Abandonment Issues: No new oil, gas or coal development if world is to reach net zero by 2050, says IEA

In light of the recent IEA-International Energy Agency announcement to abandon fossil fuels by 2035, the following press release from EMAP, publisher of PTQ & Digital Refining, is worthy of our attention.

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In response to feedback from organisations across the industry, EMAP, publisher of PTQ & Digital Refining, is launching Decarbonisation Technology, which will focus on the strategies, legislation and technologies powering the transition to sustainable fuels and energy.
Decarbonisation Technology will explore the global deployment of technologies, whether mature, at early adoption, under demonstration or still a prototype, together with the growth of supporting infrastructure and the latest policies and proposed legislation.
Our new multi-platform media brand will include a website, digital magazine, online Q&A, and weekly newsletter, and will become a popular forum for conversation between governments, policy makers, energy companies and technology providers. This will be followed up with a series of conferences worldwide.
Each digital issue will feature an executive viewpoint focusing on ‘Towards 2030: roadmap to sustainability’, a Q&A section discussing transition strategies, and a Sustainable Technologies section, which will highlight new decarbonisation technologies.
The first issue, to be published in August 2021, will examine:
   Reducing CO2 emissions
   Carbon capture, utilisation and storage
   Hydrogen’s role in the energy transition
   Marine and aviation fuels
   Catalysts and adsorbents in the energy transition
   Digital technologies: a key enabler to low-carbon fuels and energy
   Improving energy efficiency
If you would like to contribute editorially, please send your suggestions to editor@decarbonisationtechnology.com
If you have any questions or would like to discuss advertising, contact
Paul Mason: info@decarbonisationtechnology.com - Mobile: +44 7841 699 431
Register FREE of charge for the launch issue!
Copyright © 2021. All Rights Reserved. Crambeth Allen Publishing Ltd, publisher of PTQ, DigitalRefining and Decarbonisation Technology
If you have any questions or would like to discuss advertising, contact
Paul Mason: info@decarbonisationtechnology.com – Mobile: +44 7841 699 431
https://decarbonisationtechnology.com/
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For context, you might be interested in the following Guardian article, describing recommendations to the world community from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

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The Guardian, Tue 18 May 2021
No new oil, gas or coal development if world is to reach net zero by 2050, says world energy body
Governments must close gap between net zero rhetoric and reality, says International Energy Agency head
Fiona Harvey, Environment correspondent

Exploitation and development of new oil and gas fields must stop this year and no new coal-fired power stations can be built if the world is to stay within safe limits of global heating and meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050, the world’s leading energy organisation has said.

In its strongest warning yet on the need to drastically scale back fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) also called for no new fossil-fuel cars to be sold beyond 2035, and for global investment in energy to more than double from $2tn (£1.42tn) a year to $5tn (£3.54tn) The result would not be an economic burden, as some have claimed, but a net benefit to the economy.

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director and one of the world’s foremost energy economists, told the Guardian: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.”

He said strong new policies were needed from governments around the world: “More and more countries are coming up with net zero commitments, which is very good, but I see a huge and growing gap between the rhetoric [from governments] and the reality.”

The IEA has released its most comprehensive report yet into what is needed to achieve the world’s climate goals, the implications of which will be felt around the world. Few governments intend to halt fossil-fuel exploration. The UK is licensing new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, China is building coal-fired power plants, and oil companies are still investing in new output.
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Read the entire article at:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/18/no-new-investment-in-fossil-fuels-demands-top-energy-economist
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And, for the truly diligent, here is the source for the IEA report described in the Guardian article above …

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Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
Flagship report — May 2021
Download the full report at: https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
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Jean Steinhardt served as Librarian, Aramco Services, Engineering Division, for 13 years. He now heads Jean Steinhardt Consulting LLC, producing the same high quality research that he performed for Aramco.

Follow Jean’s blog at: http://desulf.blogspot.com/  for continuing tips on effective online research
Email Jean at research@jeansteinhardtconsulting.com  with questions on research, training, or anything else
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Impact of knowledge search practices on the originality of inventions: A study in the oil & gas industry through dynamic patent analysis

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing – Socrates

One of my Google Scholar alerts turned up a recent academic paper that may interest you and some of your colleagues.

