A note from me

Good Folks,

It’s good to be able to take a little time to reflect on things at different levels of seriousness. The Premier League football season is over and Everton will still be in the league for the club’s last season at “The Grand Old Lady” – Goodison Park. This was the first major football stadium built in England and has hosted more top-flight games than any other ground in the country. The needs of the game are evolving and it will be interesting to experience the atmosphere at the new ground at Bramley-Moore Dock, but it will also be sad to say goodbye. I was recently given a model of the Goodison Park stadium to build and this will undoubtedly be one of my little summer projects.

We learn from the past, live in the present, and look to the future. My birthday is coming up, which is a sharp reminder of the passage of time. We’ll celebrate by experiencing some of the best of the past – Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, and also some modern-day film-making that imagines a potential future – “Furiosa”. I’ll write a short review of the film afterwards if you’d like – I expect it will be brilliantly structured, action-packed and excellently performed. But it will be set in a dystopian view of the future – wracked by social conflict in a harsh environment desertified by climate change.  

That’s not a future we wish to drift into but that’s the dangerous direction we are heading. That is why I’d like to focus our next few Newsletters on Energy Transitions, which is one of the topics that Newsletter subscribers already indicated they would like to sink their teeth into more. In some ways, it is a natural build on our previous arcs considering strategic character, collaboration and community. All these will need to be in strong evidence if we are to moderate the impact on our environment of the build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that largely derive from our use of energy.  

Because we cannot operate, build or move anything without energy, we need energy services more than ever to provide for a growing global population and the many people in the world not yet able to secure a decent material quality of life. Yet we also need to completely reform our economies to use energy differently to avoid the fossil-fuel combustion that accounts for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions and currently provides more than four-fifths of our primary energy. 

Development and Decarbonisation – these are the dual challenges of Energy Transitions.

My Bi-Weekly Guide

Introducing Energy Transitions

I currently spend much of my life immersed in the topic of Energy Transitions and have done so for almost the past quarter century. I have just been at the World Energy Congress and the World Hydrogen Summit, I’m a Co-Chair with the World Energy Council, on the board of a Renewable Energy company, a Senior Advisor to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and a Senior Fellow with Mission Possible Partnership. I spent over 40 years with one of the biggest international energy companies in the world, and still advise some of the others. So, more than most, I know there are multiple angles for looking at energy transitions.  

Obviously, there are different perspectives on the topic, often driven by different circumstances and different ways of understanding the world and human behaviour. All perspectives are relevant, but some are more helpful than others in understanding what we can actually do to realise the transitions that urgently need to be made.

As a bedrock, I’m going to highlight the 5 basic techno-economic features of change that emerge from all the many studies that have been conducted over the past decades. There are critical uncertainties around how soon or how quickly these changes can take place, and urgent change is vitally important for moderating the looming environmental damage ahead. However, while subsequent Newsletters will consider the “when?”, “how?” and “who?” of transitions, here the focus is on the main “what?” in all outlooks even if some of the details may differ between them. 

Here are the five main technological components of Energy Transitions, and all will need to play a substantial role in any sustainable future. There is no single “silver bullet”:

1. Demand Moderation:
   The global need for energy services will grow, but the associated demand for energy itself can be moderated through energy efficiency.  This is not just a question of “a better light bulb” but deep structural efficiencies e.g. through smart, compact urban development with well-integrated modes of public transport and integrated waste/water/heat/power utility systems. Of course, the efficiency of delivering energy services has been improving for decades but the pace of improvement would need to approximately double to meet Paris Agreement aspirations.
   
   Overall, energy consumption by the end of the century could be 40% less than it would have been if efficiency remained at today’s level. This should mean absolute reductions in energy use in some regions that are already industrialised. However, there will still be growth globally because of high needs for energy services where economic development must still pass through the more energy-intensive phases of infrastructure construction and industrialisation to deliver citizens a decent quality of life.  
   

2. Renewable Energies:
   Clearly, continued explosive growth rates in the deployment of so-called renewable primary energy sources like solar and wind power are essential building blocks in the transformation of the energy system. In addition, many of the hydropower resources in the world are already in use although there are still more opportunities. There are also increasing opportunities to produce modern fuels from so-called biomass resources, e.g. vegetative material or wastes that can be re-grown so that the carbon dioxide released when they are used for fuel is re-captured through the re-growth. In their use in modern equipment, of course, modern biofuels are significantly more efficient and less polluting than traditional biofuels like dung, peat and gathered wood that has been used in crude forms for millennia. 
   

3. Electrification:
   The major new renewable sources of energy – solar and wind power – are primarily transformed into electricity. Hence, to fully exploit these and grow them to their full potential, the global economy has to become much more deeply electrified. About one-fifth of global energy consumption is currently delivered through electricity and this needs to increase to around three-fifths if aspirations for decarbonisation are to be met. This will entail deeper electrification of the transport system, light industry, and residential heating/cooling etc..  Electrification has been increasing steadily but slowly for decades but the pace of change would need to become approximately three times the historical average to meet the timelines for decarbonisation necessary to meet the Paris Agreement objectives.
   

4. Substitution:
   While electricity can serve many of the energy needs of the economy, there are activities that are very difficult to electrify because of the need for easily stored, portable or thermal services that are best served by suitable molecules rather than electrons, or where the molecules themselves are also part of the processes involved. These “hard-to-electrify” or “hard-to-abate” sectors include heavy, high-temperature industries like steel, cement and petrochemicals manufacturing, as well as long-distance transport like heavy freight, shipping and aviation. Liquid and gaseous fuels derived from crude oil and natural gas will continue to be needed in these sectors for a considerable period to come until new forms of equipment, infrastructure and processes can be developed and deployed at scale.
   
   Given the overall growth in global energy needs, it is likely that the overall needs for liquid and gaseous molecular fuels will remain approximately constant, although these will be increasingly concentrated in the “hard to abate” sectors while electrification substitutes their use elsewhere. However, over time as the capacity for their production and deployment grows, biofuels, hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives like ammonia will increasingly substitute fossil-derived liquid and gaseous fuels.
   

5. Removals:
   A diminishing, but continuing, need for fossil-based fuels will continue to add to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so removal processes will be needed to mop up remaining emissions. This may be achieved through natural or technological needs or combinations of both. Natural means include ending deforestation and initiating significant reforestation, afforestation and soil regeneration programmes. Technological means include carbon dioxide capture (e.g. from industrial processes) and long-duration underground sequestration (CCS) as well as the more difficult direct air capture (DAC) and storage.  Combination technologies like using renewably grown biomass in furnaces equipped with carbon capture and storage (BECCS or biomass-enhanced CCS) can lead to net-negative emissions for the overall system and hence the absolute drawdown of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in the hope of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

What do you think most people need to understand better about the basic technological building blocks of energy transitions?

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