Energy Transition is Graduating to a New Common Goal
Start-ups love a common enemy. Usually that villainous figure comes in the form of the old guard. And in the energy transition it is no secret that the old guard was the oil & gas industry.
Over the past decade, our newest energy companies have been in a grueling 10-round boxing match versus the old guard. The metrics that measured progress on the scorecard were terms like. “levelized cost curves”, “fully delivered costs”, and market share. Well, with the recent news that Exxon is halting employee contributions and Occidental Petroleum is selling assets to pay down debt it is increasingly clear that the battle is over. Renewables will win. Electrification will take over mobility. And even the most traditional coal utilities are accelerating their energy transition.
What happens next? How can we unite the old and new guard of the energy transition?
In the last battle the new guard’s tactics to beat the incumbents relied focusing on “reduction“: on lowering a cost curve to beat carbon-based power sources. I believe the focus for the energy transition has to move exclusively towards GROWTH metrics… and specifically economic advancement figures like jobs and training. Why? The most powerful industry movements find ways to simultaneously strengthen their local communities, amplifying the overall impact:
- Energy transition requires major capital investment
- Capital investment propels corporate growth
- Growth creates jobs and economic opportunity
- Jobs support families
- Families support communities
As a community, we should be carefully tracking and celebrating every new 1 million people employed/supported by the energy transition. I believe we will be getting the best of the next generation to join this opportunity as very few career opportunities have aligned economic, environmental, and social impact. We should celebrate this generation’s arrival.
Recent data from the EDF shows that there are approximately 1 million people working in the new energy industries, while Clean Energy Trust points to over 600k jobs in the midwest alone. Assuming that our energy transition jobs number is 10x in 20 years, what systems can we invest in now to support personnel advancement? These are questions we are thinking about at Energize and if you are working on any of the following digital technologies and how they will educate and grow a workforce, please reach out.
If Detroit in its’ prime was the center of the auto industry, I can argue that there should be 50 smaller “Detroits” around the country at our renewable energy hubs. And each hub will create economic opportunity. That is a goal we can all hope to achieve.