The paper, titled “Impact of knowledge search practices on the originality of inventions: A study in the oil & gas industry through dynamic patent analysis,” notes that while oil & gas firms do lots of research, the money spent on R&D effort could be used more effectively.

The authors explore the ways in which enterprises, and the inventors within those enterprises, identify the information they need to create innovative solutions to problems faced by their firm. As the title implies, the oil & gas industry is used to illustrate the authors’ approach.

Within an enterprise, inventors may face obstacles to finding corporate knowledge within their own company, because of the structure of the internal knowledge base.

So how can the authors of this paper help you make better use of your R&D resources?

POSIT: You need to identify innovative solutions for the problems facing your enterprise.
QUESTION: What are the best search practices you can use to identify those solutions?
ANSWER: Take some time to read the following research article. It may offer some guidance.

The authors’ method combines interviews with patent analysis. Patent analysis is used as a proxy for knowledge components.

They identify four search approaches used by major oil firms:

(1) refinement, (2) clustering, (3) absorption and (4) recomposition

No matter which approach used by a particular firm, results can be improved by structuring the knowledge in such a way that the firm’s inventors can easily access all knowledge components they need to produce innovative solutions to the firm’s problems.

The paper is written by academics for an academic audience. As such, it is not easy reading. But I think you will find it worth your effort.

The abstract appears below, as does the URL for the free, full text of the paper.
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Impact of knowledge search practices on the originality of inventions: A study in the oil & gas industry through dynamic patent analysis
Quentin Plantec1,2, Pascal Le Masson1 & Benoît Weil1
1. MINES ParisTech, PSL University, Centre for Management Science (CGS), i3 UMR CNRS, 60 Boulevard St Michel, 75006 Paris, France1
2. Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI), 15 rue des Minimes, 92677 Courbevoie CEDEX, France
Free full text source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120782
ABSTRACT:
The paper suggests a new taxonomy of knowledge search modes to describe the creative process of new invention design, in particular how firms combine knowledge components from their own knowledge base—taking into account both the components and the structures of knowledge bases—with those from newly acquired or newly internally developed. Using network theory techniques, we defined four knowledge search modes: (1) refinement, (2) clustering, (3) absorption and (4) recomposition. We conducted an exploratory study on the oil & gas industry, reviewing 50,776 utility patents filed by 16 major firms between 1989 and 2016. The results showed, first, that firms relied to varying extents on different knowledge search modes in their invention design processes. Second, reviewing the technological originality of the designed inventions showed that simply absorbing new knowledge components, without major changes in knowledge base structure, was associated with low technological originality, but constituted one of the main knowledge search modes used by the analyzed firms. In contrast, major changes in knowledge base structure favored technological originality, with or without new knowledge components, but were nevertheless the least used mode. Understanding organizational learning practices associated with the phenomena described here can foster innovation performance in firms.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Oil & gas firms are heterogeneous in their knowledge search practices for designing inventions.
Firm’s knowledge expertise should be bridged to design original inventions.
New knowledge not bridged with firm’s expertise negatively affect originality.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: We would like to thanks B. Cabanes (MINES ParisTech – PSL University), C. Sternberger (INPI), N. Sennequier (INPI), F. Caillaud (WIPO), C. Vahlibay (MINES ParisTech—PSL University), G. de Rassenfosse (EPFL), M. Wustmans (Bonn University), M. Chebre, J. Luo (IDC), S. Sarica (IDC) and the participants of the Data & Algorithms for Science, Technology and Innovation Studies Conference organized by EPO and KU Leuven for their useful insights in relation to this research project.
FUNDING: This work was supported by the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI) [collaborative Ph.D. (CIFRE scheme) grant number 2018/0255] and the Chair of Design Theory and Methods for Innovation (DTMI) of MINES ParisTech – PSL University.
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Google® Better!
Jean Steinhardt served as Librarian, Aramco Services, Engineering Division, for 13 years. He now heads Jean Steinhardt Consulting LLC, producing the same high quality research that he performed for Aramco.

Follow Jean’s blog at: http://desulf.blogspot.com/  for continuing tips on effective online research
Email Jean at research@jeansteinhardtconsulting.com  with questions on research, training, or anything else
Visit Jean’s Web site at http://www.jeansteinhardtconsulting.com/  to see examples of the services we can provide