Scaling technology on the road to transition

Evolution of technology shaping the energy industry, critical partnerships across the entire industry and trust in data will be essential to scaling up low carbon solutions and ensuring success on the road to transition, according to a stellar panel of energy executives

Collaboration, the evolution of technology shaping the energy industry and trust in data will be essential on the road to transition success. These were among vital components identified by industry leaders discussing “exciting times” during yesterday’s Strategic Panel Scaling up technology for an efficient and sustainable transition.

While scale was a key word, most people hadn’t comprehended the size of the transition challenge, it was said. Antonio Pietri, President & CEO, AspenTech, spoke of scaled digitalisation aiding idealisation, conceptualisation and ultimately design around different pathways for sustainability.

“The use cases for customers in oil and gas, chemicals and other industries have been well understood for the last 40-50 years,” he said. “With energy transition, sustainability and decarbonisation you have a whole new set of use cases that have to be developed, whether it’s about hydrogen, incorporation of biofuels, carbon sequestration.

“The role of technology is the platform to test, to understand, not only the core process technology that will be required to achieve hydrogen at scale, for example, but also the economics“what’s going to be the potential greater return on investment.”

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chair & CEO of TechnipFMC, said his 20,000 personal were “relentlessly pursing technology around both traditional and new energy”. But he cautioned: “We have to quit looking for that one perfect technology that’s going to solve the challenge; there is no one technology. “We need to be much more open minded, and embrace many different forms of technology, different forms of energy“ we’re only going to get through by collaboration.”

Caspar Herzberg, Aveva’s CEO, said disruption of global supply chains and “the relentless focus on sustainability” had pressured the industry to decarbonise and become more efficient. “The really only solution at the centre is to digitise faster and to make use of data generated from the digitisation of assets“ that only works if that data is trusted.” Hakan Agnerall, President & CEO, Wartsila Corporation, spoke of “living in really exciting times”. “This is a transformation that will take time, decades, but a lot of stakeholders are realising we need to accelerate, to work together, because there is significant capital that will go into the transformation, also significant social aspects.”

This includes kick-back from societies against associated solutions on their doorstep as well as using existing tech better, the session heard. “You can take one approach saying we’re living in challenging times, but I would also say we are living in times where we really can set the stage for the future. The big thing is the social transformation and the capital, and this is not an easy equation.”

Sophie Hildebrand, CTO, ADNOC, touched on decarbonising existing operations and working with “great partners”. “We’re in the middle of a change and we can be scared by it,” she said. “But as CTO, I think I’ve got one of the most exciting jobs on the planet. There’s all sorts of technology that exists today, that we can scale. And things we need to work on together to help bridge the gaps.”

AWS is the largest buyer of renewable energy today, decarbonising its entire logistics and supply chain. Bill Vass, the company’s VP of Engineering, said: “Our customers, when they operate on the cloud, that’s an absolute demand we have to meet. “Also the important part of the transition, you have to make it economic or people will not accept it.”

But Vass added: “The energy industry knows more about moving molecules around and building things at scale, shipping molecules and managing molecules, than anyone else on earth. It’s gonna be very important to leverage those skills in the renewable world.”