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The explosive growth of data centers amid the AI boom has put incredible stress on infrastructure—especially the electrical grid. Tech giants have partnered directly with utility companies and billions have been committed to upgrades. Will capacity grow fast enough to keep prices from rising? Will policy keep pace? And is all of this enough to maintain AI's momentum? 

Scotty, We Need More Power

Conferences

Calvin, hello. I, I feel like we ended the last one on a meditative note, and I'm noticing your mood beads there. So are you the calmest man in the power system right now? I'd like to think so, at least I'm thriving for that, but probably not, probably not. Well, look, I want to start with the fact that if we were doing a brainstorm with the head of a major utility company 10 years ago, we might have been talking about wind farms. And and solar panels and sort of happy consumers giving power back to the grid and our green cities and here we are in a panic mode about AI. So let's start. Has the dream died of of the first scenario of. Cleaner power and everything else. So first, let me say good morning and good morning to you. Thank you. I like the jacket. Um, yeah, well, thank you. I mean, I feel my son bought it and I feel like, uh, you know, Ralph Lauren should pay me to be wearing this big a thing on stage. So there you go. I, I would tell you, I would, I would tell you. We're not in a panic mode, 1st. 2nd, that dream has not died. We are a country that needs to continue to invest in all technology whether it's nuclear, wind, solar, gas. We need every electron. To make a difference we need that because we're in an unprecedented time where we're dealing with low growth and that load growth is being driven by technology data centers but also the onshoring of manufacturing, the electrification of everything, all of that is coming to a head and I say this all the time is that. I've been in the utility industry for about 25 years and in my entire career and probably the last 4 decades we have never had a moment of this amount of low growth and what a great opportunity we are in, but we need to seize it. And unfortunately for us as we get caught up in policy debates as to what is good, what is bad, what is, not just policy debates, you're actually election issues now in some of the areas that you're in, right? Was it the price of electricity is the new eggs, and that's not a good thing and. Um, so, so talk about that, even just the areas that you're in, incredible, that's both an area of incredible business growth but also affordability is acute in places like New Jersey. No, thank you for the question. So think about Exelon. We have the privilege to operate in some of the largest cities in our nation, Chicago. Uh, New Jersey, New Jersey, Baltimore, DC, Philadelphia, so you've got urban. Rural coastal and we have some of the largest uh disparity of incomes in the nation so affordability is key, which is exactly why it was an issue in New Jersey where but this is what you can't have progress if you don't invest, you know, so we want jobs we want economic development but don't do anything. It, it, it's not going to work. So what we are trying to do and we are partnering with our elected officials to say there is a thoughtful way of doing this and that goes right back to policy matters and I have 10.7 or almost 11 million customers to think about and I have to serve. The lowest income to the wealthiest, so you take DC as a microcosm. I have to serve the 2nd ward the same way I serve the 8th ward. Well, it's interesting because you actually do not own the underlying, um, power plants. You are the Constellation Energy that was spun off about 3 years ago. Now you want to get back in. So, so how do you want to get back in? Why is that important since we're talking in the context of Scotty, we need more power. Calvin, we need more power. Is that what it's going to take? You need to own this again. Well, let me just be very clear. I'm good. I don't want to get back into it, but if they're not going to build, someone needs to. What I always say is the independent power producers have no incentive to build anything new. Because they're maximizing their assets, which is fair for the current market conditions, and they were being when when low growth wasn't occurring they were getting pushed so now that growth is occurring they're able to maximize the dollar using New Jersey as an example. The average residential customer last year in New Jersey saw their bill go up $36. You know what, supply, the supply, the piece of that, it went up $38. I actually reduced their bill because of the reconciliation and blame and yet they blame me, and that is concern. So what we're doing is we're telling policymakers the warning lights are on. You're you're driving your car, the check engine light is on. You're like, I'm gonna keep pushing this. And no one's gonna pay attention until it breaks down and then everyone's gonna say, Calvin, why didn't you tell me? So what I'm doing is I'm telling you on that hottest day or that coldest day you might have a supply crunch and people are going to suffer. I'm telling you you have to fix it now. So that's why regulated generation is so talk about the talk you made this announcement yesterday with Next era. It's uh two states. It's intra utility red, blue. I mean, good for you that there's a man who's bringing us together here. Talk a little bit about why that matters. Is that something you think's critical? And again it's in the context of a conference where. The trajectory of AI and the trajectory of power are not necessarily on the same track. So Diane, let's go back to what we started with. You don't get data center growth, AI development, and so forth without building things, and that 765 KV line transmission system that we talked about announced yesterday with Nexttera is key because what it does, it's the highest voltage transmission system going across Pennsylvania and West Virginia, 220 miles, and what's so key. About that, it's helps with reliability, resiliency and affordability all at once. That that is the largest scale transmission system and it maximizes the output of the system. How real is the issue of of NIMB for those, you know, the not in my backyard phenomena, both with there's the data, you know, do