 Jennifer Schenker, editor-in-chief of the Innovator magazine about digital transformation and I'm very pleased to be moderating the panel this morning on increasing resilience in energy systems. We have a great panel. Immediately to my right we have Jeff Radebe, who is the minister of energy from South Africa. We have Sun Zhangsheng, who is from the International Energy Forum. Anna Tribvich, who is the CEO of Singularity Grid in Germany, and Karol Papa from NL Foundation and Chen Yonggu, who is president Asia, Middle East in Africa for ABB. So this morning we're going to talk about the kind of pressures that traditional players are under from retrends, electrification, decentralization, and digitalization. At the same time they are also facing challenges in helping to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change and issues around cyber attacks and associated vulnerabilities. So against this backdrop we're going to talk about how can business and government work together to create more resilient energy systems from a global perspective. So Karla, let me kick off with you because some of the same developments that may be seen on the surface as adding vulnerability to the system can actually make them more resilient. So let's talk about how adding distributed systems to the energy grid is working out in reality. Yeah, thank you very much. It's typically, I mean people are talking about distributed generation or electric vehicles as a constraint for the network or a problem, a trouble makers for the network. It really depends on which technology you are looking at. If you look at the technology is implemented today in a certain number of countries, those two elements particularly can be actually supporting the managing of the network because the distributed generation is able today even to provide ancillary services. If you are talking about wind park or solar park in big system, they are able today to provide what a gas fire power plant would have been able to provide 10 years ago. So the distributed generation is up to the level, not only in terms of costs, you know, people are talking about the cost of solar and wind that has become a reality and a competitive, but also in supporting the system rather than making trouble in the system. There's another factor that as you all know that the renewable system are distributed. There are of small size compared to nuclear or coal or other power plant and this automatically embeds more resilience to the system because let's say if a typhoon that we just seen in our, let's say, in the neighboring country of Philippines, Hong Kong, it's a certain part of the country. It will affect only a portion of the assets that are there and there will be other assets able to produce electricity for the entire system. On the other side, if you're looking at electric vehicles and you look at vehicle to grid technology that again is not something that will come in the future, it's something that has been used today. Actually each and every single battery of that you have in cars or even in train or even in or more in buses can be a way to stabilize the network. Think about the bus that goes in the garage at night and can constitute a big bulk of battery that can support the system. Imagine during heatwaves period where I condition are picking the system, that batteries can actually use today for balancing the system. So, Joanne, I know ABV is very involved with immobility, electric cars and so forth and also in infrastructure. So do you think that today's infrastructure is up to the job or does it need an overhaul? Thank you very much. Today's utility is really facing a challenge but also very interesting period because if you look at the supply side, like you mentioned that, it's more and more renewable side are integrated, which renewables are depending on the weather. And then from the demand side, we talk about mobility. So really the pattern has been changed. They are used to be very predictable, very planable, very controllable in the past. The load is very defined for the household in the morning peak, evening peak, industry as a base load. This is a completely change. And then on top of that, there's a lot to talk about the connectivity between the countries because again, it's because renewables of some country has a very rich with hydro resource. They want to connect with renewables to balance like use energy storage. Some even as an idea to connect between the east and the west to follow the sun, have a sunrise, sunset. You can continue to have the solar power. So all this connectivity creates a lot, a lot of, of course, the opportunity but also challenging. And I think the most worry is organization readiness is not there, at least not everywhere. OK, we should not say not there, but if you put the general statement for utility, the organization of readiness is not there because of the transition, because of the culture. And that is, of course, the time scale they used to work is like the days, or maybe even, you know, weeks. And now we are talking about the second, the minutes, things could happen, how to react, et cetera. And that creates a lot of challenges for the utilities. And also there's a culture piece we see. Actually, a lot of things happen. It's not every day, but a lot of things happen. And people don't want to talk about it, don't want to share about it for the reason because maybe they want to show this as a weakness. Sometimes they have a feeling it's a failure. And that I hope it would. Because if you don't share, you don't learn. And it would be very difficult for the industry to be prepared. OK, so that's where I think we can look at your international organization and what role do you see the International Energy Forum playing in helping to sort out some of these issues. OK, thank you, Sankir. I think it's a very good subject because for the energy industry is the high investment, high risk, and also high the recovery of the business. So by this one, I think the government and also the business, the corporation, is very important. Because the government have to have an understanding and open a favorable policy and the investment environment. And then the business can evolve, especially for the oil and gas because of the big investment and the high risk. So for this part, I think the business