 Good morning and welcome to our panel on powering the digital economy This is a really interesting panel because it's not specific. It's about the digital economy and it's about energy and Some very interesting contradictions and gaps in our knowledge, so I've enjoyed trying to prepare for it When we think about the digital economy and the contribution of technology the internet digitization blockchain Many of these elements cut both ways Digitization and the internet Consume a great deal more energy than most of us think about I've spent a lot of time thinking about energy as an editor at the Wall Street Journal I've not spent a lot of time thinking about how much energy the internet consumes. We talk a lot about cars We talk about the extractive industries not so much about the cloud So today, we're going to explore what how the digital industries the ICT sector because one of the buzzwords consumes as a carbon footprint. That's a great deal bigger than what many people understand it to be and actually presents a greater threat to our ability to reign in Climate change then I think is generally realized at the same time However, what's so interesting about this is that many of the same elements and forces that are contributing to climate change potentially also hold the potential to Help us come up with better solutions and to particularly devise ways of finding efficiencies and limiting carbon change So we have this great panel today to address this double-edged sword Jennifer Morgan is the executive director of Greenpeace Philippine DeCerclez is the global VP of strategic strategic partnerships at Schneider Electronics Electrics forgive me Antonio Neri is the incoming CEO of HP Enterprises and Paul Ellis is the CEO of Electron Jennifer do you think you could lay out for us just to get us going a Little bit more about the facts and and so help us to understand what the real carbon footprint of technology is and how it is increasing Sure, I can get us going. I mean I think when Greenpeace started looking at this And ran our first campaign on it as a campaigning organization back in 2010 I think the thing that struck us was that you know this infrastructure on IT and digital is probably the largest kind of collective system that we as human beings are are building and The way that that's done Will be quite important So if you look at the energy use maybe just to highlight two different issues If you look at the energy use and the projections out to 20 25 on electricity It could go from seven percent up to 25 percent, which would put it at about fourth if it was a country Looking out into that time frame and if that is a coal built fossil built infrastructure It's a obviously a great risk to countries meeting their Paris commitments and addressing climate change as a whole But a lot of the emissions also come from the the supply chain itself because about 20% of the sectors global energy footprint is tied up in the manufacturing of the devices But actually for Samsung Apple etc. A lot of the emissions actually come 70 to 80 percent Of their carbon footprint comes from the supply chain So I think that's one issue and there's no you know, nobody looking out at that As far as regulation or incentives or any of that right now and we can talk about that later There's some companies that are stepping forward and taking leadership on that but that's one piece the other is obviously the materials and You know cobalt Both from a human rights perspective in an environmental standards perspective obviously has many issues around it So and geopolitically as well So those would be the two issues that I would Outline as you know the the main things that we're looking at at Greenpeace and can talk a little bit later about The response that we're seeing which is quite positive and negative. I think it's both what you're saying go in different ways That's very helpful. What about in terms of industry? Antonio, can you give us a sense of how widely? understood or shared are these concerns in industry in terms of the environmental footprint of both you make a good point Jennifer both the sort of the hardware the Manufacturing piece and also the electricity consumption By technology companies Sure. Good morning. Great to be here with the panel and with the audience. I think first of all I don't think is well understood. I think Jennifer just Highlight to some of the issues that we have to work as a community of leaders and governments and in the society as a whole You know when we think about and by the way that requires a tremendous amount of education that we are responsible for When we think about some of the trends we see today We speak here at the World Economic Forum about the fourth industrial revolution blockchain of deficient intelligence And so forth What what we we see is an opportunity to really Dramatically address some of the fundamental problems in the world create new economic opportunities, but at the same time what we realize is that all these new technologies demand tremendous amount of power and Think about it in your life. Everything around us computes everything we do in our life now computes And that requires tremendous amount of power that we have to think about it How we develop these technologies for the future with sustainability in mind The core of this is all about the data. We are generating today. We generate every day 2.5 billion 2.5 quintillion bytes a day for those who Understand quintillion is after trillion and you know with that basically is 18 zeros and what is Really astonishing to me is the fact that in two years from now We're gonna