6
EIC guest editorial
by Fabrizio Fabbri East Hemisphere Executive Vice President EthosEnergy
Decarbonisation, without sacrificing reliability or efficiency The journey to net zero greenhouse emissions is underway. As the energy transition increasingly takes centre stage, particularly with COP26 in November, it’s incumbent on all companies to ensure we meet critical targets. This focus is driving one of the top trends impacting our industry today, ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance. While ESG isn’t a new concept, more organisations are laying out roadmaps and targets, taking a holistic approach to sustainability. There has been a continuing shift towards tackling environmental and social issues, which has been amplified over the last year as the pandemic hit us. As the world ground to a halt and travel plummeted, we were inundated with stories of how air pollution had significantly decreased as well as images shared globally across city skylines previously marred by smog. This focus won’t change as we see travel increase.
As companies continue to ramp up ESG in support of the energy transition, it is important to understand the changing landscape for business investment as well as attracting new talent. Investors are increasingly analysing a business’s ESG performance as a deciding factor; and candidates are becoming progressively aware of organisations’ core values when applying for jobs. EthosEnergy is no different, our recently launched ESG programme follows the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and will weave and integrate into every aspect of our business; this is part of our energy evolution. Sustainability will change how we do business in a fundamental way, we must shift all aspects of what we do; it’s not enough to watch the game, we have to be playing.
We need to be more conscious as humans about how we impact our planet, and businesses are no exception.
This energy evolution is not and will not be an easy journey, it’s a long-term goal and will take effort and resources to get to where we need to be. The change of energy is challenging across a number of areas; transportation, storage and stability of supply.
We already see B2B and B2C have less difference than traditionally, the same drivers shaping the decision making process. This is especially prevalent in younger generations, and as our industry sees these generations move into decision making positions the importance of ESG factors increases. There needs to be alignment between business, social and environmental factors to achieve success.
We need to be investing in new processes, energy types and ways of improving availability to support the energy transition. At EthosEnergy we have already developed a suite of life extension and emissions compliance solutions to support current assets in meeting targets. We reduce the environmental impact of current assets to make them more efficient, this allows for life extension and minimises the requirement for replacement.
Get in touch Share your news and views...
Email newsdesk@the-eic.com • Phone +44 (0)20 7091 8600
It’s not simply about cost reduction but a significant impact on CO2 emissions across two fronts; one where avoiding production of new equipment and emissions during the manufacturing process, and the second avoiding or postponing the recycling of aged assets. Hydrogen (H2) represents a key enabler for the energy transition and EthosEnergy strongly believes it will drive future global energy businesses considering the pressure that, not only the European Union, but all major countries are putting on decarbonisation. The decarbonisation of the power generation sector can be achieved by increasing the share of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. However, these renewable sources provide a fluctuating electricity supply which needs to be balanced by other forms of reliable, affordable and sustainable power generation. The introduction of hydrogen as a fuel in gas turbines can be the solution. Hydrogen gas turbines would complement the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, easily being used as a vehicle to energy storage. Hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis (green hydrogen), using excess renewable power or by steam reforming of natural gas, which is also carbon neutral if CO2 capture technology is added (blue hydrogen). Reforming, coupled with carbon capture and storage is the first step to create sufficient hydrogen supply in the short term and enable the creation of a hydrogen infrastructure.