you want a data center in your backyard and now do you want transmission lines coming across? Do you get much pushback these days just given the need or is it just every day? And what what I say to communities and what I say to data center developers what I say to my team members, you have to do it with the communities you can't the communities cannot feel you're doing it to them we're going to create jobs we're gonna create a tax base but you have to take their voice into consideration and those who do it well. Do that those who don't, they just show up and start building and it never goes well and what we started about a year ago really working with the communities on identifying the path of least resistance but you're always going to have some noise but you don't get to where we wanna go if we don't build something. Can you just anchor for us how critical a situation are we in? Because you know we're talking about accelerating growth next year, this whole conference. Did you really get the sense that 2026 is going to be the year where the curve goes up? Can we handle it in the current context that we're talking about with your six utilities? I think we can. Because we've always had, we've always shown and demonstrated our resilience in stepping up to the challenge each and every time. Now understanding I'm not a believer that the growth that we are talking about is going to be 10x or 15x, but I do believe we're going to have growth. I do believe we have developers that are playing states against one another and there's some double counting. And I also am optimistic because we do have the most resilient infrastructure in the world. We can maximize in the world. We do, we do, we do. When you, when you think, and I can speak directly, we will be, we will be putting as an industry $1.1 trillion of investment over the next five years, and you are chair of the Edison Electric Institute, I should say, so you've got the whole macro view of what's going on. I think Diane, you were trying to say I'm biased. Yes, no, no, no, I'm just saying. Our man in Washington in many contexts here, so yes, I, I am, and I, and I, I know my peers and we know our number one job is to provide a reliable and resilient system because it doesn't matter to you. More of you are working from home, you're educating your children from home, and if the lights don't come on, all the other stuff that we talk about, so you don't think about electricity until your rates go up or there's like a blackout and then it's, that's it and we're the backbone, we're 5% of the economy, but we power the next 95%. And we have to get this right. You know, let me talk about AI generally, and I'm going to take some questions from the audience. I mean, you're talking about it sort of as something you're powering, of course you must be using it yourself in some context. What are some of the tools you're using that are helping to both address these issues and grow the business. It's, it's a great, it's a great question, and I always say that you don't want your utilities to be the leaders in technology, really, why not? You don't, because when we lead and something goes wrong, bad things happen, so we, we want to be, I'll, I'll speak, I can, I'm speaking for Exelon, not EEI. When we, we like to be followers, we don't wanna be laggards, but we wanna be followers we cyber security is key for us because every piece of technology that you put on the system you make yourself more vulnerable. So we are always thinking about protecting the grid both physically and through cyber and we're also making sure our people are properly trained. I listened to the interview, I think it was Brad right before me and he was talking about people are the key to that change. And understanding utilities, it's not uncommon to walk into a utility and people have been working there 30, 40, 50 years, second generation. So that change management is second generation, aren't you? I am. You did your homework well. I mean, thank, thank you, uh, yeah, all of them. No, well, you know, talk about, talk about though with. AI, I would think that that's something we talk about as helping to basically alleviate and manage power. Are there any particular tools that you are comfortable with? I would say two things, and then I will tell you how I'm thinking about it in the future. The two things that we do is we like customer interaction. When you call in, if you ever need to call in, I want to be able to anticipate your needs. We're utilizing AI to do exactly that. 2, I'm probably angry because happy, but no, I'm just kidding, right? You don't call your utility when you're happy. You, you don't. And yeah, I, I've not had one of you call me and say thank you for my lights today, but that's all, that's all right. Noted. We're not working on that. Just wait till Monday. You'll be flooded. The, the second piece is making the regulatory and financial structure in which we operate more streamlined. We can take what takes months of just gathering data and, and we're utilizing that now. How do I want to use it? I talk about Exelon investing $38 billion into its system through 2028. We have a goal and we have stated it publicly that as a customer you should expect 24/7 reliability on blue sky days period. When the sun is shining, there's no rain, you should expect when you come home it's nothing more frustrating when your lights have been blinking and you're like what's up? Why? Shame on us. The second piece is after a storm, which is not a major storm, we should have 100% of our customers back online within 12 hours. And when we have a major storm, 100% of our customers back online within 48. That is significant. No one has ever said that's what they're going to do, but that's what you should expect from a world class utility, and I have to manage affordability. So how does AI come in? AI comes in and helping me anticipate where I'm having problems in my system so I can do proactive remediation where I can get in there and send you a notice and say you're gonna be down from 8. To 10 because we're working on this line that's not an outage that's me partnering with you as my customer and plus I mean it it is one of those industries where you have capped rates you don't have full, you know, um, I wanna take a question if there's any questions from the audience raise your hand, um. Yes, we