double the amount of data that we generate in in mankind So two years from now, we're gonna have double the amount of data We have generated in the history of humankind so to manage all the data you need a lot of power and to extract the Insights and insights Interaction you need a lot of computational power and the reality is that the current architectures are now sustainable We are not going to solve the problem today with the current where we You know architect the compute Platforms so we at HPE Thinking about this and we have thinking about this for a long time In fact, we made a very strong commitment to reduce the power consumption 30 times by 2025 However, we don't think that's good enough And that's what we are thinking about how we're gonna deal with the the challenge we have with the The modest law which is basically the law that was put in place by Jeffrey Moore, which basically says every 18 months or 24 months we can double the amount of compute capacity however We need to reduce the power consumption and we think there is a better way to do so and the way we think about that is how we create architectures which are data-driven and Basically reduce the power significantly in that in that in that equation and then ultimately use alternative energy Sources like hydrogen cells and other things to power these massive data centers. We have to create going forward Philippine if I could ask you to pick up on Antonio's comments and give us if you have a sense of how Seriously, the industry takes these issues and what kinds of solutions people are coming up with That'd be very helpful. Yes Yeah, I think you've you've framed the issues very very clearly in the sense that it is true that the rising consumption of data centers for example in terms of the the industry is is there is is significantly Increasing today represents about 7% of the total electricity demand But what's true actually one of the questions being is it possible to power the digital economy in a Sustainable way and it is it is it's a question of Implementing the huge untapped energy efficient potential that still remains so on an overall level Estimate says that they are about 75% of Cost-effective energy efficient and tap potential and that's true across all sectors So in the building sectors about 80% in industry 60% cities could be 80% more efficient But if those technologies were being implemented in the IT industry and in data center specifically We could reduce even if those numbers that you've pointed out Jennifer on on the increasing levels and and Data sentence that will be created that will need to be created to power this digitization of the overall economy We could only increase so if they are going to triple by 2022 you could reduce the increase in actual electricity Consumption by only 3% So so you are totally right in saying that it really depends what direction we take But technologies do exist So a big potential contributor that could in fact increase those numbers exponentially is cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and blockchain right which the platform that Underlies Paul, can you tell us a little bit about why it is that? Bitcoin that mining Bitcoin consumes so much energy and that blockchain represents potentially a game changer in terms of the energy consumed and Potentially saved. Well, I'll hazard a guess that the consumption Of Bitcoin miners and Ethereum miners and so forth. It is probably the fastest growing region within data centers of energy consumption It's probably worth just Exploring why that is What how does this come about? Essentially blockchains work Based on they have three principles that underlie them. The first one is Game theory Economics and I'll come to that in a second and that's the important one for this discussion The second one is Cryptography and the use of cryptography to secure the Platforms and secure access to the various accounts The the third area is what you call peer-to-peer Trump peer-to-peer interactions and this was really Driven by by companies like BitTorrent Where they were file-sharing so it's a combination of these three technologies that come together to form Allow blockchain to work So the first one I mentioned game theory or economics the way in which blockchains work is they effectively incentivize parties to stay honest and in the case of Bitcoin blockchain for example, you would need to have what they call a 51 percent attack in order to undermine the essential transactional integrity and the way in which that 51 percent Attack is secured is through requiring parties who are mining Bitcoin or effectively adding blocks to the blockchain To require them to undergo or take part in what is called a consensus mechanism Driven by proof of work So proof of work involves the Bitcoin miners or the Ethereum miners Engaging in very computationally intensive calculations calculations that can take in the case of Bitcoin something like 15 minutes or so in Ethereum. It's normally about 16 or 17 seconds But essentially it's the same principle that underlies it you have to solve a very computationally challenging problem And in fact it's being solved with specific hardware So the Bitcoin hardware is very specifically designed in order to solve this computational challenge the Ethereum blockchain Uses GPUs, but again very specifically designed Well very powerful GPUs that are used to solve these problems So underlying blockchain is this requirement to solve a problem and by putting in that work to solve the problem That's what secures the network. So that's essentially what's sitting behind it So that