Charting the Energy Transition: A Strategic View to 2050
Developed in partnership with IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization, this radar serves as a proof-of-concept platform to visualize and compare energy technologies that can support global decarbonization and climate resilience by 2050.
Designed for internal stakeholders only, the initiative leverages IEEE’s Technical Roadmap (TR-123) and expert network to inform a structured, interactive tool that offers a systems-level view of the technologies required to meet each country's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Built on Envisioning’s latest radar engine, the platform allows users to toggle between five countries—Brazil, China, Germany, Nigeria, and the United States—revealing how priorities shift by region and sector.
Technologies are grouped into five functional clusters: Renewable Energy Integration, Reliability & Resilience, Grid Edge Technologies, Advanced Computation, and Cybersecurity. Each signal is scored across multiple standardized metrics, including TRL, policy maturity, cost outlook, workforce readiness, and social acceptance. These assessments were co-developed with IEEE specialists and grounded in high-quality sources, supporting experts, policymakers, and planners in making more informed, systems-aware decisions for a sustainable energy future.
- Developed comparative foresight radar in partnership with IEEE.
- Grounded in the IEEE Power & Energy Society’s TR-123 Technical Roadmap.
- Powered by Envisioning’s new customizable visualization tool.
- Visualizes 27 technologies from the PES Technical Roadmap.
- Applied backcasting to connect NDCs to enabling tech and policies.
- Features 7 custom metrics assessed by IEEE specialists, complementing TRL.
- Enables country-to-country comparison: Brazil, China, Germany, Nigeria, USA.
- Focused on decarbonization, grid resilience, and climate-aligned innovation.
To convert the roadmap into a visual tool, Envisioning restructured the underlying data and narrative. The project translated a complex policy and engineering document into an accessible digital platform, enabling users to interact with the content by country, cluster, or metric. This layered architecture allows both expert and non-expert audiences to navigate and understand the data with ease.
Beyond standard TRL evaluation, the radar introduced seven additional metrics tailored for energy and infrastructure planning: NDC Impact Fit, Policy & Regulatory Alignment, Social Acceptance, Skills and Workforce Availability, Build & Run Cost (CAPEX + OPEX), Delivered Energy Cost per kWh (LCOE/LCOS), and Funding Opportunities. These were assessed by IEEE specialists to ensure relevance and comparability across countries. Envisioning supported the methodology development, formatting, and interface integration to make the data accessible through a visual layer.
The radar is enhanced by an embedded AI assistant, trained on the tool’s database. It supports natural language queries, enabling users to explore technology definitions, compare national trajectories, and uncover insights across the dataset. This feature encourages active exploration and deepens user engagement with complex energy topics.