have one over here and you can say thank you and, and you can please thank Calvin first and then tell us your name first. Thank you for the lights and everything else. Um, Ian Bramson Black and Beach, um, and uh my thank you for the partnership. You're welcome. Oh, OK, now this is a friendly question. My question's about cybersecurity. I run our industrial cybersecurity side. You had mentioned that earlier. You're talking about load. You're talking about. You have to go build stuff. Everything's at the forefront. We're putting in AI in here and not on the IT side. I'm talking about the operational side, keeping those lights on, keeping the AI centers running. What's the priority? What are you actually doing to build in fiber from the beginning? What's, what's in that? What, what are you doing there to make sure that that emerging threat is you're staying ahead of it? It's, it's all about governance protocols. Is early on we have we have we have a, a defensive depth strategy in all of our cyber security efforts that is embedded in any new technology that we're bringing into the system and we have protocols and governance procedures that have been set up way before we do any and. That just not goes into technology that goes into when we're building something we have to build it from the mindset that there's people out there that want to violate that system and they're trying to penetrate it each and every day so it is ingrained in everything we do, but what happens with that, it takes longer. Because now you have another sector that you have to incorporate into it and I'll be honest with you, the concern is not so much what we're doing my concern is by do my suppliers have that same ability to put the same protections on their system because once they get in they're in so we have to then go back to everyone else we're working with to ensure that they have the same protections and safeguards your comfort level right now with that given the number of. Stakeholders you have. It's not as high as I'd like it, um, because 1 to 10, I would say 6 or 7, yeah, because I would, the reason I say that is that I'm a big believer to give small businesses opportunities and small businesses do not have the capital and the infrastructure to put it in place. So therefore I have to put it's a belt and suspender type approach because I, I want you to grow with me, but at the same time I need to protect my customers and the system. You know, I, before, um, I give you some final thoughts, and if there's any other questions, like, forgive me, I just, uh, I'm, I don't see your hands. I'm gonna, um, I'm sure there's some out there, but. Um, we're talking about, uh, you know, you're mentioning almost really diversity in terms of bringing in some of these smaller suppliers, affordability, clean energy. How is the landscape around some of these other priorities, uh, shifting and especially clean energy because there's no question that, you know, we're on a trajectory where we have to care about that sort of thing. I would tell you that at Exelon it's still a priority because. When you I the jurisdictions that I outlined for you earlier, clean energy is still a priority nuclear and my, my view is that I'm going to partner with each and every one of my customers to achieve their goals and I've worked with administrations from Democratic to Republicans and the reality of it is is that. We are true to our mission and our values we're gonna be OK and that is how we outline it now the challenge that I do have is that because we're a 100% regulated business we need to get paid for all the work that we're doing and having those conversations up front matter. We're talking about 2026 predictions. Um, I know our time is winding down for final thoughts, but, uh, what's your prediction for prices next year? They're going to go up by how much double digit a lot. Look at exit to your right, so you're getting an out, but what, what do you, uh, any thoughts? Is it going to be something that is comparable to this year's increases? So let me, let me put it in perspective for you. We operate within the PJM marketplace. So again, the majority of us don't own generation. Last year, the governors in the PJM region put a price cap on. It saved customers $3 billion or the prices would have been higher. The governors have recommended extending that price cap for another cycle that would save anticipate another $10 billion. So that's why I can tell you with certainty that the prices are going to go up. So in the 39 seconds we have left, any final thoughts you want to convey to this audience of tech leaders, entrepreneurs, people forging ahead with the future of AI? Believe partnerships matter. We will get better because of our ability to work with you and if we do not get your voices into the conversation to make us better because utilities we know what we do but in partnership with you we can help technology make us more efficient and drive progress. I cannot think of a better place to end than there please join me in thanking Calvin Butler. Thank you very much. Thank you.

As climate regulations tighten and eco-savvy consumers demand more, addressing environmental risk is no longer optional—it’s a business imperative. In this panel, business leaders will explain how to make sustainability initiatives part of everyday operations—not just to help the planet, but to save money, meet regulations, and improve workflow. From cutting energy use in buildings to expanding electric vehicle fleets and finding cleaner manufacturing solutions, we’ll address what’s working, what’s not, and whether going green can lead to big payoffs. We’ll also discuss the importance of sharing corporate climate commitments and why transparency is key to building lasting trust in an era of growing greenhushing.

Lunch Session: The Business Case for Going Green

The future of energy will be defined by the coexistence of traditional fuels and renewables. Clean energy now generates more than 40% of global electricity, with technology making renewables practical, scalable, and reducing the impact of conventional fuels. Meanwhile, the rise of AI is driving unprecedented power demand, underscoring the urgency of new energy solutions. Forward-looking leaders share their insights on the capital, innovation, and pathways powering this next wave of the energy transition. 