hopefully is a brief outline. There are Mitigating ways of handling this which I think will probably come on to but for the time being the main blockchains are all using proof of work Can we just before we move on to sort of another round of questions? Just stay with that for one second and try to put some numbers on How much energy is required for example to mine one Bitcoin? Which is sort of a trick question because I don't know that there's an exact accepted answer well For the miner itself that gets lucky. So so it basically it's a random process Which which miner ends up mining the next Bitcoin is a random process So so there are thousands tens of thousands of these miners Active all the time trying to be the next one that mines the 25 or 12 and a half Bitcoin so To say how much energy for that particular miner very little relatively speaking but for the whole system a lot and I think some estimates have put it as the entire energy consumption of Ireland Is consumed in Bitcoin mining in fact very recently in just in the last two weeks I noticed that a Bitcoin miner has actually purchased a power station in Russia Specifically to do Bitcoin mining it now costs apparently a thousand dollars back to the hardware question just to buy the specialized equipment that you refer to necessary to Do the math basically to produce a Bitcoin is that That sounds about right. Yeah In highly concentrated areas, so so there'll be huge sheds of effectively tens of thousands of these thousand dollar devices Okay, so In terms of our first round, I think we're hearing some of the dimensions of the challenge both in terms of the clearly growing demand if Bitcoin is just one visible headline example of how Computing is creating growing soaring demand on on electricity systems and also potentially some sense that there are companies and organizations starting to look at solutions which I'd like to explore in this second part of our panel In terms of Policy so we have regulation on tailpipe emissions We have lots of regulation or attempts at regulation in different ways Subsidies and and so forth around the planet aimed at in many cases reaching the goals of COP 21 Is anyone is there a need to think more or to find ways to more directly tax or address the Carbon footprint of Technology Jennifer is that something yeah, I mean I think first of all as far as where we are on this right now There's there's 20 global IT brands that have signed up for a hundred percent renewables of their data centers and including including HP and with Really Facebook starting Apple coming in Google and I think one of the main challenges that they find is It's geographically very specific right so as far as the availability of renewable energy and One of the key challenges I think that we need to get to which is kind of a parallel to your question is if We need to have these types of commitments for a hundred percent RE and it needs to also go into The supply chain as a whole but then one of the energy systems and the policies on energy that The companies are trying to to deal with to actually source Renewables so a number of the companies that have committed to a hundred percent are you're now also engaging In states in the United States in countries like Japan to say we need to be able to source this to try and Get a bit more Diversity because there's a lot of growth in renewable energy in some places and in others There isn't Samsung right now for example one percent of their electricity comes from renewables Green pieces trying to see if they can see the light and come away. So I think one piece is making sure that the energy policy Framework that's renewables. I totally agree on the energy efficiency side of things as well To reduce that demand the more we can reduce the demand the better So that's good news on that side of things and then I you know, I think that's the question of the You know the the regulation or the policies that go across the supply chain as a whole That could then create the incentives for companies to actually have to source From from renewable energy as a whole but right now it's we're not there at all if I may and I think the first half of the panel we've we've we've identified and we've Underlined a big challenge and the the quite unnoticed sometimes challenge that this digitization of the economy is is raising But I think it's important to underline that it's also really a part of the Solution and what I mean here is that because of the digital digitization of the economy it's really transforming the way energy has been generated Distributed and consumed in unprecedented levels in unprecedented ways and the fact that today Digitization and energy converge mean that you add a layer of software on Connected products, which means that you can choose when how you consume your energy You have much more flexibility and and you have to understand that these this leads to Unprecedented levels of efficiency and so you have to keep that in mind as well in terms of Considering the big challenge that are being raised, but I would say that we need to Definitely accelerate the implementation of those technologies and policies are needed for that and you mentioned Carbon tax. I think what we need is clear price signals. So that means no subsidies and A pricing of externality. So in effect a pricing of carbon Okay, I'm glad you made that point I think one of the things we're trying to get at here is the idea that this is a double exactly that that there are Technology may bring as many solutions as it is creating additional demands Let's talk about a fish. Let's keep talking about