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Oil prices remain volatile, artificial intelligence is demanding more power than the electrical grid can easily handle, and energy CFOs are deciding where billions of capital will flow next.
Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner joins Fortune Daily to discuss how one of America’s largest energy giants (No. 21 on the Fortune 500) is navigating these shifts—from continuing investments in Venezuela to signing a 20-year natural-gas supply agreement for Microsoft’s massive data center project in Texas. Bonner breaks down energy security, AI’s unprecedented power appetite, and what consumers should expect on their energy bills as winter approaches.
Also on today's episode: • Term Sheet Preview: How did prebiotic soda brand Poppi scale from a local farmers' market booth into a $1.95 billion beverage powerhouse? Senior Writer and Editor Allie Garfinkle talks with the founder to uncover the blueprint behind their rapid growth.
- watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcD2QIeEH8
Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 

Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 - Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner on AI & Energy Demand 
14:04 - Term Sheet: How Poppi Became a $1.95B Soda Brand


Inside Chevron’s Massive Bet on AI & Energy | Fortune Daily

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I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn and one of the main topics of conversation is the price of our energy bills right now. We hear the concerns and the most important thing that we can do and what we are doing as a company is ensuring that we bring as much supply to market as we can. Hello, I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune Daily. Energy is rarely out of the headlines these days and oil prices continue to be volatile. At the same time, AI needs more power than the grid can easily deliver. At the center of all of this are CFOs, Chief Financial Officers, because they're the ones deciding where energy companies invest their money. Ema Bonner is the CFO of Chevron, which is number 21 on our Fortune 500 list. And she's helping steer one of America's largest oil companies through all of it, from deciding to double down on rigs in Venezuela. To a 20 year deal with Microsoft to supply natural gas power to a massive data center that it's building in Texas and that project alone could deliver power roughly equivalent to 2 million homes. Bonna joins me to talk about energy security, about AI's voracious appetite for electricity, and also about what she'd say to consumers, panicked that as we head into winter, that already very pricey energy bills are about to skyrocket. Eva, thank you so much for joining us. So it's the UN General Assembly this week in New York, and there's real hopes that U.S.Iran talks there could help stabilize global oil prices. What's it like to manage this volatility, this ongoing volatility from the CFO chair of a major oil company like Chevron? Well, thanks, Ellie, for having me. It's buzzing here in New York at Ongo Week. Look, things Very volatile and very uncertain and that's something that we don't try and predict as a company we plan for it and so from a CFO chair I'm involved in planning for all of that uncertainty. Our business is cyclical, so we're used to every few years having some shocks and cycles, and we have to make sure, and I have to make sure from the CFO's chair that we can weather all of that disruption. So what I pay attention to are things that are within our control. How does the portfolio perform at high and low prices? What investment choices make sense? Investment choices that make sense over the long term that will be profitable and deliver high returns even if prices. are lower. How to manage risks around the world, we have operations. Around the world and so each country is different and so we think about that as a company and the CFO plays a key role in looking at all the enterprise risks and ensuring that we can manage those risks. And then third is really to ensure that every day we're safely and reliably operating all of the assets we have because it's that platform of performance that is so important, important, especially given the disruption that we're managing today when Delivering supply to the market to delivering products to customers, and it's even more important when you've got constraints in the system. Chevron has announced that it's planning to more than double its red count in Venezuela following a deal struck with the Trump administration. You've negotiated or the company has negotiated stability clauses and arbitration rights as part of that deal. But this is still a deal that's tied to a certain political administration. What protects that money that Chevron has invested if the politics change over the next couple of years? The new terms that we were able to negotiate it unlocked this growth opportunity for us. It had long duration growth possibilities. It was a low cost. Operations 3 low cost operations and higher returns. So those 3 things came together to give us confidence that we could grow our investment in Venezuela. So when we think about Venezuela, we have 3 operating. Joint ventures today we've been in the country for 100 years, so we understand the country very well. We understand the stakeholders very well. We have exceptional employees in Venezuela, so our human capital is there. Our partnership has been developed over many years. So that's where we're starting from when we got these new terms and additional acreage, it made the outlook for. Venezuela compete with everything else that we have in the portfolio. The extra protections that we put in place, the stability clauses, protects the terms of all of those new agreements regardless of who's in power, regardless, regardless. So the stability clause, and these stability clauses are like what we would have in other parts of the world, so they're no different than what we have in Kazakhstan, for example, and that really protects the investment and that's really important to know when you're in a country that the investment that you're making for the long term is protected. So in addition to the additional acreage, we also got those additional protections. And then we got the right to resolve disputes through international arbitration, which is something that we would typically have in other assets of scale around the world. So it was the terms and it was these protections, the protections on the economics and the protections, legal protections that gave us that overall confidence to grow, and we'll grow production. We'll double production over the next five years. That will require gross $7 billion of commitment. And what we'll unlock at a gross level is roughly 9 billion barrels of commercial. Commercial reserves before becoming CFO you were CTO, um, so you're particularly uniquely placed to talk about what we're seeing now with the AI boom and its potential impact on, um, the energy market. So every week is bringing another story about AI agents and what they can, they can't do, how they might. Behave. AI is now selling utilities protection against that, um, to try and guarantee safety. You're about to sell power to these companies. Um, what goes through your mind? How are you thinking about this moment in time and specifically the conversation we're having right now about AI and long term safety? So we see the opportunity in two areas. One, how to leverage the technology to improve performance, and it's one focus area. And the other area is how to power the energy, the AI growth, and the energy that's needed, that's needed for the AI growth. So we're playing kind of both sides of the equation. I'd start with, you know, leveraging AI. I mean from a CTO perspective, when I was the CTO, we stood up the enterprise AI team, so the team in Chevron that has grown over the last couple of years that has deployed AI across the organization. We're using AI in our assets to improve performance. We're using it in our reservoirs to help us make the right decision on how to increase recovery. We're using it across the organization for personal productivity and team products. Oh, I use it every day. In fact, I can't remember a day where I did not use AI. I'm using it every day to help me synthesize information. There's a huge amount of information that comes obviously across my desk every day. And one of the challenges to discern what really matters and what doesn't. And so it's really helping me with discern discern. Things I should pay attention to. It's helping me with my personal efficiency, and that gives me more time to think about some of these longer term decisions that are important to me. One of the topics that has been mentioned in these doomsday debates that have been swirling over the past week or so is the possibility of AI hacking the energy grid. Is that in your perspective, is that something that's likely within the next decade and sort of all the repercussions that could happen as a result of that? Well, I can talk about the