The New Energy Playbook

Good morning everyone. What does the new energy playbook look like in the new world, driven by AI, data centers, and population growth? These are the three key points we will be talking about. And if you have any questions during our session, please feel free to raise your hand, and Mike will come to you and you can ask your question. We will start by with all our amazing guests, but we will start with you, Katherine. Uh, how do, how do you see the energy transition progressing in mindsets, investment, and technology? Where are we going from here? Yeah, OK, um, good, good morning everyone, and, um, despite sometimes um. The noise, I think overall uh the energy transition is progressing very, very well. I think some of the numbers were mentioned earlier on and uh I think what's really different this time is that the energy transition is not just responding to a climate urgency which remains very high it today uh manages to meet a lot of the challenges that the different regions, different countries are facing. And it can be energy growth, energy growth driven by electrification, so you're going to need to install new generation capacity. So if you're going to install new capacity, you might as well install low carbon emitting means of production. So that's, you know, energy growth is one of them. The second thing is even in countries where the demand grows a little bit subdued, what you have is that the old assets retiring. So again, here you need to install a new assets and then you might as well, you know, develop a green projects. The third point is competitivity. Um, the cost of energy transition is becoming a massive issue, which is why, you know, companies, um, technology are so important to make sure that when we do this energy transition. We indeed provide competitive solution and the nice thing is that there are numbers of technologies today that are competitive indeed. I think when you look at the solar competitiveness here in this region it's quite amazing, and I'm not going to steal the number of my colleagues here, but by coupling solar and batteries in certain conditions you can have very, very competitive projects. So that's another aspect of course of of the energy transition um drivers that are. than ever and maybe then the last point is around sovereignty and self-dependency, um, you know, we might discuss later on about geopolitics, but for sure the ability for regions to self rely much more by having their own production, whether it's homegrown electrons or homegrown molecules when it comes to green gas that is also a very, very important driver. It gives you more sovereignty, more sovereignty for sure, because you depend less on import fuels, for example. Um, so that's why, you know, today as NG we remain more convinced than ever that we invest roughly 10 billion a year at NG. Most of that money comes to the energy transition and we are actually more comforted than ever that we are, you know, in the pointing in the right direction with the caveat that you need to make sure the projects are good projects, projects that are going to provide the right elections at the right time, which means that It's not just developing solar everywhere, you know, you need to couple it with the right assets so that eventually the electricity that you produce has the right profile, the profile that customers need, and here, you know, again integration of different technologies, having storage capability, having flexibility are very, very important. These are some of the levers that we are pushing and using to make sure that we are meeting all these challenges that I've just mentioned. as NG is started legacy, I mean it's a legacy energy company, so we will talk about the transformation, but I would like to focus on technology now, and I will move on to Mustard and speak about how much technology, or how much we are looking at those new energy companies as technology companies today. How does AI transformation factor into what you do today at Mustard? Are you using it? Are you building on it? Will it factor into anything that you do? Thank you, mate. First, uh, let me say I'm excited to be here and back in Riyadh, uh, the capital of the kingdom. Also excited to visit our team here in the kingdom. Mazdar has part of has been part of the journey of the Vi2030 since the start. We have around 60 gigawatts of renewable energy projects, um, and we have deployed circaross capital of around $5 billion US dollars here in the kingdom. I just also yesterday I had the pleasure to visit our Uh, project, uh, with, uh, uh, the Red Sea Global, uh, at the Amala project, which represents in fact, a fully integrated utility system. That that integrate both the generation capacity vis a vis renewable, mainly solar integrated into an energy storage system integrated into an RO system with wastewater treatment that fulfill the requirement of the end user, which is eventually the bay area and the the resorts area. And we are very proud to be part of that system which triggers the discussion of technology integration. You know, it has always been a challenge, man. You know, when we look at renewables, one of our key challenges in renewables that we do not control the feedstock, you know, so basically we can't control the sun. We cannot control the wind. We cannot control the water. But you know what you have we do, but how can I control that? Energy source was always a scientific theory, but in today's world and going back to the Amala project and the recently announced project what we call round the clock project in Abu Dhabi, we just laid the ground for the groundbreaking two days ago. We could now control. The the power of the sun where we store during day and we generate during day and then we dispatch during night. Now that is coupled with an umbrella going back to AI. That is controlled by an operating system. That is driven by artificial intelligence which allow us to control the system more effectively and be available 99% of the time. 99% of the time generating a 1 giga load base load, green renewable, reliable, competitive energy. So that is a fantastic outcome of this project and we believe this this could be a blue. Print and replicated elsewhere. Every country has its own characteristics. For example, in the kingdom here, the kingdom is blessed by a lot of resources. Solar is one, but also wind that has been the case. We