'Techno-economics' will drive irreversible shift to clean energy, says think-tank boss
Transition Accelerator CEO Moe Kabbara. Photo courtesy: Transition Accelerator
Moe Kabbara has spent nearly 15 years navigating the labyrinth of politics, industrial policy and economics of Canada’s evolving energy transition. But the chief executive of the Transition Accelerator, a Calgary-headquartered think-tank tasked with charting the country's path to net-zero, says his epiphany came not at a high-level summit, but in a spreadsheet.
Watching lithium-ion battery costs fall precipitously in recent years as wind and solar power costs fell below new-build fossil gas, Kabbara said he grasped the “fundamental truth” that the world was in the midst of an industrial revolution and that the shift away from oil and gas was quickly becoming “irreversible.”
“When I started working on batteries and seeing the costs going down year over year over year, the reality of the transformation underway became undeniable,” Kabbara recalled in a far-ranging interview with Canada’s National Observer.
He watched electric vehicles go from a market curiosity — just one in 50 vehicles sold globally eight years ago — to capturing a third of automotive sales worldwide today.
“For me, it was really the idea that there is an industrial revolution happening," he said, driven not by the “moral persuasion” of decarbonizing economies, but because markets are “being presented with a better option.”
The bottom line, according to Kabbara: “If a technology is superior from a cost of performance perspective, it is eventually going to win out.”
That hard-nosed realization continues to shape how Kabbara leads the 50-person Transition Accelerator, whose name doubles as its mission.
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