UN 2030 Agenda

Below, we briefly outline how our work supports each of these areas:

1.         Economic Growth, Environmental Sustainability

Academic work executed by Borderless Renewables on strategies for accelerating sustainability transitions creates a pathway for ‘an expedited’ transformation of industrial systems. It departs from an industrial model built on the prototype of natural resource exploitation and a legal framework designed to protect rents generated from it to a decentralised renewable energy-powered model expanding through complex system notions. Substantial evidence demonstrates that the natural resource (fossil fuel) exploitative system took over seven decades to establish. It is characterized by a gradual build-up of infrastructure and market adaptation within traditional, singular industry approaches designed on the classical physics knowledge available at the system design stage. This lengthy and objective expansion has ensured that it is embedded in the industrial structure and human lifestyles and cultures assimilated with it.

Consequently, system fundamentals and system creation practices on a prototype of natural resource exploitation are embedded in our thinking, background, culture and lifestyles. This has occurred through various mechanisms, one of them being education.  The leaders in the global oil industry, monopolizing the energy market (Prasad & Mir, 2002), simultaneously laid the theoretical foundations for business schools and exerted control over their curriculum and research, for example, by financing them (Lubinski & Wadhwani, 2020; Lubinski, 2018). Communities and leaders educated on the practices of natural resource exploitation, are using this knowledge base to re-engineer an industrial system in an attempt for it to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. But they are using a narrow knowledge, embedded in them through, for example, a targeted education, and based on the principles of economic value exploitation from natural resources. This poses numerous challenges to sustainability transitions. Firstly, using this knowledge and practices risks re-creating exploitative models. Secondly, it poses a timing risk. It took over seven decades to design the industrial system on the principles of oil. Attempting to replicate this lengthy timeframe to sustainability transitions is not feasible, given the urgent alerts of the current environmental crisis. This highlights the need for a different approach, one that is faster.

Below we explain how we will tackle both, an embedded knowledge incompatible with sustainability and a timing problem to sustainability transitions:

Firstly, we decoupled a scholarly dependence on the system of natural resource exploitation in strategic management scholarship on the foundational, root level. This is needed to stop an academic practice from continuing to evolve theories built on the wrong foundation.  Such theories continue to evolve through incremental theoretical developments (Fisher & Aguinis, 2017) driven by an academic reward system designed to incentivize this approach. This continues to enlarge resource exploitative research and curriculum further.

The Policy Club departed from this model, followed by most business schools, choosing instead a different path. We departed not alone, but in collaboration with other scientific disinclines, such as physics and sustainability transitions policy. One might ask: What is this different approach, and how could a departure from the abundant knowledge base of a natural resource-exploitative economy have been achieved? Our approach utilized the historical method, through which knowledge from classical to quantum mechanics was leapfrogged, but not incrementally elaborated, this is a thought experiment (TE). A work by Aguinis et al. (2022), a guideline for using TE in organisational studies, gave birth to this method to be empirically accepted in social studies such as management as an enabler to transcend from natural resource contaminated scholarship to an alternative scholarship that is aligned with sustainability transitions. The results of our empirical study indicate the emergence of an alternative, a (dynamic) system-based scholarship.

It has several implications for sustainability transitions.  The first implication is that it stops utilising oil & gas as an energy source and thus stops exploiting it for that usage purpose. Secondly, it decouples the scholarship from the resource (matter) to remove further exploitation of other natural resources other than those which have been already extracted.

Many humans engage in profit-generation practices to compete with each other and often, to satisfy. Therefore, thirdly, our study derives to economic model in which people can continue to compete through organisations. It offers a profit generation framework from decarbonised electricity.  Importantly, the competition is based on the creation and systematic positioning of sustainability intermediaries which transfers the economic value from traditional oil-based sectors (economy) to networks stimulating innovation and deployment of more sustainable electricity. It will continue to become more sustainable by economic resource amplification in these parts of a system. As funds shift to these parts of a system, they compete in the creation of the most profitable intermediary by allocating funds for R&D and, hence, enabling innovation to drive sustainability transition.