developed the first wind project in the kingdom with our partner Domiel Jal. And imagine if you integrate wind, solar energy storage coupled with a control system that is driven by AI to fuel the growth. And then the AI part, the other side is the demand side of AI, you know, my dear brother, his, his older brother and a younger brother at the same time. Uh, uh, you know, the vision, invest and, and, and of course Aqua Power and the rest, but they are also developing data centers. So data centers and super what we call hyper scales and whatnot, they are driving the GCC, particularly our region has grown circle around 5% on average in terms of power demand, and that's without AI. OK, so imagine if you couple that with AI and our region really is one of the driving forces of data centers which will feed into AI. We believe that growth for electricity will double. This is our belief, not in the kingdom and in the GC generally. I mean, uh, he, he has just asked the question for us. What is Aqua power doing in that direction? So with the data centers and today with AI and the good news after the great speakers, my colleagues here, I cannot say anything more, you know, we are a small company with we have big vision and we are trying to, you know, accomplish something. I think the technology, and they have to say it thanks to the Chinese innovation, and they have to give a full, full credit to the Chinese. There are many political issues in the world, people criticizing China. But if there is no China, there is no energy transition, and they have to give a full, full credit to China, innovation, scale, competitiveness, and giving solution to the world that they will be able to go to energy transition. And I have to say that, uh, you know, if we take our case, it's not any more uh renewable solar wind storage because we've done it many times in big big scale we have 94 gigawatts today. In reality, I think what is more important is that how and what you create out of this integration of renewable, as my colleagues they were talking about in this energy transition is a real happening and it's economically there is not much subsidy. There is no feeding tariff, you know, it's become a competitive solution, economical solution. It's not only regulation by countries, but it's also economically. The sound, but also you are going to get, as Mohammed said to data center. Where you are going to go to downstream if you allow me, but if we look at it, our best example in this country we have done is the green hydrogen. OK. Today, you know, Saudi Arabia is building the biggest on Earth green hydrogen and and really I have to say this is the reason why, as Mohammed said. Uh, you know, it is Saudi Arabia is blessed with resources. It's very unique. You cannot find it in GCC except Oman, uh, you know, where you find a combination of solar, wind, as Mohammad said, and storage. But also, you are taking it and going through electrolyzers and doing hydrogen and oxygen, and then you're doing green ammonia or methanol or whatever. If you see our project today, it's a 4 gigawatt. Of solar and wind. Show me one project today. It's 4 gigawatts where it's taking a grid, dedicated grid to electrolyzers and and making the future energy of the world because, you know, again, is it going to be, you know, decarbonization is going to be by green electricity? No. You need, you need an energy. And this energy that you needed to do decarbonization, and the only way to do decarbonization today is using energy converted. Is it blue energy, blue hydrogen from the gas or from green hydrogen from renewable? It is two ways, but in reality today. Even people are saying, as you said, capital. Cost of capital. If you remember the solar in the last 10 years, and if you remember the wind, the storage, the battery storage, what has happened? The cost come lower, the efficiency is better. You know, reliability is better. Again, we are getting green, green energy, but also now we are getting in Saudi Arabia 100%, you know, renewable green water. Desalination is coming from green energy, but you could imagine 60% of the cost of water. It's coming from renewable, and you could imagine that the price and the cost of water desalination has went down almost 85% in the last 10 years. You could imagine that there is 2 billion in the world. They have no accessibility of water, drinkable water, bottable water, but you are giving a lot of solution of this energy. And this renewable and this green that you are making competitive costs, accessibility to people having no electricity because you do not need a grid in the renewable. You need to have a micro smaller, you know, it's a rooftop, is it, you know, and this is the great thing about the distribution. Yes, the distributed solar, it's become now the future. You know, and that's a solution by itself because there are so many houses, there are so many projects behind the meter that you could do captive, distributed energy. Reality today in the world. We are going to see cost competitiveness. We are going to see more reliability. And now we are going to see also security of supply because we talk, they talk about it, my colleagues. I think what's unique is going to be a security of supply. It's not about accessibility to energy. It's not only a cost of energy. It's become with the recent unfortunately situation globally, what's happening upside down. Security of supply, it's become a key, a key, a key component, and that's what His Royal Highness Prince A is always saying in all of these world conferences and his speech, our Minister of Energy, he always say, you know, we talk about energy, not only one energy, we are going to talk about the total energy. But in reality we are going to talk also about security of supply because security of supply, it has a lot of values that and this is the great thing about renewable, that you know you will get also the security of supply. Again, the whole world today going for very, very huge, I have to say, disturbance. Because you hear green is not good, you hear the wind is not good. You hear this is not good. In reality, what is good, I think what's good for the people, what helps the people to have a better quality of life and to have a better accessibility to electricity and water and energy. Major organizations, energy organizations around the world now are starting to go back to talking about. Dividing between