really like to have a safe environment to invest and then they can get the money back. So I think the both sides need the insurance. So I think the dialogue is very important. So minister, please tell us how this discussion is playing out in South Africa. And also maybe you can address whether you see an opportunity for South Africa to kind of leapfrog some of the older technology that's being used in the West and go right to some of the newer technologies like blockchain. As you may be aware in South Africa, our energy is generated through coal, which is very dominant. And also a state-owned company utility, which has been dominating for the past 100 or so years, but recently because of our perisacrement and other international obligations that we have in terms of climate change, we are increasingly moving towards renewable energy. So we felt that this would be an opportunity to bring in the private sector into the generation market in our country to create a competition with the utility, which has gone very well as we speak in South Africa today. So therefore, we really appreciate the involvement of the private sector that has invested almost over 200 billion rents in the South African economy through this renewable energy. And moving forward in terms of our national development plan, our vision 2030, we need to ensure that by 2030 we've got more than 20,000 megawatts of electricity out of renewables. Right now, we are around 6,300 megawatts. We are completing, as we speak in South Africa, our integrated resource plan. And this resource plan indicates that our least cost plan must be renewables, wind, solar, as well as gas. So that's the direction that we are moving. That's why we're very keen to understand how we can be able to take advantage of these technologies that are there so that we can be able to mitigate some job losses that can be affected through our transition from coal towards a renewable energy. Thank you. So I think that's a perfect transition to you, Anna. So let's talk about the role blockchain is playing in the sector. We're hearing a lot of noise from new entrants like Power Ledger, another one called Switch, that are building, what they say, are going to be global exchanges of energy that they say once their system is up and running there will be no need for traditional energy providers that the cost of energy will go to zero. And it's all gonna be peer to peer and you're gonna trade around the world. But the same technology, blockchain, can also be used to the advantage of traditional players. And I'd like to hear from you about how your energy web foundation is using blockchain to bring together some of the traditional players with startups. Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I think the disruption will be interesting, but it will not be as radical as some may pose it. At the end it will be a hybrid system and we will still need the grid. And so these innovators that you're talking about are very useful in responding to the challenges that Mr. Gu has pointed out, which is the complexity of the new connections, the issues with the grid balancing. Because blockchain is a technology that has that very potential to aggregate, to settle, in a way to help resolve those challenges, which is why so many innovators are looking at blockchain. Now utilities at the moment, some are innovating, they actually have become IT companies building apps. And have dev teams as part of the company, but not very many. And in terms of geographic coverage, they span around the world. Some of our leading, at the moment, innovators are actually Singapore Power, which is close to here, but also Anji from France, and then there are others who are starting to look at blockchain, Shell for sure, and many others. Startups that you mentioned, like Power Ledger and Switch, and there are others, work with these utilities. And what we have done at the Energy Web Foundation, which is a nonprofit global consortium, is to pull these efforts together. And what is happening is that many of the corporates are actually investing in these startups, buying a share, or sometimes majority share of the startups to bring in the innovation, but generally working together. In a very competitive market, they're collaborating because the actual technology is still early stage. So everyone realizes that collaboration is necessary to bring it to market sooner. Because more disruptive apps, like peer-to-peer trading, will probably come last. They require also some legal changes, because the law doesn't recognize your fridge as an energy trader. But some of the others that we're working on, like tracking renewable energy, issuing certificates through a blockchain, getting a global app to exchange those, are already happening. So some of the innovation will come to life in the next year, the more disruptive one, probably in several years to come. How do you see a technology like blockchain helping a country like South Africa achieve its goals? Yes, so South Africa was our first demonstration use case. I was at MIT with my colleague co-founder, Evald Hesse, about two and a half years ago. It was the first blockchain event at the MIT Media Lab. And we connected with a colleague in South Africa, Lauren Gamarov, and live there at MIT, we paid directly to a smart meter and lit up a school in Africa. So it was a donation of one Bitcoin at the time. It would have lasted many years of electricity today, but it was several months of electricity back two and a half years ago when we paid for that smart meter. And the fact that it happened live, immediately real time, with only several seconds delay, is was a visual that demonstrated the potential of this technology. Now, the currency, the way we see it from a blockchain perspective is the most simple application. It's transferring money from A to B. Now, when you get to other values and other processes that you wanna put in a blockchain where you have to program them like any other app, it's a little more complex. It requires more scale. But like I said, some are ready in the next few months. Others will come. So the technology has to be explored. We are yet to see if it will fully be, reach the potential that it seems to have. So we always have that caveat, but so far it's moving much more fast than we had expected. So let's now move to the issue of security. You touched on this a little bit when you said people don't like to talk about their weaknesses, but as we're moving to new business models, new technologies, bringing in new players, this connectivity also brings in some vulnerability. So I know ABB is part of a new initiative, that the forum is launching on cyber resilience. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes, ABB has been a member of this forum and we have quite a few discussions. A couple of things was discussed. One thing we would like to see, we could share as much as possible the case we have learned. Of course, it's not realistic to ask people to share all the details. Maybe we could define certain kinds of standards with the protocols. So whether it's based on the regional-wise, acceptable standard, or if it's next step with global-wise, we can see at least on a certain level we should be able to share. That is one topic we have been discussed. Another topic we have been discussed, the challenge we have seen this season because of the utility, as I mentioned before. When you go to this cyber security, this IT investment, it requires a lot of investment. And this investment, a lot of utilities are state-owned companies. And of course, all this investment are decided by the very strong governance from the board and from the governments, et cetera. The cycle, I should say, relatively takes a long time. And so it's important that we create awareness as a board of directors, as a guiding principle, what they should be aware. So that is at least one of the things we have been defined. And we still feel it's a little bit too narrow, but it's the first step. So if you sit in the board of directors in the utility, you need to ask certain questions regarding the cyber securities and they be aware of their responsibility. We would like to even, of course, ideally we would like to go even further, but at least it's a very good step. Minister, how do I give a concern is this for you? Because I think everybody's aware if the grid is attacked, you can bring a country to its knees. And this is a concern everywhere in the world. How is your government trying to deal with this? And what kind of dialogue do you think is an agreement need to be put in place? Well, we have what we call a justice and security cluster in South Africa, which consists of ministers that are responsible for justice and crime prevention. So it is a very big issue where we're investing a lot of money recently in order to ensure that we are in line with what is happening around the world in order to ensure that all those people are involved in cyber crime can be brought to book. But it also means that we need to train a lot of people, especially with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution where children who enter primary school this year would be in jobs that do not exist. So it means we need to put even more money into education in order to train our people, especially youngsters. But also we need to ensure as well that we put more money into research and development. Our goals is that by year 2025, we need to ensure that at least we spend 1.5% of the GDP in terms of R&D was still very far behind there at about 0.79. So we still have a long way to go. So that's why we're very keen to see what is happening around the world so that you can learn from best experience. What you see is the role of the International Energy Forum. So I think this is very important for the cooperation between the government and also the business. And for the International Energy Forum, we have joined the data for the initiatives of the oil and gas. And this covers the 114 countries for the oil. And for the gas, it's 85 countries. So by this, the data, we have the other seven partners. So by this one is to improve the transparency and the cooperation of these countries. By this one, the government and the business have a better understanding of the situation. So by this, the cooperation and the resonance of this improved. So I feel that the data is including South Africa is our member country. So by this, I feel that in the future and we can have more use of the data. And last year we had a workshop for the Judy data in Tunisia. And in South Africa, we have 30 countries drawn this workshop. And also we have the workshop in China and in Russia. So by this one, I feel that in the future, more and more countries can use this data and then improve the understanding and the transparency of the market and improve the security. What kind of a role could blockchain play in terms of security? Well, the inherent nature of blockchain is much higher security. So the entry of data still remains vulnerable because it's still prone to any manipulation. But besides that, once you have a database, it is the most resilient data center, distributed data center database if you wish. And it enables you to have much better control of your information. What are you sharing? Who are you sharing it with and for what purpose? Now in terms of world economic forum and how we are involved is really trying, we are already in touch with the Center for Fourth Industrial Revolution. What is important is to agree on the common standard, just like whenever there is a new technology, naturally we're also working with IEEE and the traditional standard makers. But there is also the issue of sharing best practices, the regulatory part. So not all touches upon regulation, but some of the blockchain disruption. Well, the most interesting one, peer-to-peer trading. There are countries that have already started regulatory sandboxes. The leading happened to be in Europe. So it's UK, Sweden, Austria. There is also a country that is in Latin America, Chile, that already has a blockchain-based application to track its incentive program. So those best practices need to be shared. And so within the EWF, we already have a global sharing of a common platform. So what we're building is one platform for everyone to use. Because unlike a traditional IT application in blockchain, the core platform is an integral part of your application. So the more we do, the more blocks of that app that we build together, we call them frameworks, the faster we will get to the commercial application of blockchain. Carla, what do you see as the challenges of trying to create standards