Today I'm flying to COP28. Here's why.

As I write this, I'm on a plane en route to Dubai to attend the 28th Conference of Parties on climate change, COP28. Aviation contributes to climate change because it burns fossil fuels and is a significant source of global greenhouse gas emissions which the previous 27 years of COP meeting cycles have failed to make much of a dent in. COP28 is being hosted by a major oil exporter, which stands to gain (at least in the short term) from our continued use of fossil fuels.

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So yes, I understand the irony.?

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As the chorus of shrill exchanges between the supporters and the critics of the actors on this particular stage rises in volume, it seems strangely appropriate that here in the UK we are fast approaching panto season.

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?For those unfamiliar with this peculiarly British tradition, pantomimes are the UK's most revered seasonal dramatic art form, and least successful cultural export ("OH NO THEY'RE NOT!")

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Pantomimes provide a couple of hours of light relief from the weary complexity of everyday life, instead portraying familiar tales of unambiguous moral clarity?with garishly colourful caricatures of wholesome goodness and unabashed wickedness, slapstick humour, and occasional dashes of wry social commentary – all punctuated by well-rehearsed sing-along show-tunes. Audience participation is encouraged.

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By now you can probably see where I'm going with this.?

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On stage, a global community of nations joining hands with engaged citizens to bring prosperity, health and happiness to one and all through a shared and noble quest for sustainable development. But ominous music begins to play as corporations and oil producers emerge from the wings, conspiring to thwart the community’s plans and profit from their heinous treachery.

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The difference, of course, is that in reality there is real peril, the outcome is far from certain and there is that weary complexity to deal with.

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It’s real.

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Climate change is real, it’s severe, and it is already causing harm on a global scale because of average global temperature rises that appear to be at the top end of recent model-based predictions. The human consequences of even apparently modest single digit global temperature rises read like a roll-call for the apocalypse: life-threatening heat-waves, hurricanes, wild fires, floods, water shortages, food shortages, disease and war.

The wider economic consequences of climate change are often less acute, can be more nebulous, but are often more pervasive than the most obvious direct economic costs of headline-grabbing climate-related natural disasters. Few people can have failed to notice the rising cost of food, energy and just about everything else including borrowing since 2020. How much of this is directly or indirectly related to climate change is up for debate but remember we’re only just getting started. Most of the mitigation and adaptation costs of climate change lie in the future and include the costs to build out renewable energy infrastructure and work around the intermittency challenges as the share of renewable wind and solar rises.

Twice so far this week in the frigid depths of our current Dunkelflaute, our half-hourly Octopus Agile price of grid electricity at home has risen well over ￡0.50 per kWh for hours on end. So much for ‘electrify everything’. We turned off the air source heat pump and lit up the wood burner (we’re fortunate to have a near limitless supply of scrap wood, but still..)

Possible outcomes?

Where we go from here depends very much on chance, whether in the long term the roll of the climate dice ends up giving us a something as low as one degree Celsius of warming (unlikely?) or as high as six degrees (unlikely?). Climate systems are complex which makes such outcomes hard to predict with any certainty within this kind of range. But the mechanisms by which our actions can mitigate or exacerbate climate change are well understood, unequivocal, and as certain as science can be. One way or the other, we are loading the dice. Given that one degree is seen as business-as-usual for many people, and six degrees would most likely be end-of-civilisation stuff, it would seem prudent to lean into this one a bit.

Even with today’s relatively modest one to two degrees of accumulated warming, the effects of climate change are already producing extreme effects that are, like so much else in the world, unevenly distributed. One of the greatest injustices of climate change is that many of the developing countries most exposed to climate change effects are least able to cover the economic costs of mitigation and adaptation compared to the wealthier countries who produced most of the accumulated historic emissions.

For both reasons, action on climate change is seen by many as a moral imperative.

So, what does this have to do with Libertine, COP28 and the A380 I’m presently winging along in?

Libertine makes Linear Generator technology. Linear Generators are a new category of power generator that offer the efficiency of fuel cells with the cost and durability of conventional internal combustion engines, ultra-low engine-out emissions, and the flexibility to use a wide range of renewable fuels. Clean power from renewable fuels can complement intermittent renewable power generation, and can complement battery electrification in transport, accelerating the pace of decarbonisation and powertrain electrification.? Libertine has been developing Linear Generator platform technology on customer-led programmes for over a decade. Since 2020 we have been working to develop our next generation performance validation prototypes through motored operation and combustion testing, and in 2022 we began a collaboration with Ashok Leyland working towards vehicle integration and demonstration in their commercial vehicle portfolio. Our mission is to bring forward the widespread use of Linear Generators in transport and distributed power generation. Our vision when this task is successful: Global energy abundance. More on that later.

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For the next few days, I will be speaking to and hearing from companies from around the world who share Libertine’s vision, who see the challenge of climate change as we do, and who see Linear Generators as part of the solution.

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“Well of course oil companies will talk to you, they want to carry on burning their stuff.”

