Mainstream energy transition models prioritize cost optimization and overlook critical factors related to the feasibility of building massive amounts of new clean energy infrastructure, including socio-political, cultural, commercial, and financial aspects. These omissions lead to greatly overstating the potential for deployment and create a dangerous gap between the decarbonization pathways proposed and the real world of project development. This, in turn, leads to ill-informed policy targets and inadequate implementation plans.
The following article, written for atw magazine, summarizes analysis of the risks to the clean energy transition in the USA, UK, Germany, and Japan. It outlines the immediate risks that must be anticipated and mitigated to ensure progress toward a Net Zero future. It sets out how, by diversifying the portfolio of emissions-free technologies, aligning targets with feasibility analysis, and implementing risk-informed strategies, we can mitigate the key risks and help drive a successful transition. It identifies a REPOWER strategy that enables the repurposing of existing infrastructure to run on emissions-free energy and produce emissions-free fuel as a practical, achievable, scalable, and equitable way to reach a Net Zero economy and put the world on a fast path to growth and decarbonization by 2050.