around cybersecurity? There is more discussion now about holding private companies to particular standards. And maybe they may be open to some sort of liability if something happens to customer data or systems go down. So what do you think the standard could or should be in this particular sector? And from your perspective, what would be the challenges in doing that? Standards are always a problem, but it depends which issue we are facing. The cybersecurity as the climate change impact is so big on the system, on each and every element of the system, the standard is an important word. And only the trigger that we're looking at is the cooperation between the public and private sector. Because cyber attack is not anymore like 20 years ago, a little techie challenging your network or challenging your police system. But we're talking about much bigger risks. So when the risk is so big as for climate change, public and private should come together. And that's what we see, even if it doesn't go on the front pages or newspaper or it's well known to the general public, but it's in the countries in which we see operation. For example, for electricity, we see a very tight cooperation between government, official, police, institution, public institution, and the companies. So I think the standard is already clear that, because we know which problem we need to fix. It is potential massive cyber attacks and systematic cyber attacks. So I think it's not a matter of standard, but to push forward the cooperation between public and private sector. But I must say that from my point of view, it's already there. Because when the problem gets very serious or potentially very serious, people out there are acting. I mean, the company that is financing our research interacts with more than 90 million customers each day in 32 countries. So you can imagine the responsibility that we bear in dealing with these people. And on the other side, there are government that are fully aware of the risk and actually working on the site. OK. What are we not hearing? What is going on in the background? Is it worse than the press reports? How many of these attack attempts are really going on every day? That I don't have an overview, to be honest. What we know is, of course, we are being working with ABB used to provide the network control system for the decades, decades. At that time, at least the cybersecurity was already on the topic. But there was a much less scale. Because as I said before, the utility was very much, I should not say isolated. It's a well-defined problem in the technology terminology. It's really your scheduling, planning, controllable, and predictable. Even at that time, it's, of course, the security. The system is relatively isolated. But still, things could happen. But nowadays, that model, technical model, it cannot be valid because of the change of business model. Because integration renewables, and we talk about this, also, immobilities, all this connectivity between the countries, and also new IT systems comes in. So what do we really need to do? I think that we need a lot of new investment. That's why in the working group, we talk about what is the responsibility of the board of directors, create the wellness. I think this needs to come from there. They need to push for that. And we need to also, of course, there are new technologies coming in, like blockchain, et cetera. It's a part of the solution. But we should not also underestimate that we require a lot of skilled new people to come to the industry. And this is a lot of things we need to be done. And I think it's still a long way to go. It's still a long way to go, in my opinion. Is it too much to ask of traditional providers in the industry to step up with all of this investment in security at a time when they're also under attack from all kind of new competitors and trying to figure out new business models? And the whole regulatory and political climate is not stable. I would say that when things get complicated, they either you lead or you disappear. So I mean, as my colleague from RBB was saying, this is what you see in the utility space. People that are still in the 20 years ago scheme and other company that are actually trying to bring these things forward. So in other terms, 10 years ago, you could stay and sit down and say, oh, renewable is not going to come. The company that have thought the renewable was not going to come probably are in bad shape today than in the future. And there are other companies that embrace the renewables and actually push it forward. The investment, the honorable minister was mentioning, if you see in South Africa, are made by companies that actually are leading the pack and finding new countries and new with which to cooperate on renewables. And this is the same for cybersecurity. You can say, OK, let's not put smart meter because the electromechanical meter are much safer. Clearly, you cannot hack an electromechanical meter. But if you see the technology that some of the leading company have deployed in smart meter, it's as difficult to hack as a smart meter, as a digital meter. So again, if you stand still, it's not going to work. Like in any other sector, but especially in the electricity sector nowadays, you can say coal is the best solution for South Africa and like 20 years ago. If you're not hearing what the public wants, to sell more sustainable power generation, more distributed generation, you will stand still and not doing nothing or leading the investment in the countries. And this apply, I think, to each and every piece to electromechanical meter is clearly the industry after, let's say, a stable grow between 1920 and 2008, now it's facing competition. Now, most of the time, I think we tend to look at competition with fear. But if we look at competition with open openness, that's the key to look at. So sitting down with a startup company doing blockchain or with another company doing vehicle to grid is the key. So being open to the innovation, there was a time in which the only we were doing business at IBB and the big U2D company and other five, six provider worldwide. Now there are companies like NL that have a special track of procurement for innovative company, even three 10 people company. Because you should be able to listen to ideas and put some skin in the