- Back to all Speakers
- Barbara Burger
As the energy system decarbonizes, it is becoming more complex and more interconnected. Today’s emerging energy system is fundamentally different, forcing companies to compete globally. New technologies will have to be developed to meet climate ambitions, evolving energy uses, and emerging new supply chains. How will corporate structures and business models change as new opportunities, but also new threats, emerge? What new business models can scale new technologies to support decarbonization efforts? What opportunities and challenges will companies face?
Capital allocation for the energy sector has undergone a sweeping reorientation in the past two years. The shift is more complex than moving into cleantech and out of fossil fuels, incorporating increasingly sophisticated understanding of climate risk and intense engagement with shifting value within business models. Having raised huge volumes of capital for energy transition plays in the last two years, investors and their counterparts are now deploying that money into markets and capital expenditures (Capex), presaging significant shifts across the energy ecosystem. What is the current state of energy transition investing? How does the investment horizon influence sectoral focus in analyzing investments or deploying capital? Does cleantech benefit from longer investment horizons? What level of returns are currently found in cleantech or clean infrastructure? What can we expect a decade from now?
Originating in the Silicon Valley, the term “Innovation Ecosystem is the evolving set of actors, activities, and artifacts, and the institutions and relations, including complementary and substitute relations, that are important for the innovative performance of an actor or a population of actors.” Creating energy sector innovation ecosystems has been challenging due to a multitude of participants, access to capital, role of governments, and challenges scaling promising technologies. With the need to develop and scale new technologies to achieve net zero by 2050, energy innovation will be the linchpin. What are critical factors for creating successful clean energy/tech innovation centers? Where are the most successful cleantech innovation ecosystems, and what makes them successful? Does the nature of the energy system make it less receptive to new ideas and innovations? How could governments incentivize these ecosystems? How could the pace of knowledge transfer be accelerated from innovation to deployment? With future growth in energy demand and investments centered in developing countries, how can new ecosystems be created in these countries?