framework that we have in our company around AI. So what regulations and what safety guardrails are you putting in place to make sure that that doesn't happen at Chevron? Yeah, we have a framework in place, a responsible AI framework, and so since the very beginning when we started up our AI team a couple of years ago, everything that we developed and everything we pushed out was consistent with that framework, and that was the third party. Um, um, this third party, um, thought leaders on AI that had developed this framework in the early days and we were able to participate in some of that work and also implement it, you know, for us we have to think every day about cybersecurity risk, risks in general, safety risk. Health risks and so this framework helped us think about the new risks associated with AI. So everything that we've developed is within that in that framework and so for us it's really important that as we leverage the technology we think about it like every other new technology that we deployed. We have good risk management. We test it. And we deploy it responsibly and safely and so that's the approach that we're taking with AI. I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn and I have a WhatsApp chat with all the other kind of apartment holders in my building and one of the main topics of conversation. Is the price of our energy bills right now and specifically going into winter, people are very nervous about, hey, if my kind of energy bill costs this in June in New York City, what's it going to cost in December? What's your response to the consumer and those concerns they have given everything that's going on in the Strait of Hormuz and The soaring prices of energy that we've seen, we hear the concerns, you know, prices impact consumers, businesses, economies. They're very hard to predict prices. And so, you know, given the disruption that we've seen this year, not only to the crude supply that's on the market, but also now to refinery capacity, those things are showing up in the price. Over the last couple of months, all of the buffers that existed at the beginning of the conflict have been drawn down. You know, there were commercial inventories. There were strategic petroleum reserve releases. There were sanctioned barrels that were on the water, and so all of those, all of that supply buffered the price for a while and so now a lot of that is drawn down and so we're seeing that increased pressure in price. In addition to that, refinery. Capacity globally has been decreased as well with some of the some of the conflict and so those two things together are creating creating the challenge and so there's a lot of pressure on prices right now and the most important thing that we can do and what we are doing as a company is ensuring that we bring as much supply to market and that we run our refineries. Reliably and as efficiently as we can and that's what we're doing so we're growing production this year we're putting more supply in the market and that's what you were saying with Venezuela Venezuela is even in addition to the 7 to 10% that we are growing this year. Venezuela will bring more growth. We've grown Venezuela 15% this year already. So what we're focused on is bringing supply to the market and executing our plans with excellence. And then on the refinery side is really running our refineries at maximum throughput and in fact in the 3rd quarter we shared the production records that we are achieving and the refinery throughput records. So that's how we're part of the solution. Bringing supply and refinery throughput, and I think that is the message that operationally, operationally, operationally as best as you can, but you don't know the price is to an extent out of your, we don't control prices. What we control is putting supply in the market and running refineries well operationally, and that's what we're doing. You have had a really interesting career trajectory, Ema. So you started as an offshore. Petroleum engineer in the UK, um, my homeland, um, and then you went on to become Chevron's first female chief technology officer in 2021, um, and then first female CFO, not the first female CFO. OK, that's good news that that someone else had had held that role before you. But becoming the first female CTO, did that have any significance to you? Did you have any relationship with that milestone? It was, you know, exciting milestone. There were a few things that happened at the same time. I moved to Houston. I, um, was part of the executive leadership team and I was the CTO. So all of those things together was, was just, it was such a privilege to get that, get that opportunity. So it was significant on many, many levels. It gives me the opportunity to leverage all of the operational experience. I've had, you know, from multiple parts of the world, the UK, Asia, and Eurasia and really think about what was important in terms of the priorities for, for technology. And so what I learned through the role was that um technology can make what you think's impossible possible and technology can allow you to break through what's limiting performance. And again, the technology needs to be focused. It's got to be focused on the business, and you've got to at the end of the day see a result because that's the return that you get for all the technology programs is that you ultimately achieve a different step change in performance and so that's what I learned in the role and had a lot of fun in that role and then I. I took that lens when I became CFO because it helped me look at the asset performance just with that lens all the time. So I asked myself a lot, what's possible? What's possible? And I think that question came from that time. It's been a pleasure to speak to you. Thanks, Ellie. Cheers. How did Poppy go from a farmer's market stand to a nearly $2 billion soda brand? Here's a preview of Fortune's term sheet where senior writer and editor Ali Garfinkel got the story direct from the founder. What do you think most large companies are getting wrong about Gen Z? 100% of everything that they do. What is this? This is Poppy, the digital first soda brand Pepsi bought for $1.95 billion. Stop spiraling. Get a poppy. In the multi-billion dollar soda market, 3 companies dominate the shelves, and breaking in is notoriously difficult. Poppy, defied the odds. 53 days is the cycle. If you can't hit within that 3 days, you'll be the first to move at the speed of culture, what are you doing? And big corporations. Cannot move that quick, but executing that fast nearly bankrupt them. We had $75,000 in the bank and almost ran out of money. Today I asked Poppy co-founder Alison Ellsworth, how do you outmaneuver legacy giants, survive near bankruptcy and execute one of the largest consumer brand exits in beverage history. A lot of founders tend to cling to a CEO title. You really didn't. Why not? So it's so funny, and I'm here to tell you entrepreneurs, being CEO is just a glorified HR person. Like the last thing I want to do is deal with a ton of people problems and run a P&O. And, and, and in a day, no, CEOs are incredible and they, they have amazing vision and I adored ours at PPI. That's not what I'm saying, but it's like this title that people are so obsessed. with. And it's like, find your superpower. My superpower was running the creative and brand because I was the brand. I I I loved every aspect of it. There wasn't a can that I didn't design with my team, like all of those things. And so why would I want to do the CEO role? And it was the same with my husband. He was incredibly talented in the innovation and supply chain. And his team, I think other than our sales team was like the largest team. He was like managing like 80 people, right? You can find your superpower and not be CEO and I'm here to tell you, like you holding onto it for too long can be, it can hurt the business. To be a CEO, I think that it comes with experience and so Poppy with the crazy growth that we had, me and my husband looked at each other. It was like a year we're going from I think we were looking at going from 50 million to 200 million. We were looking at buying super wads and we looked at each other like we've never done this before. Why don't we bring in people that know more than us and be part of the conversation. And partner with them instead, instead of it getting forced upon you. Because if you have a board and you have investment and you have growth and you hold on for so long and let your ego get in the way of growth, it's going to get forced upon you and it's going to go sour real quick versus acknowledging it and learning from it. And I love that we're able to learn from these people who had been so seasoned in it before. So you can watch the full interview with Alison Ellsworth on our Fortune YouTube channel and we'll also drop the link um to that interview into the show notes for this episode. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin, remember to like, subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think about oil prices or maybe what your favorite coffee flavor is. I'll see you next week.

