It is becoming increasingly clear that the ambitious project pursued by OECD countries in particular to subsidise and enforce an energy transition away from fossil fuels and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 is failing. A number of companies and governments at all levels have announced in recent months that they are postponing or abandoning their ambitious timelines and targets for zero greenhouse gas emissions because market forces, resource and capital constraints and plain realities make them impractical and unattainable.

In the US, this trend has become crystal clear in both the electric vehicle and offshore wind industries over the past twelve months. In the automotive sector, many pure-play electric vehicle manufacturers are either bankrupt or teetering on the brink of collapse, while established automakers like Ford, GM, Volvo and Stellantis have spent much of this year declaring large losses and rethinking their strategic approaches and investments.

The recent disaster at the Vineyard Wind I project off the coast of Massachusetts, in which a 350-foot-long blade fracture littered the Atlantic Ocean and the beaches of Nantucket Island with chunks of fiberglass core material, forced federal regulators to shut down the country’s only operating offshore wind project and left the industry with a public relations stain. The disaster also raised public concerns about the vulnerability of such huge blades and turbines on 850-foot-tall towers in inevitably harsh weather conditions.

Other OECD countries are struggling with these and other problems, all of which are putting them far behind on their ambitious net zero targets. It now seems inevitable that the net zero by 2050 strategy will soon require a return to net zero at a less near future date.

“We need to have a different conversation about energy,” Dr. Angela Wilkinson, Secretary General and CEO of the World Energy Council, told me in a recent interview. Wilkinson believes world leaders need to “stop treating energy as if it’s a single issue with a quick fix agenda,” adding that it’s crucial to “take it much more seriously than just a quick fix.”

The World Energy Council celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024 and continues its ongoing mission to act as a facilitator and honest broker to build connections and facilitate dialogue among the myriad stakeholders that make up the global energy community. Or, as Dr. Wilkinson put it to me, “We like to say that the Council has served as a voice of common sense for a century.”

In our interview, Wilkinson points out that “the transition is a messy and complex process. We’ve never been through it before, so we’re all learning it together.” In fact, everyone involved is learning it together, often the hard way, at great cost to government budgets, corporate profitability, grid reliability and energy security.

Wilkinson believes that one obstacle to progressing the energy transition is that decision-makers lack holistic systems thinking and planning. “Energy transitions are changes in the way society is organized,” she stresses. “It’s not just about swapping one technology for another and everything else staying the same. Yet we have this very simplistic idea that we can take the oil system, put in renewables, it will happen immediately and nothing else will change. That’s like telling you we’re going to pull out your femur but want you to run a marathon.”

In our conversation, Wilkinson pointed to South Africa’s energy transition efforts as an interesting example. “The World Bank provided $497 million to help close a coal mine and move to clean and equitable energy. And it didn’t work,” she says. “And I can’t help but think that there are analogies here in South Africa, where they’re trying to move away from coal faster, like in Europe, where we moved quickly from coal to gas in the UK.”

The challenge of transforming electricity grids is another good example of the need for systems planning. “You have to change all the points in the energy system to make it work,” she stresses. “You have to strengthen and expand the transmission network. To expand the transmission network, you need more copper. To use all of this renewable energy, you need double the amount of copper by 2050 that we currently have in transmission networks around the world, and you have to mine the copper. You will mine the copper with green hydrogen, for which there are not enough supplies. So you have to be a systems thinker, and there is not enough systems thinking in the energy transition.”

The conclusion

High-level thinkers, facilitators and organizers like Wilkinson play a critical role in the success of a project as complex and demanding as the current energy transition. After spending an hour with Wilkinson, it becomes clear that her job is one of the most difficult of the entire global effort. But it also becomes clear that she is probably the most suitable person for the job.

Everyone should hope that her plea for the inclusion of systems thinking in the efforts will be successful, because the uncoordinated and fragmented approach tried so far does not seem really sustainable.