Experts discuss how grids, renewables and digital tools must evolve to support electricity use growing at twice the pace of energy demand and keep economies thriving.
At Davos 2026’s “Rise of Electro States,” leaders from grid operators, utilities, renewables and emerging economies argued that electricity demand is set to grow twice as fast as overall energy demand—driven primarily by electrifying buildings, transport and industry, not AI data centers. The opportunity is large: Jan Rosenow noted electrification could cut global primary energy input by about 50% if applied to roughly two-thirds of demand. Yet the panel stressed it will not happen automatically.
Europe’s bottleneck is execution speed. TenneT CEO Manon van Beek said permitting and spatial constraints are the “critical path,” with one operator facing “a thousand projects” and land needs equivalent to “11,000 football fields.” Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen warned that short political cycles undermine long-lived grid and generation investments and that consumers often don’t see the “true cost” of energy due to taxes and subsidies.
A consistent theme was using existing infrastructure better. Van Beek argued grids are only “full…15% of the time” and described time-bound connection contracts offering discounts for flexibility. Eskom’s Daniel Marokane highlighted South Africa’s shift from load shedding to reliability, while balancing coal’s socioeconomic realities with renewables plus nuclear and gas. Indonesia’s Anindya Bakrie framed electrification as welfare and growth, emphasizing collaboration for “technology and talent,” and demand creation via electrified public transport. Trust, the panel agreed, is decisive: “The absolute breach of trust…is if there is a blackout.”
Good morning. Welcome, everyone. This is a great session. It's going to be about electricity demand rising globally. My name is Jan Rosenow. I'm a professor in energy policy at Oxford University, and this topic is very close to my heart. And we have an excellent panel, which I will introduce in a minute. But let me say just a few words before I do that. We have seen headlines in the media recently about global electricity demand rising. Much of that was about the role of AI and data centers. But actually most of the demand we expect to be added to electricity over the next five years is not AI and data centers. That's about 8%. According to the International Energy Agency. The vast majority will be electrification of buildings of transport and now also of industry. There's some really exciting projects happening all around the world, and I'm sure we're going to touch on some of that in the discussion. I've been a long term advocate for electrification because I believe it's an opportunity to use clean power. It's an opportunity for efficiency, and I currently work with a team on trying to identify what is the size of the price of electrification, and we could save about 50% globally of our primary energy input if we electrified to the full potential, which is about two thirds of our energy demand. So a great opportunity. But and I think we're going to talk about some of the challenges here to this is not going to happen by and of itself. Clearly there are some huge challenges ahead of US regulation, the grid, some of the challenging economics, politics. And I wanted to go into all of these areas, if we have the time this morning with you. There is a new innovation playbook that the World Economic Forum has launched, which, you can take a look at if you wish. There's a QR code, and people can take a good look at that and see what opportunities already exist to solve some of those challenges. So let me now introduce the panel. So we have a really global panel, which is great. We have people from around the world and I start clockwise, and in bakery works for the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce. And you have other heads to I know so you kind of share with us Indonesian experience, which is fascinating. Then we have, Manon van Beek, who is a CEO of Tennet, and also the chairman of the board, I believe. And you're going to share the Dutch experience in particular. But I know Tennet also works in some other countries, too. Denmark from, Eskom Holdings, the group CEO great experience from South Africa made lots of headlines. But there's a lot of interesting things happening, which I'm sure you're going to share with us in a minute. And then Hendrik, from from Denmark, from Vestas CEO. Really long track record of wind power. Of course, very well known for that. So great panel. Let me start perhaps with you, Manon, starting in Europe. And then we can go across the world and see what the experiences are. So the Netherlands, are and not not many people know this in the world. I think the number two country when it comes to solar per capita, even though it's very cloudy, but it's also known for grid constraints. It made headlines for long lead times to get connected up to the grid. And of course, you've been right at the heart of solving some of those problems. Could you just share the Dutch experience with us? What can we learn from that? What if you already solved or what needs still to be solved?