Why has Effective Altruism, a philanthropic philosophy built on solving charity like a math problem, become the center of Washington's biggest battle over AI?
From major figures at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind to sharp criticism from defense officials, the movement is facing unprecedented political scrutiny. Senior AI reporter Bea Nolan joins Fortune Daily to break down what Effective Altruists actually believe, why critics claim it threatens technological progress, and what the debate over AI "doomers" means for the future of the industry.
Also on today's episode: 
• Imperia Launch: First Lady Melania Trump rings the NYSE opening bell to debut Imperia, an invite-only network designed as a "Davos for women" connecting female CEOs with global capital and dealmakers. 
• Under the Radar: Business Editor Nick Lichtenberg explores how Gen Z is building wealth with help from parents—and the economic guilt driving families to step in.

Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 
Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 - Why Washington Is Targeting Effective Altruism 
01:48 - Inside the AI Doomer Debate with Bea Nolan 
11:25 - Melania Trump Launches "Imperia" at NYSE 
13:48 - How Gen Z Relies on the Bank of Mom and Dad


Effective Altruism Explained: Why the Pentagon Is Attacking AI 'Doomers' | Fortune Daily

You know, he said the administration is trying to pin concerns about AI safety and a desire for regulation on this sort of shadowy group of people that yes, has some odd beliefs to distract from the fact that AI risk is actually becoming a really real and much broader public concern. Hello from New York. I'm Ellie Austin and this is Fortune Daily. Americanism not effective altruism. That's what the Department of War posted on X earlier this month. But what is effective altruism? It's a great question, and I have to say I didn't have a clue until a day or so ago. So it turns out it's a philanthropic philosophy pioneered over a decade ago by two Oxford academics, and it's about approaching charity like a math problem. And figuring out how to save the most lives per dollar. Advocates of EA as it is known for short, include senior figures at OpenAI, at Anthropic, and Google, DeepMind. Meanwhile, the administration believes that EA is what's standing between America and global AI domination. Uh, Pete Hegseth has been particularly vocal on this subject, calling EA sanctimonious. So Fortune. Senior AI reporters Emily Fellini and B Nolan have been reporting on how a fringe movement of mostly young, highly educated utilitarians became Washington's favorite AI villain, and B Nolan is about to join me to explain more. The, hello and thank you so much for joining us from London. So I briefly explained in the intro what effective altruism is, but I also explained that I had never heard of this term until two days ago. So I think you can probably be more eloquent. Give us a rundown of what this movement is. So at its simplest, effective altruism is a philosophical movement, and it's this idea that people should try and use like rational processes to try and do the most good for the most amount of people. Actually traces back to 2009 and these two Oxford philosophers, they founded this thing called Giving What You Can, and it was a pledge that you would donate like 10% of your charity, 10% of your income to charity. Um, the idea was to treat like charity and ethics as like a math problem and you would try and figure out what causes saved the most lives or did the most good per dollar spent. Unpack that for me. So instead of spending it on a charity in the US. You could send money abroad and perhaps that would save more lives or do more good. Another big part of this that links to that is this thing called earn to give. So the idea is that you can do more good by making more money, basically pursuing a high career and then giving that income to these really effective charities. In a way it's an argument for capitalism. Yes, it's very linked to the idea of capitalism. It's also very linked to these analytical math problems, right? Like most people don't treat ethics like maths in this way. I guess the issue is it can lead you to some perhaps immoral places. So if you're trying to do the most good. You could justify a lot of things to get to your outcome, so the ends justify the means in a lot of places. Give us an example of how it could, because to me on the surface this sounds this sounds like a good move for humankind. Um, tell us how it could be used immorally or leveraged immorally. I guess it's an older philosophical problem, right? If you could save 100 lives but you'd have to personally kill one person. Would you choose to do that? Technically, EA and utilitarianism, which is what this is based in, would say that the moral thing to do would be to kill that person. OK, now imagine if that person was your mother. Would you still kill that person to save 100 others? I mean, most people would say no, and it would be ethically immoral to do that, but EA technically have taken to his extremes, would say it was immoral not to do. So you mentioned that EA was born over a decade ago at this point. Why is it finding itself in the headlines now and why has it become so woven into the debate over AI and safety? Yes, it is a bit of a wormhole, but there is, they've always been concerned with AI, and part of this is because they're obsessed with this thing called long-termism, which means when you say they, you mean advocates of EA, yeah, people who subscribe to the philosophical movement. They have been really interested in this idea that you need to protect future generations from risk, so they care a lot about things like climate change and things like that. They also were very early adopters of this idea that we've been hearing about a lot that AI could potentially wipe out humanity. Like then stopping that becomes a moral directive, right? You need to make sure AI is safe and engage in safety research and try and steer AI to be moral in order to stop it, to try and stop it trying to murder all of us. And who is our typical effective altruist? Is there a demo that you can paint for us? I don't know. I think I wouldn't want to tarp everyone who believes in this with the same brush. There are lots of different strands of it. Like some people are genuinely just interested about how they can give to charity and perhaps how they can give to charity more effectively. It's really popular in Silicon Valley because it takes on ethics with this really analytical mindset. So like I said earlier, it's like reducing these ethical problems to maths, and a lot of people who work in Silicon Valley and work in computer science like. That is the way their brain works, so they lean more towards that. Yeah, it makes sense. I think I'm right in saying that one of the early advocates of Sam Bankman Fried, the founder of the crypto exchange FTX, he is in prison now for fraud. How much does his character, his trajectory loom over and define the movement at this point in 2026? Honestly, quite a lot. He was one of the earliest adopters. He was also one of the biggest bankrollers, so he was a really good example of this urn to give. So he was like, I'm going to go start this huge crypto exchange program. I'm going to make loads of money and then I'm going to contribute it all back to charity. But obviously, as we know now, in the course of doing that, he committed a lot of immoral acts to get to that end. And then people who criticize EA use that as a very good example of how the means do not always justify the ends. Your sources in the piece suggest that this heightened anxiety around EA that we're seeing coming out of the administration at the moment is really a proxy fight and that going over EA is actually a way to discredit AI anxiety. Yesterday at the UN, President Trump described sort of the doomsday AI argument as a hoax. Do you believe that's true? What did your reporting tell you about this theory? Yeah, I mean, I think one of my sources put it like this, which I thought was a really good way to describe it, you know, he said the administration is trying to pin concerns about AI safety and a desire for regulation on this sort of shadowy group of people that, yes, have some odd beliefs to distract from the fact that AI risk is actually becoming a really real and much broader public concern. So in terms of the administration they're very keen to keep regulation off the table. So if they can blame the push for regulation and the push for AI safety on a small group of people with Outside interests like that might make sense for them. I mean that isn't what we're seeing right now in the headlines. I mean just in the general news agenda, I think it's clear that, you know, Jensen Huang is talking about the need for regulation and so I wonder how much that argument is going to hold up in the coming weeks. Um, EA is a movement that some people right now are a bit reticent to be associated with for the exact reasons that you just described. How difficult was it to get people to talk to you for your piece? I mean, interestingly, not that hard. I had a lot of people who worked in AI safety and were researchers on that and had taken money from EA affiliated charities to work on their early research, and they really wanted to make this distinction that just being concerned with AI risk. mean that you're an effective altruist. Like there are lots of people who take this very seriously as an academic issue and sort of by virtue of EA being one of the only people funding research like this, they ended up being quite