By Paul van Son, President, Dii Desert Energy
In the last newsletter, I emphasized that Dii is inherently optimistic about a ‘clean energy future’ in MENA and the world. However, much work remains to be done to make ‘clean,’ particularly ‘net zero,’ a reality. The good news is that the transformation implies virtually unlimited business opportunities for our industry group and the markets in general.
‘Clean energy’ primarily implies cleaning up and/or reducing any form of greenhouse gas emissions wherever they occur on Earth. It also involves fully leveraging the ever-decreasing costs of renewables, while not excluding the potential viability of nuclear energy. Cleaning up or eliminating emissions would be significantly aided by a decrease in energy demand in fossil dominated markets. Unfortunately, despite persistent promises and attempts, this has hardly occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution (!) Emerging economies, the aggressive appetite for artificial intelligence (AI), rapidly emerging data centers, and populations increasingly enjoying travel and consumption—all these factors are only driving up energy consumption.
To illustrate the impact of AI, ChatGPT informs me that my query consumes approximately 0.3 kWh. While this may seem small for a singular question, when scaled across millions of users and queries, the cumulative energy demand becomes monumental. Despite efficiency improvements in the industry, the IEA has projected that global energy demand will continue to grow, with an expected increase of around 25% by 2040 compared to levels in 2020.
The critical point here is that the expanding—and possibly even exploding—demand side is still generally indifferent to the climate effects of related emissions, primarily because those costs are not adequately priced in, and when they are, it is often in a partial and invisible manner.
That’s why we never stop advocating for making the costs of emissions visible, not only on the producer side but also in the bills consumers receive.