Yeah, yeah. I think if you look at the challenge to to expand the grid and kind of what is hampering us, well, I think a lot is going well. Indeed. We are, frontrunner both offshore but also, indeed, in terms of solar, believe it or not, I would say I think we are the world champion, but that also comes with a challenge, I think, on the critical path of getting this all done is, very much the, the permitting process. If I just look at, I take, we operate also, in Germany. But if I take the Dutch example, you know, you know, the small country, very densely populated, in the next ten, 15 years, we need to do a thousand projects, where we need an 11,000 football fields of space. And that is tenet. Tenet alone. I think if you look at, at permitting, it is, so what is the hard thing? At least I question that to myself. So I would say it's not that the democratic processes which we have and which I'm very proud of, it's not that they fail, but they are simply not designed, you know, for the speed and also the spatial magnitude that we are in. And then, of course, you know, if you want to build, you know, you run into societal acceptance debates, delays. And that is where we are. And I think, you know, I cherish the democratic process, but you could compare it to, you know, building railways. If I use a metaphor where it would be very beneficial that while we work together with provincial on a municipality level, national level, all the authority autonomy, which is good, but that you at least you know, kind of what track we are building together, that we have that route in mind so that this autonomy, but also this alignment and coordination that is needed, you know, go hand in hand rather than competing, because that is what you experience. Then every now and then.
Yeah, maybe I come to you next. And if you work in the not just in Denmark, all over the world and, you know, this challenge of getting connected to the grid is one that's very real for your company. And we've seen some really great news this morning. Right. There's a new report showing that in Europe, for the first time, wind and solar have outpaced fossil fuel generation. But there's also bottlenecks. Could you talk us through what some of the challenges are from the perspective of the developer of renewable energy projects?
Sure. I think here, and I think when we sit here, we can always say, is it is it half full or half empty? And I, and I say it's more than half full. So I think in, in, in some of the challenges here we can overcome. And I think the positive of this, we in 2026, the technologies we have that are connected and can connect to the grid we already have. And then in reality, then it comes back to what are the processes leading towards that. And I think this is this is also balancing a bit. And in all fairness here, balance is also what called patience because we are now sort of reminded on acutely wherever we are in the world, that it's constant. We can get an immediate answer to anything. And that also means if I develop a project, I get an immediate expectation of now I'm connected. But here we are forgetting also, this is part of society. We got to we got to engage. We got to connect that. Also. It has a adoption in local society. And therefore I'm sort of saying if you break that in then I think most of the tracks works really well in parallel. So that's one. The number two, which I'm really encouraged with is when we now see that, then we both have the Prosumers. So we have us as consumers taking active decision in the electrification. That means whether you then have your electric bike, you have your electric car, you take an electric bus, you not far too far future. We will take an electric plane as well. So therefore we we are electrifying. Why? Because it also solves one of the other things, which is that has a storage. And that means we also then addressing to Manon's point. Don't blame Manon on the grid, because in reality, I think most grids around the world, they are plenty of time where the grid allows you to work with the grid, where it's not constrained. And that means for us, we should be much more working closely on how do we get the electricity where it's needed in the society, the price of generation of electricity, whether it comes from solar or wind and others, is competitive against all what's being discussed these days. And in all of the countries where that is built and understood, that's where we are gaining both momentum and the society is having access to energy available when needed. And that, I think is important. But that that has to be in parallel. And I think you and I over the last few days have been double sitting in. Some of these panels will be in the North Sea summit on, on offshore wind on on Monday. And I think here we should stop blaming and finding somebody to blame. But if we sit down smaller groups, it's sortable, very easy, and it actually works.
That's a great proposition. And I like your optimism. Let me now go all across the world to you. And in Indonesia, where I think electricity demand has already been rising at a pretty significant rate. I just looked at the data this morning, but also is expected to continue to rise by 2030. That creates a whole set of challenges. You also talked in the in the preparation for this about the demand side and needing to do more on the demand side to actually create demand in areas where it's currently not present. Could you talk us through the Indonesian experience and how you see it?
Yeah. First of all, for Indonesia, electrification is really the mantra for growth, industrial innovation and also actually welfare of the people. Just to give you some idea, which you all already know, it is a country of 285 million people. Most of them are young. We have been growing in the last 30 years, circa 5%. So electrification is very important. Today we have about 100GW installed. Connectivity actually is not an issue. Despite we have 17,000 islands, 99% connected, but the 1% is 10,000 villages and 1 million households. Right. But the reliability of the network is what is very much important. So trying to scale at the same time trying to give reliability of the people, in electricity is really the challenge for us. Right? But it also gives a lot of opportunities. So for example, Indonesia is quite blessed with not only the population but also the natural resources. We are the largest nickel reserve, but with six largest copper, and also for silica and so forth. So affordability is also very important for us, right. Because despite we are 16th largest economy in the world, GDP per capita is still $5,000, right? So, for example, the vertical integration to our country, the Downstreaming policy is very important. So for a group like us that has been around for about 83 years, focusing in energy digital infrastructure, I think this presents a lot of opportunities. But we cannot do this alone, not because of funding. Actually, the country has put together just ten months ago, the first, actually the second sovereign wealth fund with $1 trillion under, asset under management. But the key is the technology and the people. We cannot just reinvent the technology right away. We cannot just have the people with experience, scientists and so on. So I think this presents a lot of opportunities for collaboration. It is good that we are a non-block, non-aligned country. So the good thing about it, we can work with the left side, right side of the aisles, but we don't want to get into trouble because none of them are going to help us. So this is one of the things that we try to do as a growing nation. And I think I'm going to stop right there, but very happy to be here and having a good conversation with you all. Yeah, yeah.