involved with it, but that doesn't mean that these two things should be lumped together. There's a bit of a tension as I understand it, because on the one hand everything we've been talking about over the past few weeks on this show and beyond is that these AI companies don't care about our future. They don't care about our safety. But now EA posits that actually there's people working at high levels of anthropic and open AI and DeepMind who do really care about the future of humanity. And that's why they've chosen to go into the AI business. I mean, it's interesting. I think one of the criticisms here that might make sense is that AI gets criticized a lot for focusing way too much on these long term risks that might never actually happen. So I think you've heard people say, you know, there's a 10% AI chance AI might wipe out humanity. OK, well there's Much higher percentage chance that it might be used to spread misinformation. It might be used for mass scale hacking, and by focusing on these longer, almost sci-fi risks, they get accused of overlooking these more immediate ones, which a lot of the people in the lab, in the labs, they're very concerned with existential risk. So what actually is the outlook on regulation right now? Has anything actually shifted since Jacob Coxon resigned from? A couple of weeks ago and published that very controversial essay post. I think the main thing is, as I'm sure you've seen, we've all seen is that the public concern about AI risk has really skyrocketed and people in Congress have been responding to that. There has been a push from both Republicans and Democrats to get some regulation on the table and control some of this stuff. It doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be this slowdown that people are asking for, but maybe there's a sort of Consensus forming that having some rules around this technology if it is so dangerous wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. You mentioned um effective altruism charities a moment or so ago. If people want to find out more about this, where should they look? What are some of those charities? One of the main ones is um open philanthropy, and that later became Coefficient Giving. Um, they were founded by one of them was founded by one of the co-founders of Facebook, interestingly, so they do have deep roots to Silicon Valley. Um, yeah, you could find you they disclose their funding and where it goes, so you could look into um their disclosures around that. Um, but generally they have steered a lot of their funding towards addressing these existential risks, so you'll find effective altruists and effective altruist money popping up in lots of places when it comes to AI safety and also AI pro AI regulation. Thank you so much for explaining this weird and wonderful world of AI effective altruism to us. Speak soon. Thanks, Ellie. So that's First Lady Melania Trump ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, and the exchange is serving as the backdrop for her newly launched initiative, um, which was announced last night, and it's being framed as quote a Davos for women. So what is it? Well, it's called Imperia, and it is an invite only network for. Female CEOs and C-suite leaders with the goal of supposedly connecting the people who move capital, who make deals, and who shape policy. Here at Fortune, I lead our most powerful women summit, uh, which has been going on for almost 30 years now, bringing together women from the most powerful companies globally. And I'm often asked whether in 2026 we actually still need a business conference with only women in the room. My answer is women currently run around 15% of Fortune 500 companies, 15. Now, believe it or not, that is actually a record, but it is still a woefully low number. So yes, I believe that until leadership of the world's largest companies inches closer towards parity, we do indeed need to bring female CEOs and other senior leaders together to share insights and to Discuss the unique challenges that they still face en route to the corner office. With all of that in mind, I applaud the First Lady's intention, um, even if it is dissonant with her husband's pretty firm rollback of DEI policies across corporate America and also across the military and more. At this point, additional details on Imperia are thin, so watch this space, it will be interesting to see how it evolves, who gets involved, and whether it actually leads to concrete deal flow, to investment, and to real opportunity for a diverse lineup of female leaders. Contrary to popular opinion, Gen Z isn't giving up on building wealth. They're just leaning on mum and dad to do it, and parents are feeling guilty about the economy that they're handing over to their kids. Business editor Nick Lichtenberg has the story in Under the Radar. Nick, hello. So on Monday you went to the release of the US bank's, uh, newly released 2026 wealth report, and it's really fascinating what it showed us about, I think how Gen Z are thinking about wealth accumulation. There's this common thinking that actually Gen Z don't care about becoming rich. Um, they are out there enjoying real life experiences and big iced coffees, um, for $8 a pop. Is that true? Is that what this data shows us? No, so the, the, uh, executives at US Bank, similar to other sources I've talked to, are totally different organizations, they've said like Gen Z really is just not that different when you really look under the hood and you ask them what they want and what their aspirations are and what their strategies are. Like the economy is the thing that's different. Gen Z is, is no different from any other generation in terms of what they want. They want to build wealth and they want a good career and I had a separate report out from Boston Consulting Group saying if you look closely, Gen Z is actually doing better than previous generations did at the same age, but it just doesn't feel that way to almost anyone. By what metrics are they doing better? How do we explain that in terms of the wealth they've accumulated at a young age, but I think because We feel like iced coffee, for example, is so expensive. Like you could spend $8 on an iced coffee without realizing it. Just things feel so expensive and so the US bank executives said, I asked them actually is the bank of mom and dad still a thing? It's kind of a cliche that Gen Z, you know, they moved back in after college and they're still relying on the bank of mom and dad, and they said, yeah, that's a real thing, uh, that they track, um, and that it didn't come through. In quite these words, but one of the executives said that there's a guilt feeling that parents have about, you know, sorry we handed this economy that's so expensive over to you guys. And so how does that guilt manifest? What do they give to their children if they're able to? I think it's a lot of general spending money. Like people in their early twenties, they feel less stigma asking for this, and parents feel less stigma giving it to them. Um, that's interesting, um, and the bank of mum and dad is, is nothing new obviously. So did we millennials not depend on it? What does the data show? I mean, I feel like if you spoke to my parents, they would say it was also a thing when we were in our twenties. Yeah, I think there's, there's some of that and you know, millennials were known for burning ourselves out and for hustling too much and for being a little workaholic and Gen Z, we, we do have lots of different indicators showing that there's a different mentality around, uh, boundaries between work and life and. I would say millennials had an unhealthier sense of that. What shock does Gen Z have about home ownership, for instance? So that is the one area that everyone identified as a real problem. Like the average starter home cost is way over 350,000. I think it's close to 400,000 across the country, across the country, and That's the one area where the economy, like viscerally it feels so, so unaffordable. We have Gen Z watching. What are the main takeaways from the report and what should they be doing right now with the money they do have available to them to maybe target owning a home within the next decade? Yeah, I would say that, um, so some of the executives said Gen Z surprised them with how conservative they actually are. And I asked them if financial nihilism, which we hear about, is a real thing, financial nihilism is this phrase for Gen Z's love of cryptocurrencies and alternative investment prediction markets, meme stocks, um, even Pokemon cards, comic books, um. Really affluent Gen Zers buying dinosaur bones we hear about, uh, but I asked, is this really a thing, and the executives said, you know, at the fringes there's more interest, a little bit, but by and large, no, that is not a thing, and Gen Z wants the same thing that any generation wants and the housing market, you know, we're living longer lives. Invest wisely and conservatively and kind of pay your dues, and you will eventually get your chance to get into that. The housing market and all the other markets that adults belong to and maybe give up on the dinosaur bones. Yeah, maybe dinosaur bones maybe for a very niche niche group. Where do you buy a dinosaur bone? You know they have auctions at Sotheby's for dinosaur bones. Fascinating. Of course everyone wants the T. rex, but there's only a little bit of those. A segment for another day, Nick, thank you. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin, please remember to like, to subscribe and to let us know in the comments on our YouTube what you thought of today's topics. I'll see you tomorrow.