renewables and hydrocarbons. I'll go back to Mozar with this. Your mother company is a hydrocarbon company. You come Mazar and Aqua Power come from an energy, hydrocarbon energy rich country. How do you make the balance with rapidly scaling renewables under these circumstances and also financing them, especially when we talk about security? Yes. Uh, so, we have, I have 3 shareholders, uh, Taha, which is, uh, listed the utility company at the ADX, um, Mubadala, the one of the sovereign wealth fund of, uh, Abu Dhabi, and of course A, which is Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. And you are absolutely right. So, our country, which is a young country established in '71, was established and blessed by a natural, natural resource that was a main source of our economic drive and economic growth and remains so and remains so. So fossil fuels, natural gas, crude oil. is a very important aspect of our economy at the United Arab Emirates. And in fact, uh, of course, one of my shareholders is the national champion for uh for that uh aspect. Uh, now the country as, as, as, as the United Emirates have clearly established a renewable energy target. So when they established Masdar in 2006, there was a clear vision. The vision was we as a country, we are fully dependent. There are two dependencies. One, you are dependent on fossil fuel. For your economic growth, the other dependency is that which is very important, is that you are dependent on fossil fuel for your own energy supply, which is power, and more important than power is water because 100% of our water is desalinated water and the desalinated water is coupled with power generation. And our generation is coupled with fossil fuel. So our government was very clear in 2006 they said we cannot continue our dependence on natural resources for our own energy supply. So we need to create a company that invests in clean technologies. Mazar and we need to create a company that invests in clean nuclear power generation, Emirates nuclear company, and we need to have a target of at that time 7% renewable energy target by 2020, and that target was established in 2006. OK, so when we come to 2020, when we came to 2020, our renewable energy mix. Became almost 12 to 13%. So from 0. Zero renewable energy mix 212. By 2030, we need to come to 50. So that dependency is very important. However, We have always said, including my chairman Dr. Sultan Jaber, who used to also be the COP 28 president, he was very clear. He said that renewable energy is a must. We are committed to renewable energy. The whole world should be committed to renewable energy. However, we cannot just say we, it's only renewable energy. It's an inclusive energy mix that should include gas as transitional fuel and should also include nuclear power generation. and that was established at COP 28 when they said we will focus on nuclear and they established a base there. So, so as you can see, fossil fuel is a very important energy source. Nobody in the world scientifically or not scientifically can ignore the power of fossil fuels and the importance of fossil fuels, and what fossil fuels have played in the economic prosperity that we have today in this earth. And we remain so in our view, but renewables will play a very important role and will continue to play an important role in the future. So we don't have a lot of time left. I have so many questions for all of you, but we need to talk about the most important thing, Katherine. We'll do that wrap up like 30 to 45 seconds each. In your opinion, what is the breakthrough or mindset shift that will define the next stage of energy transition? What in your opinion would it be? Uh, I think it's, it's really this whole, uh, integration thing that people really realize that it's not gonna be one technology saving the world but really the very smart integration, um, technology based, the smart system, smart grid that is going to be, uh, the solution, particularly on the power side. And maybe because we didn't talk so much about the people aspect um I think it's also super exciting from a people attractiveness point of view um because sometimes energy it looks like it's quite easy to just develop solar panels actually the challenges, the technological and digital challenges are such that it has to be very attractive for people who want to solve, uh, interesting problems. Especially when you are driving the energy transition because you are future proofing your company and young people, they are very, they want to make sure that when they join a company, they join a company that is going to be there for decades, yeah, so you know you have both this very sweet spot of technology challenges, complicated economic and social societal challenges. And at the same time longevity and that that is really a sweet spot which makes us very attractive to people so that's a bright spot. I and I will say that uh you know I'm not a politician. But politicians, they have to be away from the economy more and these barriers of, you know, import, export, all of these issues, you know, they are making it more complicated to the world. They are making it more complicated and very expensive for everybody, and we are really just creating barriers unnecessary for no reason. And we are not able to take advantage of each other because the whole global needs each other. The whole country, there is no one country does not need the others. We are all human in this earth. We need to work together and we need to have an integration and we need to think about how we create something together that's good for all our people in this earth. We need to wrap up so. Can you say something in 10 seconds? 10 seconds? Yes, I'm blessed to be here among my dear friends and partners. Thank you so much. Thank you. We need to all work together. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Transformative technologies like autonomous vehicles, electric air taxis, circular battery solutions, and AI-driven traffic systems are reshaping transportation worldwide. Global electric vehicle sales grew more than 25% last year, and billions of dollars are being invested in smart infrastructure and logistics. The shift to smarter, cleaner, and more efficient transport is accelerating. Leaders now face a pivotal question: How can they join, shape, and scale this transformation to unlock economic opportunity, cut emissions, and drive growth? 