game in trying new stuff and see how do the works. And eventually, I mean, as she was saying, eventually take some shares or integrate the company that are doing best in innovation. Do people in the audience agree with his take? Does anybody want to jump in with an opinion on that or a question for any of our panelists? Do we have people here from China who could talk a little bit about how they see the mix between public and private collaboration evolving in China? Who wants to chime in? Maybe you go here. Yes, great. Hi, good morning. I'm from IHS market in China. And of course, like we do in any putzer of the world, we assist many companies in China in working on energy as well. I think one of the things that's become very apparent in many actually Asian countries that there is a large grid utility that's generally state-owned. It's very hard to penetrate that part of the business. And oftentimes, you don't even want to try it. But what we're seeing emerging is that we now have this distributed part of the business, especially solar. If we look at Chinese solar additions last year, 50 gigawatts of solar additions last year. This year may be lower at 30. But these are huge numbers. And more than half of that is on the distributed side. And that's attracted a lot of private investment into that space to get really consumer side energy. But there's a question now of what does that mean for grid stability? We've seen costs escalations in countries like Germany because of distributed side and utilities face challenges. I don't think that conversation is quite happening yet, at least in the open about how this growing part of the business of distributed energy system, solar, storage, et cetera, is working along the state side of the business. And I think that's something people are still trying to figure out. And it's a testament when we look at the data that solar and wind curtailment levels are very high, 20%, 30%. And that's sort of a reflection of the fact that the public and private sectors don't seem to be working very closely together yet. And we still need to figure out exactly how to move that forward without compromising grid reliability. And please. Just to give an opinion, our experience in South Africa is that if there is competition, as I said, we've got a national utility that is 100% owned by the state. But when it comes to renewable, if you bring more private sector players, that competition drives down the prices for electricity. Even though the first two rounds in South Africa of renewable energy were very high, but after that, we see a downward trend of going down where the consumer benefits. So I think the solution lies in a real competition between the public and the private sector. If I may, I mean, I would first make a comment since the research center I work in is having a lot of interaction with Chinese electricity sector, especially state-owned company. And guess what? I think there are lots of forward thinker in the Chinese electricity state-owned company, at least from my own experience. Now, moving an entire system like China towards the energy transition is not as fast as doing it in Portugal. But trust me, there are officials out there that are thinking about the energy transition and are actually made distinct the energy transition starting and happening in China. The second comment I would make that is I would challenge the idea that distributed generation brings up the cost because any statistics, so I'm talking about facts, on countries where renewables are being deployed, there was not an increase in network management cost that were burned by customers. I'm talking about UK, Spain, Italy, whatever statistics you take. And as the honorable minister was correctly saying, the price has proven to be going down and down to the point that countries that used to have an energy mix more fossil fuel dedicated are moving strongly like South Africa towards a renewable mix. So again, I think the key factor when talking about electricity is having in mind a little sentence, a Latin sentence, nung et odie, you should look when you're taking decision, you are talking about electricity system, what is happening now and today in, you know, not taking the average, take the excellence and see how the system can go. It's likely, I mean, if you take the average or the worst case, you know, it's the worst case. If you take the excellence, you know that things can happen. And I'm talking about curtailment that have been reduced thanks to technology. I'm talking about distributed generation that is well managed and so other stuff. But price are going down and there is no impact other than positive impact from renewable coming in the energy mix for final consumer being, you know, household or industrial consumer. So then my question is if this is the case, if it's, you know, there's obvious benefits to consumers. There's no additional cost on the network. Why is it taking so long to, you know, meet the goals set by the Paris agreement? What is preventing us from moving forward faster? Yeah, thank you. Let's decouple the Paris agreement from the electricity generation because as you know, it's not about producing electricity that we can save our planet. It's a good share, but it's not only about producing electricity. I would invite all of you to see the increase in renewables in the last 25 years. You cannot talking about slowing down. You can talking about accelerating like being an electric car and stuck in the engines. Meaning even if our colleagues correctly pointed out that Chinese, for example, slow down PV this time, if you plot in a 20, 25 year scheme, you see a tremendous acceleration in the last six to seven years. So I can say the energy industry, the electricity industry has made these contributions. And thanks again to cooperation between public and private sector, this is actually happening. You have a global perspective, so what? And I think this is the environment of private, I think especially in China, I think very fast. And worldwide we can see that the involvement in the energy from the transportation, RNG, and also for the contribution of GDP, and especially is for the employment. And in China is very good, the example, that employment of this, the manpower, more people is from the private sector, more than the public. And also you