For decades, a tourist destination’s success was measured by the number of visitors it attracted. That metric is no longer sufficient. Overtourism, strained infrastructure, and narrow margins are pushing the industry to move beyond counting arrivals and toward creating lasting value for local economies and communities. The task is to build destination economies that are productive without becoming extractive: using technology to improve visitor experiences, policy to align growth with local priorities, and capital to strengthen local businesses and infrastructure. Leaders across technology, investment, and hospitality examine how destinations can balance visitor demand with the interests of the people and businesses that make them worth visiting.

Gerard Walker, Chief Hospitality Officer, SJM Resorts, S.A. 
Ethan Lin, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Klook 
Ken Chan, Founder, CEO and CIO, Patience Capital Group 
Lee Williamson, Co-chair, Fortune Leaders Forum; Editorial Director, Asia, Fortune 

Reimagining Destination Economies

Conferences

This year’s energy crisis is a stark reminder that Asia remains reliant on Middle Eastern oil and exposed to the chokepoints and conflicts that affect its supply—even as China leads the world in clean-energy innovation and manufacturing. Can the region reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and reach peak oil demand as soon as 2030? Converting Asia’s technological edge into long-term energy security requires an alignment of capital, manufacturing capacity, infrastructure modernization and political will, alongside continued technological breakthroughs. Three leaders in the sector discuss the steps needed to accelerate the transition before the next shock inevitably occurs.

Haitian Pang, Chairman & CEO, JX Intelligence 
Youyuan Huang, Executive Vice Chairman and General Manager, BTR New Material Group 
Fang Wang, Executive Editor, Shanghai, Fortune China 