efficiency Antonio, I don't know if you want to jump in on that point. Yeah So I think there is a couple of points I want to make so first of all to Generous comments. We need to look at this from both the supply and the demand side and Obviously the supply side how we provide these alternatives ways to power these new technologies Paul explained extremely well the need to drive this computational side of the house but on the on the on the demand side we need to drive significant innovation and You know from my standpoint When we're gonna leave an award everything is hyper connected, you know by 2020 We're gonna have hundred billion devices connected to the network and the amount of data again We are generating is just unbelievable What are the demand the demand? Innovation aspects we need to go about it and and this is where you know We are thinking about a whole different approach on the computer architectures of the future We believe we need to go to a memory-centric compute and the reason why is because Given a great example of Paul where basically you need specialized equipment to mine these data What about if I have the data all in one place and only bring the right computation to that data To extract the value that they're looking for When we think about what's happening today is busy is simple physics, you know You have a CPU have memory and have storage When you calculate something in that system you're dealing moving electrons back and forth through a set of copper and that generates heat Heat needs power to cool it And so what we're thinking about it Why we leave the data all in one place and don't move the data around but just bring the right compute Capacity to that data to extract inside quickly and at the same time Dramatically reduce the power needs of that architecture We think in a memory-centric compute you actually need very little power to maintain that data rest Which means we can dramatically reduce the power consumption by a factor of hundred times And so this is where I think we think about the supply side How how we drive that innovation in the way we power these massive data centers But at the same time on the supply side how we power these new systems in a whole complete different architecture Which not only makes The power needs go down, but at the same time improves the business performance by a factor of a thousand And I think that's that's why we need to drive this innovation going forward regulation is important But it's an incentive to drive that innovation forward That's in terms of how What about in terms of the grid? I mean if you want to look at this from a grid perspective, where does blockchain come in on the grid? Or on the whole well the grid and yes, I guess that's okay Well, I guess that I think the first thought that that I think we should we should be discussing is the rewards mechanism that has been established for mining blockchains for mining as the next block in a blockchain And and the whole reason why you're seeing this vast The strains on the grid the the vast investment in this is because the rewards and the price of Bitcoin and ether now Are so large that it's economically viable for people to do this So so I guess the first question is is are the rewards set up? If the rewards were to be changed, which is by the way a very non-trivial problem as certainly in the case of Bitcoin Could this dramatically or have a significant impact in an effect in one sense the genius out of the bottle with Bitcoin you people have made vast investments in In specialized mining equipment for this the only other use for it really is is basically hacking people's passwords So if we actually push down the Bitcoin blockchain network, that's probably what they'll move on to do I think there is a A great optimism, however, or certainly soaked for optimism in this area The Ethereum network in particular doesn't use specialized hardware as it uses GPUs And there has been a project really since the inception of the Ethereum network to move to proof of stake And that would remove this huge investment in mining equipment And effectively make the consensus the this this game theory that I mentioned that Is underpins the integrity of the network moves that from being done by effectively Expending energy and doing calculations and moves it to being based on the amount of ether that you have at stake The final I think reason for optimism here is that All of the focus all of the interest is on these public blockchains Everyone is looking at that now, but actually I think all the real use cases the real value that's going to come out of it the the reason for Being able to improve efficiencies in energy industry in the financial services industry and so forth Can actually be done within consortium blockchains and consortium blockchains do not require you to create Consensors using proof of work and in fact normally that's would be done using proof of authority Now that again would dramatically would just basically remove all of the the energy costs associated with it So I think there are two big swings first of all ether in particular Ethereum excuse me moving to proof of stake and Secondly the fact that we're seeing a bubble right now on public blockchains But the real value proposition is going to be coming from the consortium and private blockchains, which will not be using proof of work Isn't there also I was reading that there are some pilot projects including one by IBM They've launched a blockchain based green asset management platform They're trying this in China and this could become a way of This could address some of the