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