New Transition Economics
A famous economist has found that the economic models being used to navigate our prosperity have left out one little thing, Energy, and that it is directly necessary for at least 80% of the economic activity. Energy Transition uses a new metric, Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) to ensure that energy systems are viable. This is really new, but vitally important. Learn it!
Shift Projects
Transition Engineers use a 7-step methodology in order to Flip their Perspective and trigger the creativity necessary for innovation. Our sense of innovation is much broader than looking at individual products. Transition requires changes in industry, markets, policies and behavior as well as new products.The outcome of the interdisciplinary transition innovation in management and engineering (InTIME) brainstorming process is a SHIFT PROJECT. A shift project doesn't change the world, but it shifts the product, operation, market, business... to a point that is viable within the forward operating environment. A shift project is not a fanciful story about what "we could" do. (e.g. "we could be 100% renewable by 2020"). A shift project is an actual project with a product development phase, market development, management system, financial analysis, policy framework, development of standards etc. See the growing number of example shift projects in the KNOWLEDGE Page.
The inertia that is present in existing manufacturing, marketing and supply chains means that most of our current products and man-made chemicals pose wicked problems. Disposable plastics are one of the GATE's focus areas for peer-to-peer work on transition of products.
The 7-Step Transition Engineering Approach for discovering Shift Projects