Therefore, we went further and explored how the alternative scholarship – a (dynamic) system-based management scholarship, spills over to public policy and practice to accelerate sustainability transitions. To repeat, replicating the traditional industrial model, which relies on knowledge of exploiting a physical matter (natural resources), would demand decades for linear system expansions, significant economic resources, and extensive multi-stakeholder commitments. Such efforts require a unifying driving force with a long-term commitment, akin to the oil cartel or the “Seven Sisters” in the historical industrial oil model. Instead, we advocate for leaving these outdated practices behind and re-engineering a system leveraging knowledge emerging in quantum physics and complex systems disciplines (which was not available to the classical world governing natural resources). Empirical findings in public policy reveal that “brokers” — intermediaries— play a critical role in being key catalysts that speed up sustainability transitions (Hodson et al. 2013; Kivimaa et al., 2019); by linking networks into a complex system (Trofimova-Elliot et al., 2025). In turn, complex systems theory complements this understanding with a potential for insights into systematically reconfiguring these networks to achieve the desired socio-technical transitions (Mercure et al., 2016).

Although often small and non-profitable, technological brokers play a pivotal role in driving sustainability transitions by redistributing economic value from oil-dependent networks to more sustainable ones. For instance, Nio Inc. exemplifies this role by redirecting value from the traditional automotive sector to interconnected sustainable sectors, such as energy storage, e-mobility, and digitalization. By bridging traditionally incompatible networks, these brokers create and expand components of a complex and dynamic system. The dynamism of this system is reflected in its adaptive and evolving nature.

Brokers contribute significantly to several objectives of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly by facilitating the adoption of decentralized clean energy models that empower local communities and reduce reliance on centralized, fossil-fuel-based systems, thereby lowering environmental impacts and advancing energy equity. They drive economic value redistribution from resource-intensive industries to more sustainable sectors like renewable energy. By linking diverse networks, brokers create resilient, adaptive systems for the systematic enlargement of sustainability systems. The Policy Club enhances their effectiveness by promoting public-private collaboration, ensuring policy support and resource availability on a scale needed to accelerate transitions.

2)         Social Inclusion and Equity, and Resilience and Adaptation

Brokers facilitating the adoption of decentralized clean energy models contribute significantly to Social Inclusion and Equity as well as Resilience and Adaptation. These models emphasize localized energy generation and conversion, where energy sources and their transformation into power or heat are owned and managed by individual consumers or enterprises near production and consumption points. This decentralized approach contrasts with conventional centralized systems dominated by large-scale energy producers and distributors, redistributing economic value from monopolistic entities, such as OPEC members and traditional intermediaries, to a broader base of enterprises and individuals. By fostering mechanisms like direct energy ownership and community-driven enterprises, this model democratizes wealth distribution, empowering local communities and enabling greater economic participation. The elimination of commission-charging brokers and monopolistic intermediaries from the system. This transformation enhances resilience by enabling individuals and communities to meet their basic energy needs independently, reducing reliance on external suppliers and increasing adaptability to environmental and economic shocks.

The Policy Club bridges public and private sectors to provide resources that support the development, evolution, and sustainability of technological brokers on scale needed to facilitate transitions toward sustainable systems. Additionally, it focuses on R&D for the emergence of brokers in networks critical to decarbonization.

Our first focus is hard-to-abate industries. Hard-to-abate industries account for 30 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and there is currently no commercialised technology available to decarbonise them, other than hydrogen. Over EUR 3.9 trillion per year until 2050 is required to commercialise, for example, clean hydrogen production. Given the limited availability of interest and funding on this scale, decarbonisation through sustainability brokers—creating commercial value in networks that integrate decarbonisation technologies and their application to unrelated and diverse industries, including various service sectors—becomes critical.

We invite you to join us as an Executive Member and gain exclusive insights into the next trillion-dollar technological configuration. To Nominate an Executive Member, please complete a short form.

As part of the selection process, nominated Executive Members will be asked to complete a confidential personality assessment before their membership can be confirmed, ensuring alignment with our board’s mission. We look forward to welcoming distinguished members who share our commitment to a responsible future.

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Limitations: Powering digitalisation through increased deployment of currently matured renewable technologies increases natural resource exploitation. Whilst natural resource exploitation to power digitalisation is smaller than utilising fossil fuels as an energy source, it remains exploitative.  Knowledge emerging in quantum physics, materials sciences and other disciplines is expected to remove the remains of natural resource exploitation from the economic model.