New Whitepaper Offers Roadmap for Business Leaders Navigating the Global Energy Transition

In a new whitepaper, titled “Navigating the Energy Transition: Core Dimensions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” Georgetown McDonough’s Business of Sustainability Initiative has released the findings from its 2024 Leadership and Innovation Workshop. The report examines the multifaceted challenges and emerging opportunities within the global energy transition, from financing and policy to equitable access and inclusive innovation.

The 2024 workshop convened thought leaders from across finance, government, academia, and industry sectors to discuss how the transition to clean energy can be accelerated in an equitable, secure, and economically viable way. This convening follows the success of the 2023 workshop and whitepaper on Voluntary Carbon Markets, expanding the Business of Sustainability Initiative’s ongoing mission to foster cross-sector collaboration for systemic impact.

“The findings in this whitepaper demonstrate how a business approach to sustainability produces strategic and implementable solutions for change within the global energy transition,” said Vishal Agrawal, director of the initiative and Henry J. Blommer Family Endowed Chair in Sustainable Business. “In particular, the candid conversations from our workshop helped us to identify four key areas of progress.”

Four Dimensions of Energy Transition

Last year’s workshop explored four core dimensions essential to understanding and accelerating the clean energy transition:

Financing the Transition

Participants identified persistent barriers to funding renewable energy projects, including high upfront costs, rising interest rates, and regulatory fragmentation. Despite growing investor appetite, risk perception and long payback periods were acknowledged as hurdles. The report highlights the importance of innovative financial instruments such as blended finance, tax equity, and region-specific incentives to attract long-term capital and enable equitable deployment across both developed and emerging markets.

Driving the Demand

With global energy needs surging due to electrification, AI-driven data centers, and economic growth, demand-side management emerged as a central challenge. The whitepaper emphasizes the need for credible frameworks, modernized infrastructure, and business models that align growth with sustainability. Innovations like virtual power plants, microgrids, and storage-as-a-service were highlighted as promising solutions.

Facilitating the Transition Through Policy

The group underscored the critical role of coherent, scalable policy to enable rapid deployment. Outdated permitting systems and inconsistent regulations have created interconnection bottlenecks, leaving 95% of renewable capacity waiting for grid access at times. Participants called for streamlined, durable policy innovation and deeper engagement between policymakers and local communities to balance efficiency with inclusivity.

Ensuring a Transition for All

A recurring theme was equity. With one in seven U.S. households experiencing energy poverty, panelists discussed the need for inclusive electrification, accessible assistance programs, and participatory governance to ensure that the benefits of clean energy reach underrepresented and underserved populations. The report stresses that equity should be a design principle, not an afterthought.

Building a Resilient and Inclusive Energy Future

This whitepaper concludes that achieving a successful energy transition requires more than capital; its insights call for “targeted investment, audacious policy innovation, and creative collaboration across sectors and stakeholders.” Building resilient systems that balance economic opportunity with social and environmental equity will require creative partnerships across the public and private sectors.

Read the full report, authored by Michelle Kolacz (ESM’25) on behalf of the Business of Sustainability Initiative with contributions from other Georgetown graduate students.

The findings in the report were produced following a workshop in fall 2024 and are not direct proposals or policy recommendations from the Business of Sustainability Initiative at Georgetown McDonough.