Accelerating the Energy Transition

OK, so this discussion will be conducted in English, in Chinese, so please refer to our headset to listen to our smart translation. Well, actually, so, actually, when we see that Asia, this is a huge market, even though we have very well developed new technology, but still Asia rely on the petroleum and energy from Middle East, which lead to some problem of the security. So now we invite the three distinguished guests to have the discussion. And 3, all of them coming from mainland China. I would like to share something of their background with you. So, They are, they, they are coming from the energy industry. So they also focus on the innovation of new material, etc. So today, I mean, one of the top topic is not the overcapacity, is the safety or how to have a better utilization of the recycled or new or green energy from China. So we would like to invite the three distinguished guests to share with us. So, first of all, I would like to start from Daniel. So Daniel, Daniel Liu, the vice president of Ginola. So please share something with us, something the background and also the situation of the energy, the energy transaction. So that happened in Asia. OK. Thank you. Well, in the past decade, I have run all over Asia Pacific region, over 20 countries and regions. And yeah, I saw a lot and also I interviewed a lot of people. And I, I'm glad to share with you that the transaction of energy in China is quite successful. It's something I sometimes I'd like to use the word radical. It's quite radical, but it's quite successful. We got some data. So for example, now, the power generation is over. 1.5 trillion uh 10 trillion, oh sorry, it's not 1. something, it's 10 trillion kilowatts. So it's quite huge. Such kinds of the big power generation amount is not just coming from the coming from the petroleum or coming from the coal or charcoal, etc. And a lot of them coming from the voltavoltaic. So it's coming from the solar energy. So as being a traditional coal user, charcoal user, petroleum user, China make a big step forward compared to India, you know, India got also the same population over 1.5 billion. So in the past, India also invest a lot in order to realize the energy transaction. But because of, I mean, technology or something. That the transition of the energy structure compared to China, India is left behind. Let's look at Southeast Asia. So for Southeast, for example, like the Philippines, Philippines, it owns over 7000 islands, similar to Indonesia, they also have a lot of demand. But how to combine the fossil energy together with the future, for example, the, the wind energy, right on the ocean, the wind energy got a big potential. This is something we need to consider as a big market for us. OK, thank you. Next, we'd like to invite, uh, Mr. Fang from battery. So. So, so, so, so that uh we know that you, you, you, you're focusing on the development of the battery technology. So I would like to ask your question that uh what is your idea about the development of the energy storage, energy storage, and what is your current development in China? And what the comparison between China and the other countries? In perspective of the technology development of the energy storage. OK, so the energy storage technology acquired a big growth in the past 3 years. According to the current data at the end of this year, that we expect to export over 1000 big units of the energy storage. There's over 1000 big scale, big scale energy storage units were exported from China to the rest of the world, to the other country. So that means that all, all, I mean all the industries or the government also that put a big attention to the energy storage technology. So because of what, a lot of things, number one, it could help to reduce the cost of energy, right? Yeah, #2, it could provide a stable power supply. For many countries, power generation is only #1, but #2, but power generation, you generate the power, but it's not stable, right? So the peak, you at the peak and get the value. So the peak supply and value supply, counterbalance them. So the energy storage. That unit could help to balance the two. China already established a complete industry chain. It's very reliable and of course it's quite competitive. It's affordable for many countries, for many players to import the facilities of their energy storage from from China, especially Southeast Asia. And China also a lot of the energy storage unit maker, they also shift their production line from mainland China to Southeast Asia. Indeed. Quite popular, yes. So go to Southeast Asia. Now this has become very popular because of the demand, you know that's the power supply is not very stable in Southeast Asia. So but if they want to build up a big power grid, the investment will be huge. So if they import the power energy storage unit from China, they can save the cost. And they also can control the power cost for household. Yeah, so for Gino, your company, your power generation, and also another one, OK, Dr. Huang, on behalf of the energy storage and Haikian is on behalf of the smart grid, smart energy application, right? So all of you doing something about the physical infrastructure or physical products. So it sounds like you're very, I mean, physical guy. I want to ask you physical guys that today, you know, the power grade, it's become more complicated and sometimes it's out of your way of prediction. So because you see that before we generate the power by burning the coal, charcoal, or burning the petroleum. Now, we have different sources of the power generation, right, from solar, from wind, from everything. So we please explain to us how could we have a better Uh, balancing technology or good application technology to the balance them. Make sure that people could utilize the power more in a more effectively. OK, yes, for human being, now, you know that we also, we, we, we, we live in a different region, right? So some of them live in, uh, like in Southeast Asia or or at the coastline of uh uh of the continent, and some live in the rural area or in the mountainous area. And also, for example, in the northwest part of China, so that the wind is strong in the in the desert or around the desert, right? So, if we supply the power from the south or north or east to the north northwest, it costs a lot of costs a lot by uh transporting. Transporting those power from the east to the west, from south to the north. Uh, and also the inspection. But before we ask the human being to do the inspection along the whole transportation line of the power, and