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What is Energy Transition Engineering and why it is imperative, with Sus...

I had a really interesting conversation with Jason Marmon of US Energy. He has worked in Oil and Gas and then decided to work on energy transition. We had a nice time brainstorming what energy transition means for oil and gas industry. 




Like everything these days, the go-to framework for debate is opposites positioning. In energy and climate change the position used to be "I'm not worried about climate change" vs "I'm freaked out about climate change". That framing didn't get a lot done, and it was masking the real issues, questions and potentials. 

The opposites positioning has moved on a bit and now the "it's not happening" people are off in their own bubble cooking up conspiracies. Now the opposites positioning is "Energy transition is switching to renewables" vs "energy transition is hydrogen and CCS".  These two positions usually argue about the other not being able to replace fossil fuels at scale. That is correct of both. 

Is it possible to build a frame for action through debate by constructing a new conversation where the questions are about how to transition the oil & gas industry to new business models, and how to adapt to reduced oil and gas supply in all other areas?  In this framework it could be possible to have the debates be more like design development debates between concepts, but all concepts are derived to accomplish the requirements. 

How could an Oil&Gas exploration and production company transition to not exploring for Oil&Gas, and stepping down production? How could they work with governments and other producers to set up new high price structures for the produced oil & gas? How could they work with refineries to manage the reduced supply? Once they were clearly in profitable positions, what would they go into for forward operations? 

Try not to shut down that conversation. 

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