World Energy Council Urges Change To Energy Transition Approach

It is becoming increasingly clear that the ambitious project adopted mainly by OECD countries to subsidize and force an energy transition away from fossil fuels and drive global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is failing. An array of corporations and governments at all levels have in recent months announced delays or outright abandonment of aggressive net zero timelines and goals as market forces, resource and capital limitations, and simple realities renders them impractical and unachievable.

In the U.S., this trend has become crystal clear in both the electric vehicles and offshore wind industries over the past twelve months. In the automotive sector, many pure-play EV makers are now either in bankruptcy or teetering on the brink, while legacy carmakers like Ford, GM, Volvo, and Stellantis have spent much of this year having to explain big losses and re-thinking their strategic approaches and investments.

The recent disaster at the Vineyard Wind I project offshore Massachusetts, where the collapse of a 105 meter-long blade littered the Atlantic Ocean and Nantucket Island beaches with chunks of fiberglass core material, forcing federal regulators to shut down the country’s only operational offshore wind project and giving the industry a public relations black eye. It’s also raising public concerns over the vulnerability of such giant blades and turbines perched atop 850-foot-tall towers when rough weather conditions inevitably arise.

Other OECD countries are grappling with these and other issues, all of which have the impact of causing them to fall well behind their ambitious net zero goals. It seems inevitable now that the net zero by 2050 narrative will soon require a sliding-back to net zero by some less-immediate future date.

“We’ve got to have a different conversation about energy,” Dr. Angela Wilkinson, secretary general and CEO of the World Energy Council, told me in a recent interview. Wilkinson believes world leaders must “stop treating energy as though it’s a single issue with a quick fix agenda,” adding it is key to “take it much more seriously than quick.”

The World Energy Council is celebrating its 100-year anniversary in 2024, continuing its ongoing mission to serve as a convener and honest broker to make connections and facilitate dialogue among the myriad stakeholders who make up the global energy community. Or, as Dr. Wilkinson put it to me, “we like say the Council has served as a voice of common sense for a century.”

In our interview, Wilkinson points out that “the transition is a messy and complex process, and we’ve never done it before, so we’re all learning it together.” Indeed, everyone involved is learning it together, often the hard way, at great cost to national budgets, corporate profitability, grid reliability, and energy security.

Wilkinson believes one constraining issue inhibiting the transition’s progress is a lack of full systems thinking and planning among the decision makers. “Energy transitions are a change in the organization of society,” she points out. “They’re not a simple case of swapping out one technology for another and everything else stays the same. Yet, we have this very simplistic narrative that we can take the oil system, we can put renewables in, it’s going to happen immediately, and nothing else will change. It’s like saying we’re going to take your thighbone out, but we’d like you to run a marathon.”

In our discussion, Wilkinson pointed to transition efforts in South Africa as an interesting case in point. “The world Bank put up $497 million to try and help close down a coal mine and go to a clean and just energy transition. And it’s not worked,” she says. “And I can’t help but thinking there were analogies here in South Africa as they try and accelerate off coal, as there were in Europe when we transitioned rapidly from coal into gas in the UK.”

The challenge of transitioning power grids is another fit example of this need for systems planning. “You have to change all the points in the energy system to make it work,” she points out. “You’ve got to have the transmission grid strengthened and extended. To extend the transmission grid, you need more copper. You need twice the amount of copper that we currently have in transmission grids around the world by 2050, to build all these renewables on, and you’ve got to mine the copper. You’re going to mine the copper with green hydrogen, for which there’s not enough supply. So, you have to be a systems thinker, and there’s not enough systems thinking in energy transitions.”

The Bottom Line

High-level thinkers, facilitators and conveners like Wilkinson have a critical role to play for any project as complex challenging as the current energy transition to succeed. After spending an hour with Wilkinson, it becomes clear hers is one of the hardest tasks in the entire global effort. It also becomes equally evident she is likely the very most able person to take on this job.

Everyone should hope for her success in advocating to bring systems thinking to the effort, since the disjointed, piecemeal approach tried to date does not appear sustainable in any real sense.