it costs a lot, right? And the symptoms are quite dangerous. For example, in the extreme climate, in the rainstorm, in the snowstorm, if we ask the staff to go climb up. Come up to do the inspection to the power transformer or the transportation line, etc. wow, you know, that's quite dangerous. But now we, we have the AI, we have the robots to do it, right? We have the UAE to do it, the drone to do it. And then we also get the Power generation sources also become greener than before. We have the solar energy. We have the wind energy, etc. so that the whole industry becomes complicated. Therefore, we need to develop the power management system or the control center that is a smart center could allocate the resources, allocate the power resources. Amount the big to the power grid and then make sure that people when they use their solar panel to generate power, they can get the return from them at the same time, they will go to utilize the power conveniently. So yeah, that is really quite great. So what you have mentioned has come to a new topic, which is quite hot right now. We say it collaboration of computing power, electricity power. So that is something we always say in China. So on one hand, For one hand, we use the electricity power to guarantee the computing power. On the other hand, computing power will help the power generation to be smart generated. So for example, the computing power can help the electricity to do the peak shaving. So I'd like to ask you, Daniel. So, um, from 2026, the new computing center. Um, built in China show. At least consume 80% of green electricity. So the electricity should be green electricity. Is that a burden or is that the opportunity? So for for Jino Solar, are you start to sell the solution rather than just sell. Uh, component part is that burden or opportunity? Well, I think that is very inspiring and for us, we are doing that right now. So just like Mr. Wang said. Asia Pacific region. has been very unbalanced in terms of new energy. And AI will be a very good tool to address the imbalance issue. So we know that in China, we have data center. Um, in the eastern part of the country, but the computing power should be built in the western part of China. So for example, we build a center in the western part of China because the energy cost is much lower and the energy is more enriched. So in China, there's a line that draw from the southwest of China to the northeast of China. And in the east part, there are a lot of companies, so consuming power is very strong and they need a lot of computing power. But in the northwest part of China, which has less population, less industry, less demand. But more energy. So right now, for example, we have the ultra high voltage project. So we use the ultra high voltage project to transmit the power from the west of China to the east where the demand is. Yeah, and in the future with AI we can do the peak shaving. We can adjust the Uh, power Yeah, so the energy storage demand is also going up with the computing power center. So I would like to ask Dr. Huang, so you know that the energy storage accounts for over 40% in terms of the facilities relating to AI. So what kind of material do we need for energy storage? For your company because VTR is making new materials. How do you think about the new materials? Well, AIDC. Energy storage comes from two parts. The first one is UPS system to guarantee very stable supply of power generation. And this system has very strict requirements for the volt, for the volt, um, fluctuation. And then with AI technology, and every time when the power fluctuation happens, The AIDC needs the battery to do the instant response. Even within milliseconds to ensure the stable supply of power generation. Otherwise, if we lose the data. Yes, several days ago we saw a lot of LLM shut down because of the fluctuation of the voltage, right, from of the boat. Yes, especially during the 11 when a lot of people are using their technology to buy the products. So it will have very big challenge on the supply of the power. So this requires very Um, very high demand on the new material for the stability. So it has a high requirement on the material. OK, besides lithium, you're also working on R&D of some other materials like the sodium, etc. Will that be used in the AIDC? Yes, of course. Because, The sodium ion battery has very obvious advantages in the power and also for the thermal. Resistance or or a thermal tolerance, but it has disadvantages in terms of energy density. So for energy density, lithium battery is more ideal. But for the sodium ion technology, I believe that with the industry development, it will be, more ideal choice in the future. OK, so could you please tell us about the AIDC development perspective from China and some other area. So we know that in Malaysia or Thailand they all want to build. AIDC and China has most green electricity and most cheap electricity price. But how about the other countries? Yeah, that is different. Computing power collaborates with electricity? Maybe only happens in China because the demand. And the supply. Well, you know, in China, we can use a lot of green electricity for installation. We also invested in Indonesia, and we know that Indonesia is also built the DC, but based on traditional power generation, maybe thermal power or hydropower. But still, This electricity. are different from China because China is not just for satisfying the demand on using electricity, but also needs to reduce the cost and satisfying carbon reduction. Yeah, so in China, You satisfy the demand for using the electricity, but also needs to be cheap electricity and also needs to be clean and green electricity. So China satisfying three goals together. OK, so how about you, Hai Xian? A lot of people said that, um, Silicon Valley started to talk about China, Wullan Tabo. We know that Wullan Tabo is a place that built the first Energy integrated adjustment platform. So are you also making the deployment in Wulan Chabu in the Mongolia of China? So how does that realize the peak shaving? So why do you think that the Silicon Valley people are so fascinated about that? Well, Wulan Tabu is a very typical case about China for computing power collaborating with electricity generation. A lot of AIBC were built in Wulan Tabu, um, essentially have infrastructure. I think that the biggest cost is coming from the electricity power itself. So in Wulan Tabu, it enjoys great solar power and wind power. So here, You can use very low cost of wind power or solar power to support AIDC. But for AIDC, Well, it has its