Driving Toward the Next Generation of Mobility

Tony, we're so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Um, I recently took my first ride in an autonomous vehicle. It was in San Francisco, and it was thrilling. I felt like I was on a very safe amusement park ride, but it sort of left me thinking, what is the problem that the autonomous vehicle is designed to solve? For me it was just kind of fun. I, when I need to drive somewhere, I drive myself, but there are some real social purposes and social goals behind autonomous vehicles. For, from your point of view, why does the world need AV? OK, so. Uh, that question is quite straightforward. They think about why do we need washing machines? Uh, why do we need programmable switches. Before the invention of program switches, we have lots of job opportunities for human operators to plug two phone lines together, but now we can find it can done by computer or machine. Think about our civilization. It's just lots of things in can be. done by a human being or can be done by the by the animals like horses, cattles, and gradually replaced by the machine power. AI is the same thing, you know, nobody wants to drive for 12 hours, nobody wants to get stuck in the traffic. So what if a machine do it for you and they will never have any mistakes. I think that's the dream of most of the people and that's why. I found it right. That's why we worked so hard for more than 8 years to make this thing a reality. So that's the analogy is that the productivity of the time for all of these people who would otherwise be driving that's freed up for whatever they need, whether it's keeping up with their email or inventing the next AI so. And now you've been thinking about mobility. You've been involved in AI and computer engineering for a long time. We write 8 years old, but you're, you've been thinking about mobility for much longer. Is that correct? Yes, yes, you know, I was, I was majored in at that time image processing slash computer vision in 1990s and then in 2000 computer vision. I got a PhD in computer vision and then taught at the University of Missouri Columbia for more than. 10 years, and then, you know, all my career has been devoted to the development of so-called AI because for a while, you know, after 1950 or 1960s, AI become a taboo or very cold name and people like to use computer vision and then artificial neural network and then proper models, all kinds of related terms. And then after 2010, 2011, AI. Gain her popularity but all my life has been devoted to R&D in this area AI, yeah, in the kinds of headline grabbing innovations lately that we've seen with large language models, uh, does that benefit the autonomous vehicle field as well? Does that same kind of acceleration make the cars operate better? Yeah, for sure, because, uh, you know, people talk about this kind of large language model, but inherently. This is um based on now we more like, you know, the researchers more like college foundation model. So basic large, very large neural network model it can be used to model language, but you can basically can use to model all the knowledge, uh representing all the knowledge. Therefore, you know, uh, we develop our autonom driving systems leverage on a very rapid progress in large language model and the machine learning. I see. And now, so we've explained quite a bit, um. We write is now in I believe 30 cities in 11 countries. Is that correct? Uh, one of the countries that's coming to next is Saudi Arabia, in fact, right here to Riyadh, um. What you, you know, at this point you have experience working with governments in many, many places. What's, what kind of regulatory framework do you need for an autonomous vehicle company to thrive, you know, what kind of cooperation or uh or rule making. I think we really need policies and uh the most important thing is the the determination and the openness to autonomous driving from the political leaders or officials and of course this is a new thing and Uh, there's no perfect new thing, and, but now it's getting into a certain level of maturity that can be deployed in a large scale. I'm not saying we can supply a kind of transportation tool that is 100% safe, but we can provide something that maybe 10 times safer than human driver. Do you want to take it? If you want to take it, and then you have to generate a certain regulatory framework. One thing I want to say very a few good things about the Saudi government and also the UAE government. We plan to the in the in the Mid East to our big surprise, you know, the political leaders, local government officials, they are very open, very determined, very, uh, uh, take lots of responsibility to put all of all of this autonomous driving into reality and I think we write team team up with Uber will soon provide autonomous driving. Robo taxi in Riyadh and we will soon uh uh supply full driverless robo taxi in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Today if you go to Abu Dhabi, you can already hail Uber through auto driving vehicle, but with a safety driver, but maybe next month once we get the final approval, we will have full driverless operation just like what you have experienced in San Francisco. So truly driverless, no, not even the sort of comfort level of the person in the passenger seat could be there if something goes wrong. Is there um. An infrastructure element to this. I mean, I think of the fact that Riyadh and other cities in the kingdom have a lot of new construction, you know, up to date, top of the line broadband. Uh, but you also operate in cities like Barcelona where the infrastructure is, you know, many centuries old. Uh, are there, when there's, when the infrastructure is older, are there different kinds of challenges? Yeah, but definitely the infrastructure is old, it will cost extra challenges. But here I want to make up a point is like we've recently, I would say breathtaking progress of large language model and uh neural network. Previously, we probably need to rely a lot, a lot on the infrastructure, but now with the development of the AI technology, we start to depend less or less on the infrastructure, but still a good road, very good wireless connection is necessary. I'm very glad to see that Riad Abi Dubai, they all have very good infrastructure and um so I'm quite excited to Uh, fastly deployed, uh, auto driving vehicles in these cities in a very large scale. What are the um infrastructure is no longer a barrier to expansion, um, and I was actually surprised uh. To hear