Thanks for joining us. Okay. Next I go to South Africa and you mentioned already affordability and resilience. I know two issues that you care deeply about. Dan and Eskom has been at the heart of many of these issues. And we talked yesterday and you told me that Eskom has actually gone through a change in its strategy and makes sure to shift as well as, you know, making sure we address those challenges in the future. So could you tell us a bit more of how South Africa is dealing with some of these issues?
Yeah, thank you very much. I think let me start off by saying that, over the last three years or so, the big issue for us as a country has been about reliability of electricity supply. You may have picked up in the news that we did experience quite consistent and very debilitating, load shedding. But we are now out of that. We have spent a lot of time in ensuring that we can have operational recovery, because this is quite crucial for us to set the base for the transition that we want to see. From a country perspective, I this generation is still dominated by coal. The coal value chain is quite important. It's got some serious socioeconomic implications, and therefore the pace and scale of our reforms have to speak to those realities. The transition cannot happen in any other way than one that is dictated by the realities on the ground. So what are we doing about this, our big bills or bills going forward in terms of, new capacity is definitely going to be, renewables with some element of nuclear and gas to ensure that the variability that comes with a higher penetration of renewables is managed, because grid stability becomes an important element for us. Our landmass is quite expensive, and so we need to ensure that we can operate at grid even in that space. At the same time, the pace of transition is going to enable us to be able to repurpose and repower some of our power stations that are coming to an end of their lives, in the process, devising transitions of jobs and skills is a very important component because we live in a country that's got very high unemployment levels. What we really need to do from a systems total systems perspective is to look at the total cost of electricity supply. It is not an issue of either or of the technologies. It is about ensuring that there's appropriate technologies to help the country navigate the challenges that we sit with. You know, the similarities, a lot of similarities with the Indonesian case. For us, electricity supply translates to economic growth. You know, price there's a lot of price sensitivity in as far as what customers can afford and the pace at which industries can grow. So we are very alive to that. Now that we have some stable supply, we can start focusing our attention in terms of how to do the pricing in a manner that encourages, the growth in terms of the uptake.
Yeah. This is a great segue, actually, to a topic I wanted to bring up, which is the economics of electrification, because it may well be the case that we can do that's technically, but if it's earned, even if the grid is ready, if the economics don't stack up, the demand side will not electrify. And anyway, this is a topic I know you and I talked about that yesterday. You care about quite a bit. And maybe. Maybe, share your thinking what you told me. And around the role of policy and regulation in reforming the economics in a way that actually allows for electrification to happen rather than obstruct it.
Yeah. No. First of all, I think here this may be sometimes a downside and sometimes an upside with age is that you see some of these cycles. And when they when you go through some of these cycles where you where you see that we are building a system that is energizing and electrifying our societies, then we got to be super careful of that. The cycles of either political convention or whatever is not polarizing it, because we are building electricity assets and we are building systems that are supposed to last 30, 50 years and the next generation, where we often then ends in either polarizing or excluding things with a cycle of 3 or 4 years, which actually hindering some of that consistent investment decision that drives the capital cost of capital for the energy projects down. So that's one observation. The other observation is instead of trying to get everything done in two years, then actually plan for it. So you're consistently trying to bring and I love your point about it's not either or. It's it's both and all that needs to be included. Because the more you have there, the better you are to model it and the better to you are to bring the combined price of electricity down. And of course, now you got me started, because one of the things that is really close to my heart is also then that we talk to society about what is the underlying true cost. Because when I go to the meter back home, that's not the true cost necessarily of that electricity or energy I'm using. So the true cost often gets either filtered or camouflaged. It can be subsidized or at least in major parts of the world it gets taxed. And and if you sit as a consumer and you see a high price where up to 70% of the price is actually either VAT or taxes, that means you can then emotionally disconnect to either the energy source or the, grid availability of it or whatever. And that's wrong. And I, I use some of the European examples right now. We often in Europe say, well, the electrification goes slow, but that's probably because we are not able to get societies to understand the benefit of having electricity that comes at typically 30, 40% of the existing costs by building new capacity, but you don't see it from your meter because it is camouflaged or covered in penalties, taxes and other stuff. So I always say a good advice here. Build things that last 30 years, be consistent and keep putting capacity on, and then speak openly about that. If there's something you want more of, don't tax it overly because then you will actually have an aversion against it.