asked a question, why cannot we be more faster? Yeah, I think very good question. And then I think several reasons. And for example in China, because the energy industry is the very large industry, and they have high standards, this is one of the issue. And also for the involvement of the business, for the small business, and it's not easy to get involved into this with the high investment, security reasons. And another reason is from the government part, and they also have higher regulations, and they also higher the security requirements, if any explosion not happens on a big issue. So I think both sides. And however in the long view we can see that, for the Sona PV, for the wind, for the hydro, and for this part in China, and I think developed very fast. And however now the issue is the subsidy issues. And originally government give a lot of subsidies. From this year government reduce these subsidies. So that's the reason. And this year a little bit lower than the year before. But however for long view I think developed very fast already. Anna, you wanted to jump in? Yeah, I just wanted to share my experience that most of the innovators that I have met come from economies that have unbundled energy markets. And it's not a coincidence. And now we're also seeing other start in other areas where they see an interesting use case. One is energy access. I see a colleague here, like Bangladesh and other countries that are looking at this area. So it's a matter also of awareness raising. And like my colleague Papa said, it's also who is going to lead, who is going to follow. Like in any new area, many are in wait and see mode. Others are saying no I want to start and test. Others start learning about it and then start testing. So I think that there's various stages of development. But we have to remember that the innovation is global. So even if you are very well protected, you have your high margins because you're not unbundled, it's gonna come to you. Because people are gonna get their electric car, they're gonna get their little solar panel and they will not need you as much or they will need you to support them in a different way. So it is coming. It's just that it's happening faster in markets that have unbundled. Just one point that we need to take into consideration as well is the issue of the regulator. But I think we need a very resilient, independent regulator that must protect the consumer, not the state company, must work on behalf of the people. Because I find sometimes that regulators sometimes they become fixated in protecting a state company as if that is the best thing to do when in fact the direct opposite is the correct one, that they are primary consideration. What is the benefit to the people? Namely those who consume electricity. If we have those independent regulators, I think we'll be moving very well in protecting the people. Yeah. And I think, I mean, I love the idea of bundling as a roadblocks for innovation but I mean the idea of having our business is very regulated. Even if you cannot think about electric cars but to put a charger, it's a regulated system. So it's key and if you look at the history of electricity industry, for example, in Italy, by the time the government decides to unbundle the sector, so to push for innovation, they set the heavy weight regulators with an innovative view and an eyes on consumer because that's key. It's really of tremendous importance and the regulators worldwide that have been on the forefront of the energy and the concentration have been the right couple with UTT company colleagues, appears fighting most of the time but fighting for the good of the electricity system. So I would stress the idea of regulators should be and must be innovative and should be open to any solution to the point that they are good for customers, whatever they are, household or industrial use. Yeah, no, I agree with you because one thing we should acknowledge is the role of technology in these past decades. I agree with you say, why can't we go even faster? Sure, we want to go faster but actually the world has achieved a lot in the past decades. If you look at the scales or renewables we have today and partially because of technology advance, the power electronics, software, et cetera, of course. And in the morning I joined another session, we talked about making it even more sustainable, we need to look at the energy storage, the whole system. I heard the cost of battery has been new, technologies have been half and then the second generation will further half. A lot, a lot of new things are coming. So this is really exciting. And then of course in the past few, past hours we talk a lot about challenge, about the security risk, et cetera, from supply point of view, like you are our customers. We see this also as opportunity because when we do business with our customer, what is the base foundation? The foundation is a trust, right? Because they share a lot of data with us, their financial data, their business data, et cetera, personal data. So of course now we see the risk as a security risk but if we can turn it around, make it more secure, this can be a competitive edge for us. That's why I agree there's a lot of new companies will come into the space but also for us we see this is a great opportunity also. So because, well, one of the opportunities for the traditional players is to figure out interesting services to build around the data that they collect but there the regulators have to weigh in too so that it's clear what can and cannot be done with the data. So what are some of the other opportunities that you see for traditional players in terms of new services that could be launched and what does everybody think that the traditional players should be doing now in order to, maybe they haven't started doing yet in order to prepare for this very different future? I mean we look at what we need to, one thing we have to acknowledge is for the utility space, it's completely different, right? As we talk about it, it's a complete dynamics. The balancing of supply and demand, this is really completely different and the new technology, obviously technology, I used to say in the past it's the space very much like automation. In the past it's the great utility, I won't call them control, it's more the supervision. You go from