Our key takeaways from CERAWeek

Q5 co-founder and partner Sharon Rice-Oxley recently attended CERAWeek, Houston’s annual energy conference. 

The two key themes for the conference were obviously energy security and supply in relation to the war in Ukraine and Energy Transition: what it’s going to take, how the industry is responding.

Here are our key takeaways from the five packed days of talks, seminars and discussions:

• One of the biggest challenges is going to be reskilling and sourcing talent with the skills necessary to manage the energy transition. The money/investment is there to be used but the big question is whether companies will be able to find the people skills they need – the view is a firm no from CERA.
• The world of offsets is likely to require significant transformation. It has not been the most ethical area of industry and is currently unregulated. Organisations that are using this as a solution should commit further diligence into understanding if their money is actually having the intended impact.
• The Energy transition needs a complete rebuild of our infrastructure. None of the world’s plants, ports and transportation systems are suitable to deal with what is coming. Again, the investment is there to rebuild so we need to pivot all the amazing major project skills that exist in the industry currently to fixing this problem.
• Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration is needed between companies, governments, think tanks, academics, institutions. This is the only way the dial is going to be shifted. The investments required are too risky for any one company to take on. It requires the industry and the innovators to really understand what is going on for all the different stakeholders: national oil companies, super majors, mid and small cap companies- all have different needs and starting points. This demands real hands-on collaboration – not just playing nice together.
• The transition is going to be expensive, and the future supply of energy will not be cheaper, in fact the opposite. Big Oil has a massive role to play and is ready, willing and able to fund the transition but it’s going to take time.
• Out of the hundreds of seminars, talks and workshops there were only two that focused on people, leadership and the required culture change to support such a interconnected and complicated transition. Given that organisations are made up of people, how they operate and how they engage both internally and externally, these are areas which require further discussion. It feels like organisation design and managing change is not yet high enough up the energy transition agenda. This is Q5’s sweet spot – where we can make a difference in the energy transition conversation.

If you would like to learn more you can watch a video Sharon shared from CERAWeek here.

Founded in 2009, Q5 is a UK-headquartered and award-winning consultancy with international offices in the US, Asia and Australia, contact jamie.scott@q5partners.com for more information.