Shell Energy Security Scenarios show grid technology innovation is needed to meet the long-term challenges of energy security and climate change
Response to Shell Energy Security Scenarios and meeting the long-term challenge of climate change
How can Europe capitalise on the smart technology on the grid to guarantee decarbonisation?
Last month was European Sustainability Week, which focussed on the theme ‘Going Green and Digital for Europe’s Energy Transition’. With the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine threatening the continent’s energy supply, and a commitment to decarbonisation by 2050, Europe is devoting significant attention to ensuring energy security. Despite the immediate nature of this winter’s gas crisis, however, the theme of the week demonstrated that Europe sees an opportunity to accelerate the long-term transition to clean, reliable, affordable energy.
Russia will dominate energy security until the grid is fit for renewables
Coal is political and environmentally untenable. Nuclear is politically unpalatable in many places, unaffordable, and following Russia’s attack on the Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear plant, an unacceptable security risk. The inflexibility of nuclear power station output also makes nuclear difficult to integrate with the variable demand of electric vehicles. I worry that many countries will sacrifice their climate goals to achieve security through a system that combines electrification of transport and coal-fired power. We do not have to do this.
Energy regulators seem to expect Christmas all year
Across the world, the public have been promised that they will be able to benefit from the falling price of renewable energy, but they have been misled. Regulators and politicians acted with the best possible motives as they sought to provide cheap and green energy, but many people failed to understand the true underlying dynamics of a system dominated by renewable energy. In moving from a system where supply could easily adjust to follow demand to one where supply would be driven by the weather, policymakers appear not to have properly accounted for the value of the stability services provided by thermal generation, nor the cost of provisioning stability for a system based on renewables.
Looking for the next Tesla? Skip EV; start where Nikola Tesla left off: The grid
The world will need many more companies that manufacture wind turbines, deploy renewables at scale and manufacture EVs. But Vestas, Ørsted and Tesla have shown the way by identifying the problem and proving the technology and the business model. The next Tesla, whether a disruptive new entrant like Tesla itself or an established company that successfully reinvents itself like Ørsted, will need to do the same for the next problem in the energy transition.