is the work of IEA- all rights reserved.

The examples illustrated are ones chosen by IEA to help relate the attribute to the example of technology, innovation, or process change.

Within this extensive report on the innovation need to deploy clean energy technologies you get a deep dive through this Energy Technology Perspectives 2020. The report focuses on technology needs and opportunities for reaching international climate and sustainable energy goals. This flagship report offers vital analysis and advice on the clean energy technologies the world needs to meet net-zero emissions objectives.

Providing a comprehensive innovation understanding of the impact and relationship

It is a comprehensive report for anyone interested in how and why innovation is central to our lives as it has the major role to play in the energy transition we are all undertaking.

A journey to turn our energy into clean modern and more sustainable ways, as well as to move towards the eradication of harmful emissions caused by our industrial past we need this transition to hopefully give us a promising future of ensuring our (one) planet will be fit to habitat in decades to come.

In my view applying and harnessing all we know on innovation, research and development give us this (one) chance.

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