lookingforenergy.blog

This post is an opinion piece based on the following publications:

Ember – Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights 2025:
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-mid-year-insights-2025/

Reuters – Energy transition set to divide manufacturers across the Atlantic (Oct 17 2025):
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/energy-transition-set-divide-manufacturers-across-atlantic-2025-10-17/

US SIF – Indigenous Peoples’ Investor Guide:
https://www.ussif.org/news/press-release/new-investor-guide-launches-to-de-risk-energy-transition-projects-on

Carbon Pulse – Big Oil’s share of global renewable capacity:
https://carbon-pulse.com/443429/

IEA – Electricity Mid-Year Update 2025 (Executive Summary):
https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-mid-year-update-2025/executive-summary

Across boardrooms and classrooms, the energy transition has become a management problem. Electricity prices have shifted sharply across major markets over the past year. Supply chains are being rebuilt around carbon targets. Capital is moving toward technologies that only recently entered mainstream corporate plans.

In early 2025, global electricity demand rose 2.6 percent year-on-year. Solar power supplied about 83 percent of that increase, lifting the renewable share of total generation to a new high. Manufacturing costs now vary by region: European producers face higher power prices, while North American firms benefit from cheaper gas and slower policy tightening.

Investor behaviour is evolving as well. A recent guide for asset managers links Indigenous inclusion and early community engagement to lower project-finance risk. Developers that treat these factors as part of the financial model, rather than post-approval steps, tend to avoid long delays and cost inflation.

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What Business Education Adds

Through conversations with professors at Rotman and students who recently attended ClimateCatalyst (https://www.climatecap.org/climatecatalyst), it’s clear that the curriculum is evolving. Courses in finance, strategy, and operations are incorporating questions once confined to sustainability electives. Case studies now include carbon pricing, clean-tech investment models, and the financial risks of delayed transition planning. Students are asked questions that resemble real boardroom decisions:

• How to allocate capital between existing assets and emerging technology.
• How to measure value when regulation and emissions costs alter product economics.
• How governance and stakeholder relations influence funding access.

Programs aim to connect financial reasoning with technical and social variables so decisions remain contextually viable (given the current environmental landscape) once implementation begins.

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Connecting Finance, Operations, and Risk

Class exercises now model how project returns react to fuel-price changes, permitting timelines, or incentive programs. These issues define outcomes in sectors such as mining, transport, and heavy industry.

This integrated view matters because transition projects work only when finance teams understand operational limits and engineers understand financing constraints. Business education provides a space to test that coordination before it happens in practice.

Signals Worth Watching

Several indicators show how the transition is influencing business fundamentals:

• Transition-linked finance: issuance of green and sustainability-linked bonds continues to grow and now accounts for a meaningful share of new corporate debt.
• Energy-company diversification: the largest fossil-fuel producers hold roughly 1.4 percent of global renewable capacity, revealing how limited diversification remains.
• Regional competitiveness: manufacturing cost gaps are widening as power prices and regulations diverge across major economies.

These signals reveal where firms are adapting and where progress remains slow.

Why This Matters

Business education does not control the speed of decarbonization. It can, however, influence the quality of decisions inside it. Stronger financial modeling and risk assessment can reduce delays and borrowing costs. Better understanding of stakeholder dynamics can lower financing risk. For professionals moving into the field, combining technical literacy with strategic judgment is becoming essential. The transition increasingly rewards organizations that align engineering, economics, and governance in a single process – MBA programs are beginning to train for that reality.