How my renewable path led me to Fleet Electrification
The road is long, but the future is bright
There are a great number of problems affecting our planet, and it can be difficult for any of us to stay sufficiently informed, much less maintain an enduring connection to any particular topic to find a way to help. If you are like me and want to make a difference in your personal and/or professional life, I recommend that you direct your energy on a single piece of the planet-sized puzzle. We have to trust that others are similarly motivated to help and that they will focus on all the remaining pieces.
This is the abbreviated story about how I found my piece on an ongoing 18-month (and counting) journey. My hope is that by sharing here, I might provide some inspiration for you as you pursue your own path.
Where does one start?
If you are feeling overwhelmed like I was and not sure where to begin, may I suggest reviewing the UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDG). Chances are many of these topics are familiar to you but instead of stoking more anxiety, these Goals and the annual Progress Reports provide an ambitious “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” The United Nations SDG’s show us a path forward on 17 fronts!
As you scan through the material there, think about what speaks to you. For me, it was #7: Affordable and Clean Energy. The complete goal is to:
Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
I see a lot of potential in that goal, but I find I am mostly drawn to it for economic reasons. And digging into that kept me busy for many months.
Clean Energy is #7 on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals
In those early days of my journey, I quickly learned that Clean Energy includes a great many things. Some of them are proven such as hydro power, solar photovoltaic cells, and wind turbines. Others are still in the early stages like large-scale geothermal, and hydrogen power generation.
Some of my first articles related to Clean Energy
Some approaches like nuclear fission are more controversial and others like nuclear fusion are still largely pipe dreams.
And because of the intermittency of many of the newer sources of clean energy generation, there is an entirely different but related technology category around energy storage.
Not all clean energy is renewable, but that’s where I wanted to focus
Some of my articles focused on Renewable Energy
In order to avoid feeling overwhelmed, I chose to focus my attention on Renewable Energy, specifically how we would shift to a new model for providing power to the people, without destroying our planet.
For the next few months, I began researching topics related to Renewable Energy but before long, I realized I still needed to narrow my focus. In one of my early “point of view” posts, I called this out:
My point is that there is way too much information related to renewable energy for most people to understand, much less relate to. I/we must find more effective ways to engage with our respective circles.
Further narrowing my scope
While ramping up on all things Renewable Energy, I became particularly curious about what is being called the Energy Transition - how we move away from the energy world we created in the last century to a new one that will better sustain the world's growing population keen on continuing and expanding our progress and improving our collective lives.
This is where I start to see an actionable plan emerging
Some of my articles related to the Energy Transition
Now I felt like I was onto something. Instead of just learning about cleaner and more sustainable ways to generate and consume energy, I was tapping into a real movement where many different parties were aligning around a common goal. We had a desired future state in mind and it would take most, if not all of the emerging Renewable Energy alternatives to get us there.
This kept me busy for a long time. I continued to gather notes, and as I navigated my way through vast amounts of information, I forced myself to post articles here on this site. It helped me feel like I was making some progress down my path.
Treading further…
Within the broad Energy Transition space, there is one particular challenge that ultimately captured my attention: electrification. This term is used to describe a range of important and related solutions that prescribe a specific kind of transition where the world would shift from running most, if not all our machines on electricity instead of the various and outdated fossil fuel-based precursors.
If this topic interest you in the slightest, I highly recommend getting a physical, electronic, or audio version of Saul Griffith’s book Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook For Our Clean Energy Future. And perhaps the subtitle gives it away, but I would encourage anyone who is feeling overwhelmed about the scale of solving the looming climate crisis to read or listen to Chapter 3 especially. You’ll thank me.
Some articles I wrote on the topic of Electrification
There is however, an important caveat to the electrification proposal that connects back to the original clean energy topic. We cannot incentivize individuals, businesses and entire industrial sectors to adopt electricity-based alternatives if that electricity is still originating from fossil-fuel power plants that burn coal or natural gas. We must simultaneously decarbonize our electric grid to draw power from clean, renewable sources like wind, water and the sun.
Now, within Electrification, I have most recently zeroed in even further to focus on the electrification of transportation, specifically the millions of cars and trucks on our roads that are contributing GHG emissions.
I highlight on-road vehicles here although we should also be paying attention to the other parts of the mobility sector including trains/rail, ships, planes, etc. that also need comparable clean energy solutions.
My own path is becoming much more clear
Connecting to Climate Change
Of course I was aware of climate change. Even before I began my journey down the renewable path, I was hearing about it all the time, as it continues to dominate the headlines that spotlight the environmental changes we are witnessing all across the planet.
SDG #13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
When I first reviewed the SDGs, I remember pausing briefly to explore #13: Climate Action. At first, I didn't make a connection between the two topics, but in my subsequent conversations with people in the clean energy space, I kept hearing ties being made to climate change. And what stuck with me was the urgency. That we needed to move off of a depleting supply of fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources was evident to me. But a century-long period of dramatic expansion in the oil, coal and natural gas industries, artificially inflated with subsidies has dramatically increased our collective dependency on these fuels and the machines they ultimately power - all of which have combined to disrupt our planet’s atmosphere.
That was a big insight for me, specifically that clean energy is good for the planet and that there is urgency in accelerating our transition because of the mounting climate-related harm caused by the previous forms of energy. So I dug in a little deeper:
Choosing a specific path
My multi-year exploration into Clean Energy has introduced me to an overwhelming amount of information and opened up many enticing pathways. I remain curious about the entire space and am encouraged by seeing how many options there are for contributing and helping improve the world.
As I moved forward down my own path, I forced myself to turn away from so many interesting topics and I focused on finding a specific area of concern. There are myriad ways to help with the global Energy Transition, but I chose to concentrate on helping transition the mobility sector. And not the entire sector, but the on- and off-road machines in that sector that currently run primarily on gas and diesel fuel. And even more specifically, I am choosing to look at electrification as the primary transition option for these vehicles.
But even after all that whittling down, I still hadn’t landed on a set of problems that I felt would benefit from software solutions. This is my unique challenge and what set me on this renewable path 18 months ago.
I am looking to contribute to the Transition as a software professional. I have to find an area where my skills and experience will have a significant impact. I needed to narrow down even further to land on a specific challenge that requires massive scaling, is sufficiently urgent, that in solving will help create a more prosperous planet - and that can be accelerated in some part by innovative software solutions.
And that ultimately lead me to Fleet Electrification
I am attracted to problems with opportunities that have an impact at scale
I feel strongly that it is time to decommission the internal combustion engine, everywhere and as soon as possible. We have spent more than a century figuring out how to use this machine to transform the world and we should all feel gratitude to the collection of industries that have made this progress possible. But all that amazing progress came with terrible costs that go beyond air pollution and warming the planet.
The Transportation sector now contributes the most to our global emissions problem. We need to recognize the massive challenge we face in moving away wholesale from our dependence on gas- and diesel-powered vehicles. And the largest and perhaps most difficult part of that challenge won’t be convincing individual consumers to buy EVs but will lie with the millions of fleet vehicles in service and the many more significant barriers that fleet operators that will face in making this much-needed transition.
That is where I want to help. That is my path forward.
Conclusion
The more I dig into the obstacles and opportunities associated with electrifying fleets, the more I am convinced it will keep my attention for the next decade of my professional career, AND that the work will need to continue long after I've retired.
I feel like I am early (again) in recognizing a massive disruption, one of many interconnected ones all being heightened by climate change resulting from global GHG emissions.
I am getting value in writing these articles and documenting my journey here but now that I have found my path, I am ready and eager to contribute more.