From Ambition to Reality: Four things you need to know about standardization in the journey to net zero
Within this decade, standards and standardized designs can become widespread even in complex industries. Governments can ready supply chains to reduce lead times to less than six months for the most complex equipment. And schedule benchmarks can continuously be improved.
All this can be done, but how? From Ambition to Reality, our thought leadership paper series in partnership with Princeton University’s Andlinger Centre for Energy and the Environment, explains what we need to do to make this a reality.
The series proposes five key shifts in thinking about and delivering projects on the road to net zero. The third shift, standardization, outlines how projects must move to a system where we standardize as many aspects of a design as possible, and then replicate that design many times. Currently, most projects are bespoke. Each time, a design must be developed and put through a lengthy approval process. Each has its own equipment and materials procurement schedules. Each time, we go back to square one. Each time, we waste time. So, if we could use a successful design as a blueprint – to be cloned again and again – running programs of projects in parallel, we could dramatically increase how much gets built, and how quickly. An aspect that’s critical if want to achieve net zero on time. We explore four things our industry must do to scale and speed up our journey through standardization.1. Develop a global set of design standards
“This is not just an infrastructure challenge. It’s as much about the standards we use to design and build. For example, we won’t achieve the speed and scale needed for ambitious wind power capacity targets if we’re taking the technologies and infrastructure successfully deployed in Europe, and then rejecting and redesigning them to satisfy alternative standards in the US,” says Chris Greig, Senior Researcher at Princeton University and co-author of the From Ambition to Reality series.
Chris Greig
Senior Researcher, Princeton University2. Readying the supply chain
3. Sourcing enough raw materials
When standardizing designs and projects, one hurdle to overcome will be around the supply of raw materials. The required speed and scale of deployment required by the energy transition will cause demand for raw materials to skyrocket.
“Critical minerals supply chains have several vulnerabilities. Many of these resources are concentrated in a handful of countries, so geopolitical tensions can threaten supply,” says Greig.