Advancing the energy transition will require innovation with a capital 'I'

The energy transition is only in its early stages. Only about 10% of the low-emissions technologies needed by 2050 to meet global commitments have been deployed, according to our latest research.

Achieving the remaining 90% was always going to take real work, even before recent global developments such as shifting geopolitics, changing policies and the surge in energy demand from data centres. It will require innovation with a capital “I” – not only innovation of individual technologies, but also a fundamental reimagining of how the energy system works and how new technologies mesh together.

Our current high-emissions energy system delivers high levels of performance. It moves energy relatively easily to where it is needed because current fuels are energy-dense and easily transportable.

One average tanker carrying liquefied natural gas can power more than 40,000 homes in the United States for an entire year. It dispatches energy rapidly. Some gas turbines can move from full shutdown to generating power at full capacity in less than ten minutes. And the chemical flexibility of fossil fuels, combined with the high-temperature their combustion generates, means that they can be used to manufacture thousands of materials and generate the high-temperature heat needed in many industries.

Low-emissions technologies offer promise and their performance has improved rapidly in some cases. However, they do not yet offer the same level of performance across the board. Diesel, for example, has about 50 times more energy density, by weight, than even the best EV batteries.

In easier use cases like passenger EVs that do not typically drive very long distances, such performance gaps do not matter as much. Indeed, the average EV already has sufficient range to meet the needs of most households. But in harder use cases, these performance gaps are more challenging. For example, it is very hard to produce a battery that is both light and sufficiently powerful enough to propel an electric truck with heavy loads over long distances. Today, battery electric trucks would struggle to complete without recharging 20-45% of long-haul heavy-duty journeys that their diesel counterparts complete daily.

Of course, some performance gaps can be overcome over time, and, in some cases, clean technologies already outperform fossil-fuel-based ones. For example, passenger EVs and heat pumps often achieve double or more the energy efficiency of their fossil-based counterparts. Nuclear power is more reliable than coal plants in terms of consistent delivery, while batteries can ramp up power supply faster than gas plants to cope with demand surges.

Nonetheless, there are still technological performance gaps across the entire energy system. For example, a low-emissions power system would face performance challenges related to higher volatility of generation when solar and wind are responsible for most generation. Managing this system would require 2-7 times the amount of flexibility solutions like storage or backup power capacity, relative to the overall power system scale-up.

To further complicate matters, some of the required technologies aren’t mature yet. Industrial materials such as cement or plastics rely on fossil fuels as sources of high-temperature heat and/or feedstocks, and low-emissions options cannot yet fully replicate those roles in some situations.

In the case of carbon capture, the performance of current options means that capturing point-source emissions could be three times harder where flue gases have a less pure stream of carbon, compared with current use cases.

Addressing such critical performance gaps matters because collectively they could affect the abatement of about half the carbon dioxide emissions of the energy system. So, what needs to be done?

First, more innovation is needed to squeeze maximum performance out of low-emissions technologies. Fortunately, progress is evident in many areas. The energy density of batteries has been improving by about 3-5% a year, and new chemistries could double energy density by 2030. New electrolyzer models could enable hydrogen production to be more efficient and new electrification technologies are serving more industrial processes. For instance, the first high-temperature electric cement kilns came online recently.

But the fact remains that we can’t innovate our way out of some gaps. Batteries will never be as dense as oil; solar and wind will always be intermittent to a degree; and carbon capture is inherently harder when dealing with less pure streams. So, the way that the entire system works will need to be rethought.

One imperative is to change the way that low-emissions technologies mesh together to accentuate their positives and minimize their negatives. In the power system, historically, most efforts to manage variability have focused on adjusting the supply of energy through storage or backup forms of power. While these are important – and innovation is progressing – we can broaden our thinking and transform the technologies that demand power.

Cars, buildings and industry could become providers of flexibility. Heat pumps could operate flexibly, preheating homes before the grid is constrained during peak periods of energy demand. Car charging, hydrogen production and some power demand from industry could also be suitably timed. Batteries in homes or cars could even provide energy back to the grid.

We can adapt the ways we consume materials and energy resources to make the most of the properties of the clean technologies that have been developed. For example, electric trucks may not actually need the same range as diesel-powered ones. If routes could be reconfigured so that recharging can take place during truckers’ mandatory breaks, then the range limitations of electric trucks may be less relevant.

In some cases, we can sidestep some hard industrial challenges by replacing the actual materials we use. For example, cement could be replaced, to some extent, by materials that are easier to decarbonize. In Sydney, a 40-floor-high hybrid skyscraper is being built using wood in combination with a steel and cement frame.

These changes will not be easy. An expansive view of innovation is needed to deliver a successful transition, improving low-emission technologies, new configurations, and bringing about profound change in energy supply and consumption. The task is not changing a lightbulb, but rewiring the entire house.