There is a global energy system transition currently occurring. Driven by our need to decarbonise and move towards a greater renewable mix, renewable technology has rapidly advanced over the past decade. The experience curve effect has driven down costs, vastly improving affordability of new technologies. Coupled with digital innovations, greater integration is occurring across value chains, while our access to improved data, in real time, is fundamentally altering the ways in which companies leverage their assets in creating value.
These changes, together with the market shifts and movement away from vertically integrated monopolies, is creating greater market access and competition and with it the opportunities for investment.
The changes are occurring at multiple levels, across multiple value chains, simultaneously.
It should be recognised that energy is not electricity alone. End-user energy use for non-electrical purposes such as, but not limited to, heating in industrial applications, mobility and maritime applications is greater than that for electricity generation and utilisation purposes.
When one considers then the energy transition, its effects are played out on an integrated energy and value chain basis, and electricity system perspective, and an end-user perspective; each with its own complexities and nuances.
The global energy system, which included the power sector, the industrial sector, the mobility and maritime sectors, the residential and commercial sectors, i.e., every sector, is fundamentally shifting through our decarbonisation efforts and our movement from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
As our electrical system is becoming more variable, with non-dispatchable renewable energy becoming more integrated into the system, requiring additional system flexibility through dispatchable power such as battery storage or natural gas; there is a similar need for greater electrification requiring massive new materials and supply chains to be developed and structural changes in how we manage, price for, and utilise energy, including electrical energy.
Understanding these changes and having a tool kit to respond in a meaningful manner, requires both energy users and energy providers to find new business and operating models to secure long-term viability. Similarly, the opportunity for new entrants is greater than ever, where innovative application of technology and route to market options can capture value from incumbents too slow to respond.
Our team has decades of hands-on experience across the energy sector and understands the dimensions within which change is occurring. We help organisation, through insights driven analysis and on the ground expertise to chart a path of success through uncertain and unpredictable times.
Our techno-economic modelling capability includes energy modelling through utilisation of Plexos, as well as deep commercial understanding with the relevant financial models that bring together the commercial elements of funding the energy transition.
Some of our recent projects include the development of the SADC regional gas masterplan which culminated in the approval of a multi-billion-dollar investment blueprint by SADC Member States (16 countries). We have developed renewable energy strategies, gas market demand strategies, municipal electricity modelling studies, regulatory and market development studies, for development finance institutes, corporates as well as the public sector.
