We are increasingly falling behind and even people who understand this usually do not understand that we can do something about it. We need to drive energy systems transformation in a planned and managed fashion. This is the only possible and economically efficient way.

The big problem is the global peak in oil production, “Peak Oil,” which threatens our economy and our whole way of life.

Doing nothing to inform decision makers about the need to develop strategies and plans to coordinate change efforts is not a good alternative. We need to start to debate the need for change, and which activities we need to initiate short term. One of the first needs to be the development of strategies and plans to drive change forward.

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In the case of renewable fuels and electric cars this situation will change. We use, on a global scale, 86 million barrels of oil every day and the systems and business challenges, as well as the technical challenges of replacing a large share of this volume by renewable fuels and electric vehicles will demand levels of transformation that we have not experienced up until now.

For instance, garbage and biological waste are resources that we will need to use much more efficiently than we do at present. People from countries all over the world visit Sweden and other European countries and are told about our well organized systems of waste management, where waste is sorted into different fractions and recycled or burned to produce heat that is distributed to companies and households via district heating systems. Many people from the large number of companies that lack such systems think that the use of waste to heat buildings is a very good idea, but often the question is asked: “Where do you get the garbage?” The systems we have developed for waste management are very intricate and in countries where we have them we think of them as a natural part of modern society. In countries where they don’t have them they will need to build these systems from the ground up, creating new companies and entire sectors of society and the economy in the process. Of course the waste management companies will need suppliers of vehicles, district heating equipment and other necessities. Some of these things, at least initially will have to be imported, but some need to be supplied locally.

In the same way the large scale production and use of biogas will require an entirely new business sector that produces huge volumes of biogas every year. In no country there is such a system in existence. In the small country of Sweden with 9 million people we use 200 terrawatthours of oil every year for transportation. We produce 1.5 TWh of biogas, and most of this is used for district heating. In order to dramatically increase the volumes of biogas for transportation we would need huge production plants for biogas that produce 300 to 500 GWh per year. Even with this size of plants we would need 400 units of 500 GWh plants to replace oil in the transportation sector. In the entire Swedish agricultural sector there is an estimated 34 TWh of biological waste available that can be used for biogas production. In order to introduce biogas on a large scale we need a number of new types of businesses that together will make up an entirely new biogas sector in society and the economy:

- Collection of biomass, including the technologies that are necessary to harvest biomass at farms, sea and in the forest on a large scale.
- Transportation of biomass to plants.
- Transportation of waste from biogas production back to farms as fertilizer.
- A closely knit distribution network for biogas from production to customers.
- Suppliers of technology and other necessities to all these sectors.

In the same way, in the electric vehicle sector we will need large numbers of entirely new companies, to some extent similar to the mobile phone industry of today. Among the new companies needed we will find electric vehicle systems operators, hardware and software suppliers to such systems (exist already to a large extent, but are at present focused on ICT).

These sectors will gradually grow in numbers and volumes, and we need to start build them by investing large amounts of money in creating this growth. With increasing numbers of people who are becoming aware of the need to implement renewable fuels on a large scale to replace oil we should start to debate how this can be done in the most efficient way.

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Even if this is not yet the official explanation of the development in the global financial markets, this is likely to become an increasing factor behind future re-evaluations in stock markets and other financial markets.

When investors make these calculations they are bound to realize that the global community is far behind in developing the necessary volumes of renewable energy.

We need strategies, plans, and national and international change programs in order to cope with the situation that is now evolving.

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But under the stone.

Energy analysts, for lack of a better term, purport to try to penetrate the rhetoric surrounding energy, sustainability and climate change as it suits their interests and that of their clients, employers, political party and stock portfolio. Yet ironically, or even cruelly, not the interests of their children, grandchildren and all of their legacies. And often they are treated as men-of-science when they are not. Not-even-close.

The citing and criticism of individual small-scale efforts simply kick up the dust, as they intend, to obfuscate the rationale. The dust hides the stone for another news cycle, election cycle or generation, and they sleep at night in the warmth of a dwindling flame they are helping to eventually snuff. How many more political deathbed confessions will be made that show regret for failure to use their powers for good — and how it might affect the very children and grandchildren holding their increasingly frigid hands? How rewarding it would be if the lights going out spread the greatest darkness on those who could and should have found the ways to keep them on longer.

By turning over stones.

As I have been trying to inform various parties active in the debate of the managed programs that will become necessary in order to drive Global Energy Transformation, I have mostly met lack of interest and signals that tell me that this is unwanted information.

But these are not stupid people, largely, and the conclusions in “Global Energy Transformation” are mostly common sense. Even people who argue in favor of stronger efforts to transform energy systems on a large scale back away when I tell them that I have taken a look under the stone and found something immensely more complex than energy experts would expect to be there. Since when have we not been up for the challenge?

The work within the GET Institute is focused on informing decision makers about what we have found so far under this “unturned stone,” and to dig deeper and start to disentangle even more unexpected relationships, opportunities, and management needs that energy experts, politicians and many managers of energy focused companies try not to see.

And many of us see more irony. It was the turning of unknown and unturned stones that, perhaps literally, lead to the discovery of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, shale oil, natural gas and precious metals. Incalculable fortunes pulled from the ground despite the fear. And we are the worst example of of the rule of inheritors of massive wealth: it only takes three generations for the family to lose all the wealth created by the first generation…shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves.

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The first step has to be that more people start to say and write the words: “We need strategies for large scale energy transformation and government financed programs that lead he way.” Just like the American Energy Innovation Council argue.

www.americanenergyinnovation.com

I get the impression that it is more important for people to not differ in opinion even in a small way from their peers than to help secure a safe and prosperous future for all.