concerns that we're talking about I'm not familiar with that platform. I'm afraid I There are many initiatives around blockchain and Certainly looking at green energy that there are there are blockchain firms out there which are proposing Creating incentives to invest in solar power for example So I think it's very much a force for good But we've got some pieces of it wrong and in particular the rewards for mining and the focus On proof of work I think is the is the problem here But these are not insuperable problems And I don't think we'll in ten years time still be talking about proof of work as a problem just one other thing I wanted to just I think is the role of government and policy is really also to Get well, we can't get out ahead of this because it's already moving but to really be looking at Making sure there's the investments in the transmission side of this and the whole Network that is needed in order to build the infrastructure To power it and to see that this is going to happen can happen quite quickly and I think oftentimes because it is invisible It doesn't make itself up onto the radar screen of what's going on here as far as the the projections go So I think that's quite important as well as really looking at the R&D into storage So it gets more into your energy debate right as far as how we're going to do this But I think it it just puts an additional imperative on all of those discussions As well as higher pricing of co2. Yes and I would say standards on some of the Efficiency side of things so and it's I think often a debate that's not joined together To what extent are companies factoring these concerns into their decisions right now in terms of how to invest where to invest? I think you talked briefly well HP has signed on to the Greenpeace initiative There were some other companies that I won't name that you cite for example as Locating their cloud servers in jurisdictions where their power is almost exclusively coal fired Yeah, so you have this cloud. That's basically being you know coal powered our companies making more active decisions to Are the policy frameworks such that companies are now being incentivized to? Make investments that take into consideration these kinds of factors So I was telling I heal a pack and we have a long history of innovation with sustainability in mind This is the core values of what the original founders bill and they've Put in place, you know is to innovate make a contribution and do it sustainably so When we look at the roadmap and what we do obviously we think about that and actually we put very aggressive goals in our product roadmaps and that's why last year I came To the industry I said we're gonna make a commitment to reduce by 30 times the power consumption by 2025 That said we are not satisfied with that and that's what I explained early on how we radically How we think radically different about the problem we have today and then incentivize our R&D And by the way our HP labs to think about the problem in a different way And that's why whether it's the the supply and the demand side of house our entire supply chain Where we procure these products all the way to how we architect even the power supplies These are incentives. We actually put in place for our engineering community Philippine, did you have some comment on the industry and it's how it how companies are handling this? Yeah I was going to add that actually as Antonio had pointed out earlier in terms of sourcing out of renewable energy What we're seeing in our energy advisory services is that actually the IT players are some of the biggest now PPA investors in from renewables As much as three gigawatts, so they are being conscious and are being active on that side I don't think there are enough incentives, but there are still making some conscious and voluntary Move into that direction Just a as a resource. We do a scorecard for those of you want to dig in deeper click clean We're doing a new one this year. We're also looking at 24 seven renewable energy Supply so it's not an offset regime anymore, which gets into a bit of the details on the accounting But we think that you really do need to be looking regionally so that if we're looking for as Greenpeace for where we are sourcing our Electricity we want to be able to know 24 seven that it's from renewable power, but You'll see that, you know, you've got a Google and a Facebook and an Apple all up at the a People Packard's about in the bit below that at this point in time So we could sit down and talk about because I hear your commitment to that But the the real laggards right now unfortunately are in Asia And so that's where I think we are doing quite a bit of work because you do see uptake and renewables in some places and South Korea has made a big commitment to move away from coal and increase renewables But that's where a lot of the growth is and that's where we need to be to be looking so But not only in Asia, I mean I noticed there were some interesting outliers in the US on your list that I might not have expected to find yeah on that F score on the F scored there mostly Yeah, but they are it depends on the different part of it, but IBM is not in a great place either So yeah, you can see we have a whole methodology. We just want to make it transparent also because I think our Supporters are really obviously online all the time and if they're Greenpeace activists and millennials are coming up I think you're gonna see more and more Shareholders asking for this. I mean is this some is this an issue that investors are taking into consideration Is this something you hear about from