that it's relatively inexpensive, that the per unit cost of a driverless car is if, if you had asked me before our conversation how much it would be, I would have guessed a much higher number. But can you tell me the number you, yeah, I think currently the cost of for us to build our auto vehicle is a little bit above like $40,000 US dollars, $40,000 yeah, think about $40 40,000 dollars US dollars you can. You know, I got a Tesla Model X. It's much more expensive than, you know, in the US, much more expensive than 40,000. So, you know, leverage on the strong, very strong supply chain of electrical vehicles in China, right? You can get a lot of things, you know, very cost effective price. And so that's the price and the point I want to make is for technology, our product will just come and can give us very good experience. We should strive for better experience, for safety record, not for the low price. I got enough with this kind of lowered the price and flooding to the market. That's not good to anybody, but don't always try to win the competition by lower your price. I don't think that's a wise movement. I think Elon Musk recently said if just one of these things gets in a crash, we'll have national headlines for months. Um, I mean, there is that there's sort of the cultural issue statistically. Autonomous vehicles safety record has been very, very strong, but because there's still a novelty, it seems that if something does go wrong, the attention it attracts is outsized. If I crash my car into a fire hydrant, nobody cares except me. If it happens to an auto hominious vehicle, it's it's news. That always happens to the, to the invention to the new stuff, right? You know, if you just, just dig into the old news, old news old papers, right, like one airplane just invented by Wright Wright brothers, a crash of airplane will make to the headline anytime, even nobody got injured. So it's, it's, it's just like that. It's our human civilization history, but uh. Great things like uh as entrepreneurs, as inventors, we should be really serious enough, we should be brave enough to push forward for the new innovation because we live in the AI era, think about our offspring, our, our kids, if we can make this a reality, they will appreciate us. Is there also an environmental case to be made for uh for autonomous vehicles? Is is part of the case that eventually you just don't need as many vehicles and there's a leveling off of? Yeah, I think it's all depends. It's actually in order to, you need to have to collaborate with the municipal governments because, you know. Actually, there's one point I want to make, like how many cars can the city hold? It's not depends on the population, it depends on the road networks. OK. If you build 10 times more cars, they basically they just park in the parking lot, consume the resource. So if we have an efficient way to operate so that everybody can hail a car when they need it, that is the number of vehicles you need and actually that's very friendly to our environment, very efficient. Is there, uh, that makes me realize we rides products right now are all essentially, uh, for hire. There's robo buses, there's robo taxis, but there isn't say a robo minivan that I would buy to put in my own driveway. Is that part of the business model that you essentially. that you wouldn't be intending to produce these things for individual ownership. Oh, we won't. We actually, we, we will, we have already produced something that's very similar to FSD and we write uh produce advanced system actually currently. Uh, Tinao with Bosch, a European company, the number one tier one supplier in the automobile industry, we team up with Bosch has already supplied, uh, other system to Cherry, and also we, we supply other system to GAC and also we talk, talk with, we are in talk with several carEMs. I think people will need it, you know, if you have experience to drive these days. You know, it's just like using smartphones. Your old Nokia phone is good enough, durable enough, but once you switch to your smartphone, you'll never got back. Once you switch switch to FSD and you can enjoy the trip. So I, you know, many of my friends using Tesla, and they will never switch back. Given that that's possible, given that that adoption rate is as high as it is, what's the How widely does we need to be adopted? How how widely do AVs need to be adopted before the autonomous vehicle businesses are, are profitable? I mean we write, I know you, you're approaching it, but you're far from it. Uh, how, how big does the market penetration need to be before it's actually a profit making business? It's a very good question. It depends on the market, you know, if you, uh, you know, if you want to deploy your robo taxi in the market, where I have a rule, OK, I have a rule of thumb. So in any market. If the cost of taxi or car hailing service is like more than $1 per kilometer, that is a very good market. Today with the price of ride with the cost of ride we can already make profitable. Anything between 50 cents US dollar, I'm always talking about anything between 50 cents to $1 that's why you have to optimize a lot of things in order to make the whole business profitable. Anything below $50,000 it's very, very, very, very challenging. I see. But the cost of everything behind that, the construction of the vehicle and the and the AI stack itself, those are all steadily lowering. Yeah, that's a big deal. Do you have a, where do you think the industry will be five years from now, 2030? What is your vision 2030? 2030, I think all the major cities, um, you know, if they are open to auto driving, you will see like what you have seen in San Francisco today for all major cities will be like to be like that. And besides, I'm more excited about talk about within the 10 years frame, I think we can build the autonomous driving vehicle in L5, which is L5 level, which is autom driving vehicle will drive as good as human driver. I think that is just like the GPT moment these days, you know, GPT already can. Achieve a certain capability in the in the law set in a mathematic competition it's already parable to comparable to the top human player. I think L5 within 10 years, you will see um the driving capabilities on pair with the best human drivers. So L5 within 10 years comparable with the best human drivers. Uh, I love driving, but I really look forward to doing less of it. Tony, thank you so much for joining us. Such a pleasure. Thank you.

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