Name: The New Energy Playbook
Uploaded: 2025-10-28
Duration: 23 min 31 s

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

Conferences

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.