shareholders? Not so much from shareholders per se, but I will say there is a is a board discussion for sure You know like cybersecurity is what we're doing to improve You know our contribution to reduce the carbon emissions and so forth We go through a whole process in that conversation Particularly as we we think about the the products and the services we are bringing to the market What about Philippine in Europe? Do you have a sense that this is something that shareholders investors care about? It's a board level I think it's as Antonio was pointing out is a question of All those stakeholders we engage with among which increasingly yeah shareholders and investors and we're seeing we're seeing a movement in the financial community growing interest in Sustainability issues as well. I Think at this point we can open up the floor to some questions Got one over here Hi, thank you very much for this very interesting discussion I'd like to ask miss a mrs. Morgan about Joe the geopolitics of Cobalt you mentioned it And if you could elaborate a little bit, that'd be great. Yeah, just briefly. It's not it's not my expertise, but I Think on some of these sources more on the on the Parts obviously than on the electricity side, but you're seeing that there are countries that that have the main supply And so I think how Where we go as far as whether it be Storage technology battery technology and how they're built we need to be looking at where those sources You know how they're actually being sourced where they're being sourced from what are the environmental and human rights standards? That are there because optimally we should be having the highest standards applied everywhere And this is a separate but very linked topic. We we also have released a report this week That actually shows there's many corporations that will be in one place But they will be Outsourcing or have subsidiary somewhere else and they will not and they'll use the standards of the place where they're Operating not where they're headquartered And there's lots of violations whole another set of case studies that are there. So that's more of what I was referring to Any other questions they're giving the mic. So that's okay. Yeah, I'm Arun Sharma I'm a board member in the Adani group and deputy vice chancellor at Queensland University of Technology If you look at outsourcing it actually had the model of follow the the Sun People used to work and then pass off the work to everyone Are people looking at enterprise distributed enterprise models of data centers? where The the data centers basically are in different locations and they follow the Sun and then they basically when their turn comes You just basically realign the the data Yeah, I mean listen them the fact that you are in a mission critical 24 by 7 right by the fault You have to keep the support going on as the other people come online I think there is way more work to be done to follow these principles You know and again, I think Jennifer talked about this is a regional problem But ultimately how we apply the same principles as we follow the Sun to make sure that data center have the same Principle of energy efficiency and sustainability and process. I don't think we are there to be honest with you Right. Well, you get that but the issue is that I think if you go through the policy and application of that I don't think we are there as an industry. I'm not speaking for us because We are one unique case, but as an industry I don't think the mentality is okay I'm have this level of energy consumption here how I bring it to for example in India Which obviously is a very large half and India has its challenges with power distribution So we have to make sure as we grow our business globally that we bring that conscious aspect on sustainability by you know Using models like that, but I think right now we are not there. At least that's my point of view Hi Daniel Shen young global leader fascinating topic As you remember at CES in a few weeks ago in Las Vegas There was huge pouring rain and then it's literally stopped the venue for entire day So, you know, we've been talking about empowering this economy But then those are natural caters big events. Are we resistant or are we ready for that? Can you touch base upon that? I? Well, I can just comment from a there is some work that's been done, which is The link between Climate-related extreme weather events and the impact on supply chains Which I think is incredibly important for business leaders to look at There was some work done a few years ago by Paul Paulson and Michael Bloomberg on this and Particularly well and and there was work by the Department of Energy on the electricity sector and what that can mean actually Not just for this sector, but across the board and I think it's another one of those connecting the dots things that People may not be connecting these various issues or extreme weather events that are coming and what it's going to be doing for the For the supply chain. So it's just a general comment of something that if I were CEO, I would be taking very seriously right now There are in fact, I believe credit rating agencies that now take into account Exposure of supply chains to potential weather and climate events Which shows that it's a serious material is one of the top risks identified for this meeting Did anyone else want to jump in on that point? I mean, I think is Absolutely a big topic. So when we in our in our Yearly and you know and quarterly reviews about enterprise risk management This comes up on the time is is about how we maintain Resiliency in our supply chain