It’s more important than ever for the energy industry to meet

Everything pales in comparison to the war in Ukraine. Emails, meetings, presentations—it’s difficult to focus on business as usual these days.

Cognite condemns the aggression of the Russian government and military against Ukraine. Our focus right now is on supporting our Cogniters—some of whom are from Ukraine and Russia, many of whom have friends and family affected—and our customers and partners as we all work to navigate this developing situation.

In the middle of it all, the energy industry is due to meet in three days at CERAWeek in Houston.?

Delaying the conference isn’t the answer. Neither is sitting it out.

It’s more important than ever that we get together in person—for the first time in years—to discuss the future of energy, technology, and sustainability. We have too much to do and little time to get it done.

I’ll be in Houston next week. Here are the conversations I hope you’ll join me for:

We need to scale up renewable energy

This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a grim report about the state of our planet.

What’s on the line? No corner of the world will remain untouched by the changing climate. In fact, about half of us—billions and billions of people—live in areas considered “highly vulnerable.” We’ll see drought and famine hitting millions. Coastal communities flooded. Mass animal and plant die-offs.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is the only way to limit what will already be devastating effects on our ecosystems.?

We need to rapidly scale up the new, renewable industries that will power the world. At the same time, we need to reconfigure our power grids to support distributed, intermittent power generation.

Right now, we’re not moving fast enough. This winter’s energy crisis in Europe is a clear warning sign.

As part of CERAWeek, Cognite is teaming up with planet-positive investment firm Aker Horizons to show how contextualized data and AI can supercharge emerging industries such as offshore wind, hydrogen production, and carbon capture and storage.

If you’re in Houston, I hope you’ll stop by our house at the Innovation Agora for a chat—for example during the meet and greet we’re hosting on Wednesday, March 8, at 1:00-4:00 pm.

We need to optimize our legacy industries

Our conversations at CERAWeek can’t just focus on the shiny, new thing.?

Even in the scenarios where the world successfully ramps up renewable energy production and limits global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, oil and gas will still be a part of the energy mix for decades to come.

There’s no getting around that. Until we have enough wind, solar, and other forms of renewables to completely replace fossil fuels, we need to make sure that we produce oil and gas with as small of a carbon footprint as possible.

That means we need to optimize our existing industrial assets, whether it’s the oil field that has been producing for decades, or the factory that just celebrated its 30th anniversary. These and other assets will remain the backbone of production across energy and other goods for the foreseeable future. Our job is to ensure that they reach their full digitally optimized potential on efficiency, profitability, and sustainability.

Optimizing brownfield assets is already an important topic of conversation in oil and gas, and it will only become more critical as the industry looks to develop the flexible, resilient energy strategies of the future.?

We need to make technology a central part of the energy transition

To tackle the challenges on the agenda at CERAWeek, we need data—whether it’s lowering emissions, the energy transition, staying competitive, workforce development, or even financing the energy future.?

Right now the whole world is searching for the best way to remove carbon dioxide from the air, the optimal layout of a wind farm, and how to safely and efficiently add more clean energy to the grid. We need to solve these questions now so that we can scale the renewables sector.?

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make these emerging industries digital from day one. At the same time, we have a once-in-a-lifetime responsibility to understand the impact our legacy industries have on the climate and make proactive decisions about how to mitigate it.

Add to that the uncertainty surrounding the war in Ukraine.

These are big challenges. Let’s sit down—face-to-face—and get to work.

Will I see you in Houston?