The year 2022 was a transformative year for the energy landscape in Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pressured Europe to remarkably accelerate the implementation of renewable energy. Solar and wind power generated about 22% of its electricity for the first time in 2022, pulling ahead of fossil gas with 20%, according to the European Electricity Review 2023. It proves that it is possible to accelerate the transformation to net zero, but we all need to do better.

Cleantech development is a once-in-an-eraopportunity for Nordic countries to usesustainability as an innovation strategy& achieve a long-lasting strategic positioningthat will allow Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Finland and Iceland to prosper in the future.

ABSENT LEADERSHIP IN TECHNOLOGY,

INNOVATION & KNOWLEDGE 

 

The race to net zero is not just a race to fulfil the 2015 Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5C. It is the global race for leadership in technology, innovation and knowledge. Because the competitive advantage of cracking cleantech will be immense. An estimate from the International Energy Agency (IEA) places the global market for cleantech at $870 billion by 2030, surpassing the oil market’s value. Countries won’t be rich just because they are located on oil-rich soil; they will be rich due to their ability to attract talent, retain knowledge, accelerate innovation and scale solutions in cleantech.

Environmental challenges cannot be solved with quick fixes and the countries and organisations that start developing the right agile capabilities now, will have the advantages of learning and testing faster to produce better knowledge, in short, they will be agile in cleantech.

Currently, Nordic countries have a shared vision of a carbon-neutral region expressed in the Declaration on Nordic Carbon Neutrality signed on January 2019, but more recent reports such as the BCG Nordic Net Zero show that despite the progress, nordic countries are not on track and current policies leave about 80 million tonnes CO2 unaccounted for. Simply put, innovation in clean technologies needs to accelerate, otherwise, the Nordic countries won’t make it.

IN COMES RAPID LEARNING CYCLES 

We need tools and frameworks that will help cleantech teams to manage work more efficiently and faster and make better decisions based on knowledge to deliver the highest quality product within the time constraints that the world faces. Rapid Learning Cycles is a framework that brings all the benefits of agile to the physical world without the specificities of software development.

Environment sustainability is a very real & tangible

challenge, we cannot program or digitalize our

way out of this.

The core difference between Rapid Learning Cycles (RLC) and most other Agile methodologies is that RLC organizes around knowledge, not tasks. In cleantech development and domains like it, decisions have lasting consequences and changing them late is extremely expensive and takes time that the world does not have. The way to achieve agility is to make good decisions that stick within a time flow that supports building the knowledge needed to make decisions with higher confidence. 

Rapid Learning Cycles shift the focus from traditional waterfall project management to a structured learning process to uncover problems early and make better decisions. The goal is to maintain flexibility as long as possible and make decisions based on the best information available; at the same time, the team and management are aligned on what needs to be done.

As the IEA reports that it is critical to ensure that near zero cleantech is implemented in production lines in the next investment cycle, we need Rapid Learning Cycles, a tried and tested agile methodology to manage innovation under high-uncertainty, ideal for innovation and R&D in the development of physical cleantech solutions.

Today Rapid Learning Cycles is used in medical devices in the pharma industry, the development of solar panels in the energy sector, and to the management of animals in farming. A robust framework that has a proven track record around the world.

As shown in the example of how the war in Ukraine hastened Europe’s transition to renewable energy, acceleration is possible. Stepping up the development and deployment of low-emission technologies by establishing an agile framework such as Rapid Learning Cycles will be critical to put the industrial sector on the path to net zero targets.