how we do sustainably and then ultimately listen last year in the United States was a disaster I mean hurricanes and Tropical storms think about what's happening in Florida Puerto Rico and in Texas and I had the major disruption so the question is Okay, how we distribute the supply chain and and ultimately how we deal with that energy requirement because you know We can't take the energy and not support the people that any needs think about even Puerto Rico today Only 70% of the island is the part that got the power back 30% of the people still don't have power Right, so it's a is a much bigger topic than the supply chain to be honest with you And also has implication on jobs as well So we we can talk about this but ultimately moving things around has social implications as well But in the enterprise risk management that we discuss We obviously talk about this all the time and one of the contingency plans and how you establish those a resiliency plans that you talked before Yeah, I think in terms of a building resiliency is of course very important, but Actually cutting the emissions is what we are facing We're facing two major issues at an overall level which is in terms of the energy sector which is of course cutting emissions and providing access to energy to the 1.2 billion people who still don't have access to reliable and and and and safe power and I think in those two challenges that we are facing again to 2030 50% of the solution comes from implementing energy efficiency technologies that exist right now And that just need to be accelerated implemented and what we need is to Rewire the way we behave the way we think about energy system and just implement those solutions Thanks, I have a statement and then also a question as well We're The founders of bw.com so we're 1.3 percent of the global Bitcoin mining network We're also the third largest mining equipment manufacturer and I could agree with you that proof of work is not here to stay even though we're in the business of manufacturing the equipment that supplies this ecosystem and That's because we started before proof of work Oh, well proof of stake and other proof of the importance mechanism existed, right? and It's it's a distribution mechanism to Allow everybody to gain access to the first bitcoins if if proof of work Didn't exist and we just went straight to proof of stake then Satoshi Nakamoto will own all the bitcoins ever existed so as an outcome the Switch over to proof of work to proof of stake is Inevitable not just for Ethereum, but for all other proof of work cryptocurrencies So that will reduce the power consumptions there also My question more is towards the distributed File-sharing platforms that can be built using blockchain technology that might Re-imagined the entire data center business model That is already being discussed and of course experimented in the Blockchain ecosystem and you know, we're talking about creating a new token economy that might power Competing force towards data centers. So do you do you guys see that being? Fred on the horizon of disruption and how do you guys insulate yourself from that? Sure, I can certainly address part of that. So I think distributed file systems as You're no doubt very well aware Very often include duplication of data. So actually the storage Requirements for distributed files systems could actually increase that said of course the Traditional database always needs resilience and needs backup and so forth I think what potentially I think might be interesting to see is whether or not we're used to an electricity System an energy system in which the cost of energy effectively For many consumers is smeared Across all the the generation sources Renewable has really virtually a zero marginal cost if we were for example in the case of data centers and Bitcoin mining and those kind of power consumption if that were to be more Structured according to the actual price the the real-time price of electricity You might be able to start producing the incentives to adjust the data consumption or the The amount of computations that are needed in the data side and incentivize it to be moved as this gentleman said to follow the sun So I think there's quite an interesting dynamic then I don't I don't think this is played out yet But but I think that's a Bitcoin could actually be something that pushes us to adopt something like this a little bit faster industries Will adopt the blockchain Technology not only cryptocurrency They're talking about a lot of more industries adopting the blockchain Can you name some well energy for a start? Energy the energy industry. So there's a vast shared infrastructure there which relies on asset repositories asset registration information of which could benefit from blockchain a Very interesting area right now in energy is demand-side response and that's on his very Jermaine to what we're talking about here And and that could also benefit from blockchain technology. So that's in the energy industry, which is my particular field Certainly financial services as you're probably well aware. That's really the leading proponent in that supply chains and logistics Healthcare pharmaceuticals the list does go on Anywhere really where you have a shared infrastructure in which there are central counterparties who are either Operating inefficiently because they're taking too much money out of the system Or they don't create a level playing field anything which means a lot of industries anything like that will benefit the focus here has been on on Basically data centers and and the compute power needed for proof of work in Bitcoin