own problems. So for example, uh, for training, it can wait a little bit for for training, but for Interference and reasoning, AIBC needs to do that instantly, right? And maybe not at night, right? Because only in the daytime you have the solar power. And then for the wind power, you cannot predict the wind power. Uh, you need a smart brain to understand about the physics and the geography of this area. And to predict what kind of energy storage it needs to install to ensure the comprehensive electricity cost to be the lowest, yeah, stable, clean, low cost. And uh AI brain should be important because the upstream is uncontrollable and unpredictable and downstream means you should be more ideal and flexible. So you need a smart AI brain to satisfy the needs both upstream and downstream. AI can play a vital role. Well, so why do you always call physical AI brain? Physical AI is that different from AI? Well, we say physical AI. Physical AI means to understand the physical world and physical rule, including meteorology, including the weather, including the economics. OK, physical AI brain needs to understand the physical world. Yeah, it should simulate the world, understand the world rule. OK, Doctor Huang. China is a leader definitely. But there are still a lot of challenges China face. Would you please talk about some pinpoints in China challenges, particularly, for example, like excessive and excessive supply. So when you come to other countries, like Malaysia or Southeast Asia, do you think they can Bypass our challenges. So for example, some challenges only faced by China, but they don't have such challenges. Well, I think that they can learn the lessons China has has encountered. In other countries, maybe they could not make as big infrastructure as China. Yeah, China has very big infrastructure. Yeah, in other countries, maybe. They need to make the plan and layout based on their own development stage. For example, distributed energy system is more suitable in Southeast Asia, and they can use the low cost energy technology. For example, in Southeast Asia, and some least developed area, distributed energy system is more suitable. So we are also promoting that in Indonesia and Morocco. We work together with the local government to build the energy generation plant and to promote the green use of energy and to the local government we can help them to improve the energy usage. OK. When a Chinese factory open another site in Southeast Asia, you work together with the local government and make the distributed energy system. Will that benefit the community? Yeah, of course. Especially in some countries. The resources of green electricity is abundant. And we're also very happy to see that some country make the national program to promote green electricity. So Haitian, you mentioned about Saudi Arabian 2030 vision. Do you make some deployment in Saudi Arabia? Because Saudi Arabia is a traditional petroleum country, but they also have the energy transition goal. Can you talk about Saudi Arabia 2030 vision? Well, A clean energy transition or lower cost energy transition is continued. This trend is continued. And from our side, First of all, China is leading in the technology. And we guarantee that stable supply and lower cost of supply for electricity. And In Saudi Arabia, even the country is traditionally thrived based on the petroleum, but it also has the ambition because In the desert, in the desert, they enjoy greater solar power. They enjoy greater sunlight. And also in Saudi Arabia. They are quite innovative as well. They think that even we have enough fossil energy, but for the future and sustainability, we need to make preparations. So They build AIDC as well. I think Saudi Arabia is quite an amazing country and I know those people have great mindset towards green electricity. And we also see that in some Southeast Asian countries in some Middle East countries. They are interested in our physical AI products. They would like to talk to China. They would like to accept the Chinese technology. I think that in the future, um, these green transition will be globalized. OK, we know that Jinco so far is still just uh suffering from one thing is that the overcapacity of the this industry. So still that the solar power, I mean the solar power, uh, this industry is still in the in the valley, OK, so we don't know what it can go out of this valley. Would you please analyze something about the whole the Asian market. So how the other countries in Southeast Asia sector would avoid this problem like China, right? The photovoltaic, photovoltaic power overcapacity of the production. Yeah, OK, so in order to avoid the overcapacity of the production like in China, I think this question, it must be, I mean, be aware. So number one. So #2 is that this is about the energy transaction, right? So that's, for example, that if there is abundance, there is abundance uh solar energy resources in one place, for example, like in Ningxia. So the government should have a better plan, the plan in advance and then to core the participation from the enterprises step by step. Otherwise, that if everybody joined into that channel and they step in China. Then it will cause a problem overcapacity again. So that even you go to some other like countries and regions, they would not work like China. So for example, like in Pakistan, over 60% of 60% of the agriculture irrigation were moved or driven by the PV by the solar power. Solar power to the agricultural irrigation in Pakistan over 60%. Yes, it's true. You know, Pakistan used to be, I mean, lack of the water, right, water resources, and then the irrigation costs were high, but now they import the solar energy technology from China and then to help them to support the agricultural irrigation. So they they reduced the cost a lot and another successful case study also happened in South Asia, the Philippines. And also that's, I mean, the cost reduced a lot. So I think in the period of the energy transition, so that we we have some focus on the safety, and also we have the market potential and also we have some idea how to avoid the overcapacity. Thank you for all your sharing, it's very wonderful. We know that this is a correct route, is a correct right road for us to do the energy transition in Asia. Even though China is a leader, but the other Asian countries and regions, they use, they work on their own way towards the future and we believed in the year 2030, definitely we'll reach the goal of low carbon. Thank you for your wonderful sharing.

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