Energy Enablers: The FORESIGHT podcast with those making a difference in the energy transition

In this week’s Energy Enablers, David Weston speaks to Lisette van Doorn, CEO of ULI Europe, a nonprofit research and education organisation focused on land use and real estate development disciplines. In this episode, Lisette warns that the real estate sector is not factoring the cost of doing nothing when valuing their assets. As buyers and building users become more aware of the carbon footprin...

In this week's Energy Enablers, Panu Virolainen, chief technology officer at ABB Motion, lets us into the world of research and development and its continued importance to the energy transition There is a train of thought that suggests if we have that technology to achieve the energy transition, why are hundreds of millions of dollars still being spent on research and development (R&D)?In this wee...

Digitisation is entering every facet of the energy transition, none more so than for grids and energy infrastructure. With the increasing complexity of grid operation, data is a vital tool to ensure the security of supply. Sabine Erlinghagen is CEO of the grid software division at Siemens. In this week's episode, David and Sabine examine how grids operators are adapting to the new data-driven worl...

With the ever-increasing level of data being produced across the economy, power-hungry data centres are becoming a vital node in the ecosystem. But as their demand grows, so does their energy consumption—making decarbonisation an important step for their owners. In this week’s episode, David speaks to Hans Godden, director of product management at Novenco Building and Industry, about ways the sect...

A trio of challenges facing Europe are having an ongoing impact on its energy sector: the energy crisis, which saw prices grow sharply, was brought into greater focus following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while the vital climate crisis bears a constant pressure on all decisions. In this week’s episode, David is joined by Leonhard Birnbaum, president of the trade association Eurelectric—and CEO o...

Innovation and new technologies are central to the energy transition. While there are plenty of interesting ideas to help decarbonise the economy, scaling them to profitable businesses remains tricky in a capital-intensive industry. Spirii is a digital EV charging platform. Launched in 2019, the company has grown rapidly and is now present in 14 countries, with plans to go even further. Tore Harri...

The carbon offset market is a vital tool for many companies to meet their climate neutrality targets. But questions over the effectiveness and quantifiability of schemes—particularly voluntary ones—hang gloomily over the sector. In this episode, David is joined by Artem Abramov, a partner at Rystad Energy, to discuss the future of carbon offset markets and how to make them bankable in the race to...

In this episode of Energy Enablers, Serge Colle from professional services firm EY discusses how the electric vehicle market is developing and what barriers remain. Transport sector emissions are some of the most stubborn of our modern economy. But it is also the sector that has the clearest and most developed technical solution to decarbonise: electric vehicles. The rollout of EVs is gathering pa...

Turning the emissions tide is a slow process. Emissions are still rising, despite some progress. It is increasingly becoming a case of all hands on deck, in order to stay below the 2C of global warming target. The role of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is still being debated, but it increasingly looks like it will need to play a significant part in the decarbonisation of our econom...

Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) will form the core of the aviation industry’s efforts to decarbonise. The sector and its supply chains are spending significant resources on developing the production capacity and source of low-carbon feedstocks to produce enough SAFs needed to meet the mid-century decarbonisation targets. But a lack of standardisation and with a large number of options available,...

A decade of low energy prices, falling further during the Covid-19 pandemic, meant the sudden price spikes of 2022 were felt even more keenly. The long-term impacts of the energy crisis, the societal lockdowns of 2020 and the fallout from the invasion of Ukraine are still unknown. A short-term knee-jerk reaction to the market design could have implications for the energy transition, but changes ne...

The energy transition will require a significant scale-up of storage capacity to help deal with both the increasing levels of variable clean energy generation and an ever-growing level of flexible demand. Balance these two moveable feasts will require agile and rapid response battery solutions as well as long-term, seasonal storage—a barrier that has yet to be fully overcome. In this episode of En...

The 21st Century has been defined by the rapid growth of digitalisation across all areas of our lives. At the start of 2000, the use of Wifi broadband internet or smartphones were almost non-existent. The rapid change in digital technology has also infiltrated the energy sector and its role in helping advance the energy transition is increasing. In this episode of Energy Enablers, David speaks to...

Listen to the trailer for the Energy Enablers podcast, a series from FORESIGHT Climate & Energy, in which we will speak to those who are making a difference in the race to a decarbonised economy. Join FORESIGHT’s Editor-in-Chief, David Weston, for regular episodes of Energy Enablers to hear from new guests about how they got to where they are today and where they believe the energy transition is g...