I was extremely lucky to be hanging around the VIP lounge (especially looking for the coffee) at the Energy Disruptors conference which happened this week in Calgary (Canada). This event hosted 2000 delegates across various nationalities and a great mix of speakers. Every discussion was like an ‘aha’ moment because the speakers at the event were no small deal to be around - they have tested and applied everything to disrupt the energy market in every way they can for many years now - including Electric Vehicles, battery storage to electricity trading, AI optimization solutions or building designs.
Tech
The first thing which grasps my attention in any conference is the novelty of the tech - yes, I have learned nothing from the experience of the policy talks from ministerial meetings to COPs - so I am gonna talk about the tech anyways first.
It is a no-brainer that with the booming renewable sector, the bottleneck or rather the opportunity for the disruption remains in the storage sector. And as the word disruption clearly says it's about untraditional choices of storage. The most interesting discussion throughout the two days remained on the EV batteries as the best source to compensate for the grid instability. There was a brilliant display of cost- and safety-oriented solutions provided by the cadenza innovations who have optimized the sizes of the batteries for maximum efficiency. The Volkswagen wallbox did not appeal to me necessarily on the tech (or rather the tech details were not very clear) but what appealed to me was the willingness of the entire market shift of the VW towards the EV market. But more on that later.
Though storage is one of THE biggest challenges with the renewables kicking in, there were insanely beautiful and bold solutions in the electricity to the automotive Industry at EDU 2019. The highlight for me remained Joanna Hubbard's Electron DLT (distributed ledger technologies) solution, where they have leveraged the electricity market in London quite opportunistically for grid integration. The QEV tech showed great initiatives in modular solutions for enabling traditional public transport in emerging nations to leapfrog the EV market. Their interesting case with transforming jeepneys for the Philippines showed how political will doesn't just ensure reliable EVs but also reliable infrastructure for charging while improving and maintaining better livelihood solutions.
Continuing on promising tech, Michael Palwyn, (who was nice to not just share his Tesla X Uber ride with me, but stand my irritating questions throughout) had one of the boldest and outstanding solution strategies, I believe. His company, exploration architecture, uses nature as it's inspiration for better architecture designs. Also known as biomimicry in architecture (like his book's title, my first-in-list to-read now). I am afraid to call it a 'futuristic solution' because he (and most of us) believe that these solutions need to be more traditional already where the building sector/ construction industries are not afraid to risk better designs on a bigger scale. With maximum material savings just due to better structural design (e.g. the strong skeletons of animals) exploration-architecture has been able to build some of the best models(and examples) for efficient buildings. What was the most impressive thing was their ability to deliver regenerative designs e.g. their project which converted an entire barren land to agricultural land with thriving wildlife in mid of dessert (kudos to inspiration of nature itself) - beyond just a circular economy. You can look at their amazing examples here.
Market design
Energy is hardly tech. Yes, sorry (no sorry) I say it after ranting about so much tech (and I still skipped the interesting AI and fin-tech solutions.. but sometime later on this). Energy is a network industry - which works because multiple parties and techs collaborate together to light that (it better be an LED) bulb in your house. So yeah tech matters, but the least. What matters the most is how these parties agree on the collaborations - i.e. how the market structure looks like, who produces and trades, how many MW at a given time. Who decides what and when. So where is the disruption here? There is not. Not much, at least. Let me talk about the electricity sector here. Companies like Electron and hopefully models like Energy bazaar are coming into the picture. One thing which renewables have made very clear is that there is not that much need to have central control for the distribution of electricity. Just to be clear, central market designs have been the main reason for the reliability of the grid we use today - so it definitely has insane value. But there is better scope for a more localized market - which means better possibilities to meet the local needs (from rural to urban, from purely solar market to mix of energy sources). What was raised as a concern and opportunity in the breakout discussion with JoJo (co-founder, Electron) was about the regulatory restrictions and differences from country to country - not allowing a single design of the market platform across different regions. Which is why the blockchain/ smart contracts look like the sweet deal here - they are adaptable as per the stakeholders. Some light on it here.
Entrepreneurship in energy
Data, time and money - three pillars of a startup - Lanzatech’ s talk by Jennifer Holmgren made it quite clear with the amazing circular economy solutions they have developed over decades (developing cleaner fuel from carbon waste). In the energy sector, this need is exponentially huge and it needs a big deal of collaboration and trust between partners, which is highly monopolistic and fairly risk-averse (who don't exist at the first place for new startups - so the vicious cycle of no-trust). The finance cycle for startups in energy differ hugely from the traditional IT startups and this means there is a need for better investment structures and willingness to support startups with implementation infrastructure. This is not just a must collaboration at the public or private, but at both levels and preferably together. No doubt, the words like 'technology diffusion' and 'economy of scale' were thrown quite often in every energy entrepreneurship discussion for the two days.
But the disruption lies somewhere else
A wall at Calgary - disruption and development happens not just due to better industries and markets, but best organisational policies for the people
But I believe the most important dialogue which would define the trajectories for disruption, happened on the topic of values - mostly led by the discussions from Malcolm Gladwell and Sir Ken Robinson. The values which would define where our humanity and the environment would head towards, with the pressing questions on climate change. The questions about diversity (gender, age, indigenous/cultures) in the energy space, the questions about the choices with the renewables and so on. The question about tolerance and empathy, which would define the real disruption. The real disruption needs to be in the organizational space and structures - the mentality of centralized to a hierarchical structure of the energy industry needs to be flushed (partially). Only then there will be a disruption which would actually be worth for the future of this planet.
My sincere thanks to Student Energy and Energy Disruptors conference for making this possible.