Blog: Shedding old skins: Snakey Reflections on Energy Additions and Transitions

Shedding old skins: Snakey Reflections on Energy Additions and Transitions

“The Times They Are A-Changin’” — Bob Dylan’s iconic words ring truer than ever as we move into 2025.

The world is becoming adept at adding renewable power into the global energy mix —a vital step. But we’ve barely scratched the surface of energy transitions and transformations.

The Pendulum Swings: From Net-Zero Heroes to Net Zero Realism

In 2024, the word ‘doomscrolling’ entered English vocabularies, a new phenomenon of “green-lash” started to emerge, and the horizons of technology-hype shifted from hydrogen to generative AI.

As we enter the Lunar New Year of the Snake, we will need more than Artificial Intelligence swords and net-zero heroics to slay the dragons of doom:

• Greening the Mosquito, Ignoring the Elephant: The world is regularly celebrating energy ‘additions’ while sidestepping the real challenge: decarbonizing consumption. What isn’t being counted can’t be fixed.
• Context matters: Mother Nature is shuffling a planetary deck as a new world order emerges. The COP process has lost its lustre.  A broader sustainability or planetary agenda is needed that manages the links between energy-water-food systems, climate change resilience and repair and the growing risk of biodiversity collapse.
• Limits of Electrification: Even though the electrification revolution started over 100 years ago, not everything can or will be electrified by 2050., and it’s time to act on this reality.
• Open-to-All: Results, not promises, define success. The best way to succeed is by engaging more people and diverse communities, maintaining a relentless focus on what is working in different places, and using all levers – a combination of a range of technologies, financial innovation and societal transformation.
• Collaboration has become the critical choice: Many and new ways of collaborating with others are essential and already emerging. It’s time to pool collective human wisdom and learning about how to effectively stretch and sustain collaboration across geographies, genders and generations – and for decades to come.

Some Snakes Have a Nasty Bite, ALL Shed their Skins

Many geomancers believe it will be a year of change, growth and opportunity. Other feng shui experts add caution on risks – such as territorial disputes and financial difficulties.  How can we maximise the charm and minimise the harm?

Like the snake, we must shed old skins, lift our heads above shifting sands, and learn to move with the times.

Transformation: Shed old Mindsets, Model and Models and Measurement Frameworks

We can shed old skins by moving from supply-centric models to user-driven solutions that tackle demand transformation and include consumption.

We can cultivate ‘end-to-end' approaches e.g. whole-systems costs, shared and circular economy principles.

We can use integrated frameworks, such as the World Energy Trilemma Index to the trade-offs and synergies - energy security AND affordability/equity AND environmental sustainability – which are inherent in the change process and evolve with new demands for resilience and justice.

Stretch Collaboration:  Connecting Across Borders and Boundaries

Top-down prescriptions are not working. Many and new ways of collaborating across geographies, generations, and genders are emerging. We need to stretch and sustain collaboration to progress energy transitions as inclusive and intergenerational processes.

Humanising energy systems is key to prioritize regional diversity and context-specific solutions over one-size-fits-all strategies.

Flexibility: A New Genre of Actionable Energy Foresight and Futures Design

Prediction is futile.  Wishful thinking is useless. Change will not be fast or slow, but sudden. The greatest regrets are in acting too slow. The best way to manage the costs of early action is with flexibility.

We can engage uncertainty as an opportunity and develop future-mindful collective human wisdom that combines diverse narratives with actionable data.

We can embrace a new genre of energy foresight and build resilience by learning to adapt, knowing the future is a playing field of power, not an empty space or distant horizon.

Moving Forward: From Blindspots to Brightspots

Energy literacy is shockingly poor across the world. However, there are some steps that we can all take in 2025.

1. Focus on activating “active” energy literacy—not as “experts ‘on top’” dictating solutions, but by ‘expertise on tap’, maintaining a relentless focus on what IS working in diverse regions, different places and different paces, and being open to failure as well as sharing successes.

2. Ask better questions and actively listen:

What are the implications of regional diversity in energy?

What’s working, and how can it work elsewhere?

As we grapple with connected challenges —and social, environmental, geopolitical, and financial risks— what are the opportunities?

Embrace Diverse Realities and Engage in Realistically Hopeful Solution Spaces

How we got to here won’t get us to where we need to be. Recognising this is an important step forward. Polarising policy projects, premature technology prescriptions, and a proliferation of commercially-driven thought leadership aren’t helpful. Like the snake, we can shed old skins and better prepare for new and different energy futures.

Returning to the lyrics of Bob Dylan: “And you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.”

The path forward isn’t about slaying dragons or creating heroes—it’s about charming the snake, transforming our systems, and weaving together the connections of a better energy future together.