supervision, planning, go to automations, real time, planning, et cetera. So those are the technologies it's coming and for us as the leading power technology provided in the world, of course, we continue to work with our own, develop new technology, but we also look for technology partnership, the startup, we continue to look for the new technologies and in particular look at the technology from other domains, I mentioned from automations and from the sensing and we talk about the framework like a force industrial evolution, all these smart something, it's basically you talk about you introduce more sensing technology with software, with control, so you improve the flexibility and reliability of your system. So we see a lot of opportunity but the partnership with our technology provider is one of the key. Would you like to weigh in on what people should be doing to prepare? Yes, and for the climate change now it's become a very important subject and also for the energy industries for the future and I think it's the time and because we are international organization and sometimes some of the traditional, the energy players and us how do we see this and how about the future investment and how to improve this environment to the resilience and the security. So I think another important issue is to have a right or look for the future for the studies of this and how the energy transition will develop and have a better understanding of this I think this is a very important issue and however some of the discussions and the every year, February, IEF we have a international energy outlook and the invite to the IEA, invite to the OPEC and also GECF and some of the industries that the companies like BP share are now also involved. So we have these discussions and then to see the future. For example, by 2040 what is the mixture of the oil and gas on coal and also for the sauna PV for the wind and others. So by this is the studies I think in the future we'll give a support and for the future investment and also the energy investment resilience. Anybody else want to weigh in on that? I can just add from our perspective we see both innovation in transactionery and in transformative businesses. So anything from back office and billing, asset management to different business models and what can one do, one can learn for sure as far as regulators are concerned my colleagues are exactly right. Sometimes they adopt something and they're already too late. So I also expect a lot of innovation on the vendor side especially in opening up protocols something that they do not like but we need the SCADA system and the smart meter and all the connectors to be open so that when you have a new product that is software you are not limited by hardware and you don't have to send a box but you can actually connect just like you connect your phone to the world you can connect your smart meter or SCADA system to apps that are global. This will really open up innovation. When it comes to blockchain are people moving the traditional players moving fast enough? Some are, many are learning when they learn more they start hiring IT people in their company or working with a startup because the talent is still very limited in this space. Mr. Iwanita. From my side even though we cannot always predict the future but I think the general trend is towards renewables even though as I said we are very cold country but we can see the trends around the world and we are already affected ourselves. So we've begun to speak as ministers of energy in Sadeq the southern African development community to look at gas because there are a lot of reserves of gas in Africa especially in Tanzania, Mozambique and Namibia to look how we can be able to increase the mix of gas projecting towards the future. So as a result we are busy developing what you call a gas master plan for Sadeq in order to ensure that element is not forgotten. Anybody in the audience want to give a perspective from their country? Being from the United States and particularly from California we had probably the most famous deregulation ever to fail in the world. Yeah I mean in South Africa they were laughing at us just to let you know. We learn from the past. Because we did a deregulation of electric grid based on the assumption that all those institutions that had worked so well in a regulated environment would somehow operate in a deregulated environment. And so now that we know that the laws of supply and demand still work and opportunistic suppliers in a limited environment with excess demand will take advantage of it to their own benefit. I'll ask a question because ever since the 2003 disaster in California other states have tried to tweak, if you use a U.S. term, that model to make the old model still work. And Virginia and others are making it work but they're still relying on, as our gentleman from South Africa said, we have to have great regulation. Government needs to get out of the way but government still needs to regulate. Well let me ask a question for this panel that I'm interested in. If we look at the history of taxicabs in the United States, highly regulated, supply in New York City was famously, you know, you had to have a medallion in order to do it. And the system actually worked until Uber came along. Why in the world are we still trying to avoid an Uber of energy? The reality is that in this, leaving cyber security out for just a moment because we need it to work regardless. But why is it that an infinite amount of calculations of opportunistic demand shedding and opportunistic supply providing without the distortions of subsidies and who gets how much and who gets this guarantee and that guarantee being dominant? I mean, obviously you don't wanna shed nuclear power that's online, there are some place, but if they wanna be a must be sold, then they're gonna have to be discounted in some way. But if you look at that as, if you will, nuclear power is the old taxicab company that still has some base business, why wouldn't we Uber the electric grid taking the regulator completely out of it and putting active intelligence in and then overseeing only for illegal gaming of the system? Why wouldn't that cause the willing buyer and willing seller to work in a way, you mentioned a Tesla person or somebody driving an electric car, why is it the