Making the transition

As a strategy consultant in a firm that focuses on the energy transition, we deal with all sorts of topics around it, particularly around supporting technologies, new and greener fuels, etc. Now there is a camp of people who thinks the transition is as good as moving from horse-draw carriage to the internal combustion engine – you don’t need the carriage-makers to change, you simply need newer players producing new goods to displace them. So thinking the brown or grey players can move into green is wishful.

There is another camp that believes the transition is made only when the players who are still in the carbon-intensive side of the game joins in. After all, light bulb manufacturers are still needed as LED takes off – the new LED technology simply adapts to all the legacy connectors which older bulbs had used. Basically, we still needed the components of the carriage-makers to join up into the supply chains of the new players.

When it comes to climate change and all the issues around making sure we preserve the quality of life on earth for the future generation, it is really difficult to think about costs. And it is a bit of wishful thinking to imagine that the current energy crisis in Europe now is an excuse for the oil & gas sector to hang around in its present form. The sector doesn’t have to cease to exist, just not in the same form as it did with the same activities as it did.

How to get them to make the transition, is a much harder question to answer.