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Most pantomimes have a village idiot. Am I being hopelessly naive?

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Before I dig into this one, some home truths.

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In the UK, every major political party and most public discourse is aligned, at least qualitatively, on the nature of the challenge of climate change, and that Something Must Be Done.

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After that it gets more complex, because doing anything that has a chance of working, or at least loading the dice in our favour, is going to be really expensive. Not only that, but working out exactly what should be done, when and by whom is fraught with uncertainty that takes time to resolve. And the later we leave it, the higher the costs for mitigation and adaptation will be because the pace at which global GHG emissions will need to fall to stay on track with say two degrees of warming become precipitously (maybe unfeasibly) fast.

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We could leave it to our politicians to pick the technology winners and ban everything else, or at least tilt the tables enough that the market rolls onto the right spot like we did with leaded petrol and CFCs (“HOORAY!!”) or compact fluorescent light bulbs and diesel cars (“BOOO!!”). The trouble is, UK politicians have a strong interest to get themselves re-elected by making choices that appeal to the immediate interests of voters within each term of Parliament, and push out the more painful choices and their consequences for someone else to deal with later (as Homer Simpson observed, I don’t envy that guy).

At this point in a pantomime, it would be customary for a fairy godmother to descend on wires and say something like “I’m from the future, we solved climate change. Here’s the list of exactly what worked, do this quickly and ignore everything else” (I’m looking at you, @Bill Gates). Sadly, on LinkedIn whilst there are plenty of futurists seemingly determined to play this part, none of them are actually from the future so far as I’m aware.

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So, in the UK we are stuck with alignment around the moral imperative to act on climate change, neither the economic means nor the time to try everything, some uncertainty about what judicious combination of actions is actually going to work best, and a political system that makes meaningful actions on climate change unfeasibly painful for our politicians to fully embrace any time soon.

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Isn’t that a cop-out?

The Independent recently wrote that COP28 might “turn into an expo for the fossil fuel industry”, citing the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s plan to increase production from four million to five million barrels of oil a day by 2027. The Guardian suggested that COP28 was an opportunity for the UAE to “launder its international reputation”. These views regard petrostate promises to invest at scale in renewables as insincere.

But real change is happening, driven by the sincere self-interest of petrostates to preserve and grow their economies beyond the horizon of global fossil fuel use, however near or far that may be. The business strategists of the oil industry incumbents know that time, ultimately, is not on their side and they must prepare a winning hand in green energy technology or lose out to the Blue Ocean Strategies of the renewable energy disruptors. Today’s petrostates seek to preserve their comparative advantage in energy supply even as the world shifts towards renewable energy sources.

The laudable mission of the Saudi & Middle East Green Initiatives is to deliver climate action, energy security and economic prosperity. ?Focus areas for delivery include investment in the green transition and global collaboration.

The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have set net zero targets for either 2050 or 2060, and are targeting up to 50% renewable energy contribution to the electricity mix by 2030.

According to The Sunday Times, Qatar plans to invest billions into the UK, with a focus on green energy research and development, via the non-profit Qatar Foundation. This is expected to include a partnership with Rolls-Royce for technical expertise and a research and development site, possibly in Bristol. Of the ￡4 billion investment planned, ￡1.5 billion will be used to fund the development of new green energy ideas, aiming to create "unicorn" companies worth $1 billion.

Last year I had the pleasure of presenting Libertine's technology at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The world-leading energy technology research at KAUST aims to?support Saudi Arabia’s energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

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Like KAUST, the Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS?(UTP) in Malaysia (which also happens to be one of Libertine’s first customers) is another striking campus-style university, situated in the north of Malaysia about two hours north of Kuala Lumpur. Its soaring Norman Foster architecture and a huge solar panel installation are a statement of purpose in glass and chrome that is shared by KAUST: To attract the world's best academic minds to support the energy transition from petrostate to renewable-energy superpower.

This transition may take decades, and that is an uncomfortable prospect given the cumulative impact of emissions on climate change.? But the accumulated wealth from the fossil fuel industry is providing the means to develop and deploy renewable energy technologies and spread the benefits globally.

We’re nearly at Dubai.

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The UK has clear climate ambition and an array of advanced clean technologies to offer. Gulf states need advanced clean technologies to deliver on their socio-economic transitions from fossil fuel economies to renewable energy leaders. There are real deals to be done.

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Make no mistake, we are in the grip of a climate emergency. The house is on fire. And this analogy is perhaps most fitting, because in such situations the first course of action is to make sure people get to safety. Not putting out the fire, which is important, but secondary. And certainly not debating the pro’s and con’s of water vs. CO2 extinguishers, dry powder, foam, blankets, halon gas suppression systems, or fire-proof AI robots. (At this point I’m going to resist inflaming the debate further by throwing in the possibility that the fire was caused by a battery when it was obviously a diesel Range Rover).

On with the show.

If you’re at COP28 and want to meet with me to discuss the role of Linear Generators in a renewable energy future, let me know.