and other public cryptocurrencies If you look at the fourth industrial revolution the the whole gamut of technologies around additive manufacturing 3d printing Making powders close to the resource says country resources country will benefit out of it because Manufacturers are the ultimate middlemen and they will disappear in a 3d printing world So resource the countries that produce resources will actually see value but they need to have the power to convert the resources into powders and Ship it and then the 3d printers where every household is now producing little things that they need using a 3d printer the the power consumption might actually be significantly more than the The economies of scale that you had in mass manufacturing. Is this being looked at because But yes right now data centers and and Bitcoin mining is the thing but the coming revolution in manufacturing Is likely to be very power intensive because we are getting into extreme customization but with that the power needs might be highly distributed and and and a lot I'm not sure it's been looked at. I mean, I'm a very practical pragmatic Person of this. I think 3d printing is long ways to go and I think you will see the application 3d printing in the traditional way we build things in fact my our parent or our sister company is Investing quite a bit on 3d printing. In fact, what they're doing right now is how for example even Produce their own products with the 3d printing whether it is a shell on a laptop. I I think By themselves, right So I've used my 3d printing and instead of having a tooling to build a shell of a laptop I print my own shell, right and so that has all their implications in terms of again the supply chain and The power needed for that I think goes back to the fundamental principle is supply demand and how we balance this Ecosystem to make sure that also we think this disruption in this digital economy We understand the power implications and I think is a thought in the making here Because I don't think everybody has all the answers But at least that's my point of view at this point in time. This technology will have a profound Impli not change, you know in the way we live and work But I don't think we know exactly all the implications down the road, but definitely we should think about it Any more questions and ask the panelists whether any of you have concluding thoughts that you'd like to share Takeaways What this leaves you thinking yes? Well, I mean, I just think we're at we're at such a a moment of a crossroads here and You know this I I think we told we are at Greenpeace looking very much also to digital solutions to the climate crisis to other issues as well But if we don't get in now From what I'm hearing of what also could be coming Then you know we this this won't be a full-on win So I think it for me it just reinforces that but also Just making sure we've only talked about one part of the fourth industrial revolution But how this is done and making sure that we're all paying attention to that detail the other thing that I just You know energy efficiency is like the most underrated thing And I've been in the climate world for a long time But I think more and more as this takes off if we don't get our arms around that and actually get quite practical On how it's going to get done Then this you know that'll come back and slam back at this at this issue as well If I might add to that I totally agree with the image that we are definitely at a crossroad where What we decide right now in terms of the Infrastructure we build in data centers and and all the issues we've mentioned if we don't take the right approach We're gonna hit a wall basically so and but I do think I mean having been in the energy efficiency World for 15 years. I can tell you it's the most unsexy thing it has been for a long time and underrated But at least actually now it's it's it is because of that conversion of the digital technologies which with existing products the the fact is that it's actually becoming exciting and easier to use and Even customer-friendly So I think it's really time that we that we rise up and that we actually Put in place and implement those technologies to make sure that we are set on the right path to that two-degree scenario Yeah, no, I think let's I think we hit the wall. Let's be clear You know the the the level of change in disruption we see has never seen before But at the same time I think it's exciting it's exciting because we have an incredible opportunity to change The way we work and we were the way we live However, we need to tackle these big problems and we need to tackle it totally different We have some incredible technologies available to us but also should think about the implications of the world and to the society and And we have to be responsible So I think at least from my standpoint as as the income and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise We're gonna leave those values That's how we created the Silicon Valley to make a contribution and do it sustainably and yet continue to change the way We live and work And I think I just add that I think I accept the fact that Blockchain is the bad boy at the moment, but I think there's a great great amount of optimism that's gonna be changed I'm very pleased to hear Somebody who is a Bitcoin miner stand up and accept the inevitability of proof of stake And I just hope he puts his mining equipment to good use afterwards Thank you all so much. This has been fascinating and I hope we'll have the chance to discuss some of these issues again See what happens after the crossroads. Thank you