Roberto Bocca, who heads the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Energy and Materials, tells Juliet Mann that he sees positive progress in the fight against climate change.
This is despite Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris accord to limit temperature rises.
#wef #davos #energy #climatechange
This is despite Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris accord to limit temperature rises.
#wef #davos #energy #climatechange
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00:00When you arrived here in Davos, you launched that WEF report outlining some of the business
00:04and economic cases for the green transition. Outline those key findings for me.
00:10Well, fundamentally, if you look at energy transition, we shouldn't look at it only from
00:15a perspective of an environmental dimension, but really a business dimension, an opportunity also
00:21to bring prosperity and growing the economy. And so when you think of the business and economic
00:27case, it's very clear that there is a strong economic case for an energy transition,
00:32but sometimes the business case is weaker because some of the benefits go somewhere else. So that's
00:37where we have to bridge the two, the economic case, environmental case, and so on, together
00:42with the business case. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres used his platform here in Davos
00:47to scold the business community for backsliding on green commitments. How do you think the
00:54conversation has maybe moved the dial here at the World Economic Forum? I think the conversation
00:59when it comes to energy transition has been very mature, and I would say very encouraging from
01:04that perspective, because we are talking about energy transition through the three dimensions
01:08of the energy system, that is sustainability, security and affordability and equity, as
01:12opposite to only the green transition. So I also think that the energy transition can progress
01:17faster if we really take into account the three. So I personally think there are still a lot of
01:24things happening in the energy transition when you look at it broadly, and commitment one things,
01:29but action are still happening. And we have seen in some of our report, we have seen, for example,
01:33that the hard to abate sector have diminished or reduced their emission in the last couple of
01:39years. That is very good news, because these are hard to abate. So it's difficult in the industrial
01:43sectors. There's been a lot of talk here about the momentum that industrial clusters are creating
01:50in the green transition and accelerating that journey towards net zero. What do you think
01:56people are learning from that? Yeah, this is a very good point, because if when you look at the
02:00industrial zone, this is where really big part of the energy transition is happening, because
02:05companies are co-located and can have shared infrastructure and find synergy among themselves.
02:10Some of these clusters, we have now 33 clusters in our network. Some of these clusters were before
02:15collaborating, but more commercially. Now they're also collaborating to increase the productivity
02:20of the cluster, reduce the emission and create more jobs. So it's really, really important. And
02:25I think a lot of the energy transition will happen and is happening already in these clusters.
02:29That's interesting. You're talking there cross sector rather than just within sectors, because
02:33of the way that industrial clusters operate. This is a very important point, because some of
02:37the commitment you were referring earlier were maybe at company level. But here is not only
02:42companies, not only sector, but it's cross sector. And I would say also multi-stakeholder. It's beyond
02:47the business is where you work also with the policymaker to do the right regulation that
02:51allow those investment that then create the progress. Now within those industrial clusters
02:57at ports, for example, and all around the discussions here at Davos, there's been a lot
03:01of conversation about energy, green energy. Where do you see the most progress happening?
03:07Well, you're talking about port. You know, if you think that when you look at the energy
03:10transition, it means we will have more diversified energy mix. There will be more energy in the mix
03:15going forward. And how you connect the different parts of the world through the ports very often
03:20is very important. So it's also important that and the progress we have seen is really also in
03:25the conversation of which infrastructure we are putting across the world in different parts of
03:30the world, because that's very important. But what progress has there been made towards
03:34getting to that multi-fuel future? Well, the progress is on the fact of
03:39having a coordinated approach to it, because of course, if your port is going to have an ammonia
03:46infrastructure and the port across the ocean is not having an ammonia infrastructure, it's really
03:50difficult to trade. So in the world of today, that is a bit more complex. It's very important
03:55that this coordination still happens. You're very positive. You're enthusiastic about the
03:59conversations that have been happening, but it can't help that President Donald Trump,
04:03in the first few days of office, pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords.
04:09Were you all just thinking, oh, my goodness, now what? Yeah, I mean, climate one element,
04:16if you look at some of the things he even said yesterday here, you talk about infrastructure
04:21more in the energy emergency mention he made, there was this element of infrastructure.
04:26Infrastructure is a fundamental point. We need more transmission line and grids if we want to
04:32deploy energy. So I think you can look at this in different way. Energy has always been part of
04:38geopolitical challenges and tension. I think we are just in another phase and the world will face
04:43it. As you said, I'm quite positive on it. Let's talk about AI, another big theme here
04:49at the World Economic Forum. It could be transformative, certainly in the energy
04:54sector, in the new energy sector, but it comes with big challenges too, doesn't it?
04:58It does. And this is exactly the point. Many people talk about what energy has to do for AI,
05:03i.e. we need much more energy for the data center and so on. But few, here there were a lot of
05:09discussion, but in general, few are talking about what AI can do for energy. That is your point,
05:13is AI can really help in creating more efficiency. And the speed of analyzing data and
05:20then elaborating that can really help both the old system to be more efficient, but also
05:26creating of new system. We had a conversation in this day on fusion and how AI and fusion can
05:32be designed one around each other as opposite to use old technology when you think of fusion,
05:37that is the next future generation of nuclear, if you like. Sounds like you've had some good
05:41conversations here at Dallas. What have you learned from this year's annual meeting? And
05:47what is it going to take to turn all of this talk into qualitative action?
05:53This is a great question. If you think of what we do in the forum, the other 51
05:57weeks of the year is really trying to bring forward this collaboration, this conversation
06:02and these topics to implementation. For example, we had a conversation here with the G20,
06:08the ministers in the space of energy were here, so we were having a conversation on how we can
06:13support and effectively bridge between the G20 of last year in Brazil, where we have also some
06:18support to the G20 of this year. So we are really, there is a community of people that
06:24come together to help in keeping the topics on the ground, if you like, to make them happen.
06:30Roberto Bocca, thank you very much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.