person driving down the road? I can guarantee you, Elon Musk can make a Tesla that will know that the price of electricity is varying and decide when to pull over to get electricity because the price is right at that moment because solar is at a peak and they've got nowhere to send it. So my question goes right down to the simplicity. Why not look at Ubering, if you will, Ubering, Lyft and so on, the electric grid so that in fact we actually create a willing buyer, willing seller and modernize the system? Who wants to take that? I'm second after you. Okay, I can say some. No, I use Uber from time to time. Sometimes it comes few minutes later, it's okay, not a big deal. But we tend to forget that we are so much dependent on electricity, we are so much dependent and since it's so reliable, we even forget, it's a given. So I think the requirement is very high to get the reliable electricity supply. That did I think one of the reason probably is there are certain things you need, you still need the regulations and you need at least proven technologies making this work, that was my point. Emma, what do you think? Yeah, I suggest you check out startups like Share and Charge and some others, they're already doing this. So it's already happening, but we will I think still need a regulator for some time exactly to avoid the problems that California had. We actually had a problem with our regulations. And I know that in the US you have so many jurisdictions and so many different programs and one of the problems with climate change, fighting climate change is exactly that these programs have national boundaries and should not. So that will also come. But I think for a while the grid management should be regulated and then go forward from there and we will still need the grid for some time. Another app that we're working on more like a framework is a simulation environment where you simulate the spot balancing, market balancing and this probably sometime next year can be used by energy companies to see if they want to invest in a new asset, how that will work and how the market will change. But in the future we'll actually avoid at least local market settlements and balancing and be recursive. So in the future this may be real, but I think until it's fully tested we should keep some regulation in place. What do you think? I met here the founder of Uber Intervoss January this year. He says he's very afraid of taxi drivers in South Africa. So taking that example, we cannot uberize the energy sector in South Africa very fast. It has to come in stages. That's why I said we started with introducing competition to the generation part. The next phase is to deal with the grid. Our view, tentatively, is that we need some kind of like an independent systems market operator so that there is a non-discriminatory access into the national grid in order to deal the balance between those who are independent power producers and the state utility. So that's the trend that we seem to be moving towards rather than the one night stand of California, boom, done. So we believe in a gradual, managed transformation of the electricity sector in South Africa. What do you think? OK. I was around in California working there in 2003 when the things happened. I think with just a sentence, you cannot pretend to cancel regulators if they do make a mistake. You can push for them to be more innovative and be paying the same salary that you pay a Tesla to get the smart people working there. That's the first thing. The second thing is about Uberize, the electricity sector. Very fascinating. If you are familiar and you are with the Uber business model, it's not actually working exactly in the best way for the interest of everyone, especially for the drivers to the point that there are new companies or new platform in Europe like MyTaxi that are taking over because they are licensee drivers and they actually work. You have the same funny things and interesting, fast service of Uber, but it's regulated in the interest of the workers. And so maybe on the generation side, you can think about Uberize, but then you still need to know it as you know that Tesla, not the new guy, but the old guy, was thinking about flying electrons in the earth. The electrons are still coming through wires and the wires is one. It's difficult to imagine that the wires can be more than one. So there always be a piece of the electricity sector until electrons flies. Coming up on road. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know that while a taxi driver is in some shape or form supporting the infrastructure so that actually the road is in good shape, the Uber driver is not. So it's a matter of you can skin the cat to a certain level if you know what I mean. And then going to your interesting point about charging the electric cars when the electricity is free or when it's a more green mix, in our own constituency there is a company that by the way is California based called Motorworks that is actually you allowing you to do so charging today. So you can charge when the mix is more towards renewables and you can charge when it's cheaper. And if you go to Scotland and you take Ira Tesla you can actually charge it for free because the regulators has decided where there is access capacity is going to be provided to the citizen for free. Thank you. So we're going to have to wrap up the panel. Thank you so much for that question. And I think what we can safely take away from today is that the sector has been changing quickly, maybe not as fast as some people would like. But it's making progress that for at least the short term we're still going to need a certain amount of regulation. A number of pilots and tests are going on with blockchain and other new technologies that promise to open up the sector to a lot of new business models and a lot of exciting things. But we're going to need some regulation to get us there and we're going to need some proper oversight to make sure that things evolve properly and that international organizations including the Energy Forum and the World Economic Forum's new resiliency forum will be trying to tackle some of the big issues around cybersecurity going forward. Thank you all for participating this morning and a big thank you. A round of applause please for our panelists. Yes, thank you. Thank you.