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http://www.iea.org/speech/2010/tanaka/AustraliaTanakaWEO2010.pdf

This will change everything. And we are not prepared.

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We need to make people aware of the link between energy consumption and affluence. Economic growth can be questioned, but the universal wish of people to live reasonably comfortable and safe lives cannot.

With reducing volumes of oil both the comfort and safety of the present and future generations is at peril.

Decision makers and other people in high positions need to rapidly understand the links between energy supply, affluence, comfort and safety. We can have all of this with a decreasing supply of energy, but only if we manage the transformation.

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Around the year 2000 many companies had invested in new integrated business systems, but after the implementation of the systems they realized that the systems in themselves would not realize the savings potential or earn them more revenue. Instead, projects focused on change management efforts, directed at improving the work processes of the organizations, were necessary in order to realize the substantial improvement potentials. These projects required an entirely new cadre of professionals – change management consultants and managers with change management competence.

Up until then the IT-industry had been dominated by people with an IT-background. Now IT-consulting companies started to recruit people with a business background, who could understand how the complex IT-systems could be used in order to reduce cost and increase revenue. These people could also draw up project plans, and manage the six to twelve month projects that were necessary in order to realize the potential. Soon companies started to recruit management counterparts to these consultants to fill slots in the organization charts where a combination of business and IT competence was necessary.

Companies and research institutions have now developed new energy technologies for a few decades. This development has been driven by the need for new energy technologies, and the development of any energy technology with a savings potential or the potential to make use of renewable fuels has been funded. Now it is time to realize that we will never be able to realize the full potential of these technologies without the massive deployment of change management competence and resources. We have a large number of different technologies in development and in early stages of usage, but the amount of energy we receive, and the savings we generate, from such technologies are still minuscule. Many of them will not rapidly come to wide-spread use without focused energy transformation programmes that are aimed at energy or business sectors, or household users, in which technologies are combined with incentives for implementation, and managed change efforts.

In order to achieve this we need national strategies for energy transformation and also market driven development of integrated systems offerings to various customer categories. These two developments need to support one another.

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The process has be very interesting. What an effort by both GE and the entrants! Of course GETI entered by offering How to Smartly Deal With the Intermittent Nature of With Wind and Solar Power and Pilot Study –How Intelligent Systems Integrators Will Make the Grids Smart(er) for America and the World.

But this post is about the winners, and here they are with their $100,000 winning ideas. Congratulations, good luck and thanks for your contribution to smarter energy.

• Capstone Metering: Intelligent Water Meters – Carrollton, Texas: Capstone Metering applies remote communications technology to the century-old water meter. The company’s IntelliH2O is self-powered and delivers real-time water system management, which helps conserve water and eliminates the need for manual meter-readings (www.capstonemetering.com).
• ElectricRoute: Secure Communications Network for the Electric Grid, Salem and Hollis, New Hampshire: Recognizing the substation’s unique location in the electric grid, ElectricRoute created a communications gateway point for transmission and distribution systems. Its cyber-secure, communications network infrastructure eliminates duplicate sensors and thousands of copper lines running inside the substation.
• GridON: Controlling Power Quality in Electric Grids, Givatayim, Israel: – GridON created a fault-current-limiter to protect the electric grid from disruptions and power outages, increasing the grid’s reliability and enabling load growth and generation expansion from alternative energy sources. This technology was developed in collaboration with Bar-Ilan University and Ricor Ltd (www.gridonsystems.com).
• IceCode: Wind Turbine Blade Anti-Icing and De-Icing, West Lebanon, NH – Seeking to break one of nature’s strongest bonds, IceCode’s technology removes ice by using high-power pulses to apply heat from the inside out. Employing this technology for wind turbines substantially reduces the amount of energy used for de-icing and eliminates downtime for ice removal and inspection. Developed in collaboration with Dartmouth College (www.icecode.com).
• WinFlex: Inflatable Wind Turbines, Kiryat Yam, Israel: – WinFlex produces rotors for wind turbines from light, flexible and inexpensive cloth sheets made out of composite materials. This flexible rotor design reduces installation costs by at least fifty percent and shortens the return on investment to three-four years, without subsidies (www.winflex.co.il).

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Now cotton prices increase dramatically, and there seems to be little evidence from the clothing industry that customers switch their preferences to wool, linen, nylon, perlon, or other alternatives to cotton in order to buy as many garments as before. Instead companies in the clothing industry seem to fear that customers may decrease their purchases and try to absorb price increases as long as possible, which reduces their margins. One medium sized Swedish cloth producer has already gone bankrupt because of this development.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/rising-cotton-prices/story?id=12120858&page=2

In the energy sector customers may not have specific preferences for particular energy sources, because of fashion or feel. Instead, demand is built into other structures that are more difficult to change, than consumer purchasing patterns in fashion, namely engine types and the need to travel to work, to travel to shopping malls, and to travel for other purposes.

Customers or producers of fuel cannot easily switch to other energy sources, because their cars run on gasoline, heating is set up with a gas boiler, etc. The only thing for many to do short term is to reduce travel, reduce heating, or reduce activity in other areas where energy is used, such as reduce consumption in order to afford to still take the car to work.

Energy systems are much more complex in terms of mutual dependencies than the system of clothes and cotton production. In order to be able to substantially reduce energy use in production and distribution systems companies need to make a large number of changes, that often need to be discussed and planned between companies, or managed at a higher level entirely. In order to introduce renewable fuels on a large scale we need vehicles, fuels, distribution systems for the fuels, including distribution technologies like pumps etc, which requires cooperation on a large scale.

The coordination of such changes does not happen automatically or by itself. We will need national strategies and large scale planned transformation programs

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