And maybe I can I can add to that if I if I may. So I fully concur. And on the other, you know, if you look at affordability of, you know, an electrified, and a resilient, power system, there's so much more we can do. So you talk. So in addition to what, what you said, while we are expanding the grid and we are with with thousands of projects, actually, in the meantime, what we can do is utilize the grid better. So we often talk about congestion or full grids, but the grids are actually full. If I talk, then take the Dutch example again 15% of the time. So just one example is that last year we introduced a new, time bound, transport. Right. So a new contract. So it's contractual innovation where you say, okay, I can connect you, let's say in in ten years, but I can also connect you next year. And then I give you 85% security of supply. And in return, I give you up to 65% discount. And of course, with that discount you can invest. Because I do believe that flexibility becomes the new normal. You don't want to build a grid, for the peak. And so this is super interesting for flexible users like batteries is the clear example. But there are many, many more. And in that way it's much more affordable. While we use the capacity that is already in the grid earlier. And you can speed up here, you know, in a matter of months rather than, years. So I think, that is also an important example next to, for example, cross-border collaboration. Look at the the market design. So we have to work on all of this in order to, to, to, to remain, to maintain an affordable grid.
If I come in, maybe this is a very good example and very helpful for our scenario in South Africa, our constraint in terms of, ability to bring up new generation is agreed. You know, the national resources that we require, wind, sun is mostly, very distant from where the load centers are, and our grid is not well developed in that space. We introduced a curtailment as a tool that enabled us to unlock some capacity that could be brought earlier, rather than waiting for new infrastructure to come into place. But then, you know, what I'm picking up here is very innovative ways in which you can even be on a customer side, be able to do connections a little bit earlier under different circumstances. Rather than wait for longer durations to come on board. So that's a very innovative way of.
Is this something you see happening also in Indonesia, that there's more attention being paid to making better use of the infrastructure that you already have rather than just building new.
Definitely. Because, look, Indonesia has about 100 gigawatt. And the government and that's why I agree with Hendrik, consistency and continuity of policy is very important. The government with PLN as a state grid has already embarked on a 75GW in the next 15 years in which 75% of it coming from renewable energy. This is quite interesting to me because we as a group, we are also, producer of fossil fuel, whether coal or oil and gas. But having said that, when you look at the topography of Indonesia, the 17,000 Islands and all that, not all of them are easily, electrified with the traditional ways you actually have to come up with technology of solar. We do have a lot of sun, and we do have a lot of wind, especially on the eastern side. So the government, I think, with the private sector, has sit down and said, hey, look, this thing cannot be done unless the participation between the private sector and the government, is well developed and well structured. About 65% of the $1.5 trillion economy in Indonesia is actually coming from the private sector, not from the government, because at the end of the day, as, you know, all of my peers here know the power purchase agreement when you do your IPP or selling to the state grid is very important. So certainty is very important. And coming back to the same point, that I had before. That's why I think collaboration for a country like Indonesia that doesn't have time, is important for technology and talent. And later on, when I have time, I want to share with you also a little bit about the, trying to spur the demand as well. What's on paper is nice, but it's on paper right now. Right. So the way to actually do it, I think the private sector has to spur the demand, whether that's for transport, industry or digitalization, for example.
And why don't you talk about it now? Because whilst we're at it, what what's your view. How how can how can that happen in Indonesia? To actually get demand in areas where currently it's maybe sluggish.
To jump a little bit to the transport sector. So of course, the most attractive, transport would be the four Wheeler, the two Wheeler. And that's true. And Indonesia can build essentially technically 100% local content with being able to produce its own battery materials from nickel or copper, but actually the one that drives in the beginning is the public transportation, such as bus and truck as well. Right? So people get used to actually feel the benefits of electrification, whether no smell, no sound, and also the benefits of the operators and also the municipalities and so forth. So this is, at least in our view, five years ago, was the one that drive Indonesia's electrification. Now 14%, one four of the new vehicles is already electrics. And I think it will only grow more and more. But Indonesia also want to make sure that it is a part of the global supply chain, right. Whether it is with, the East or China leading it or the West, it's very important. So I think Europe, is very important to us. We have heard what the other big Western country would like to do, which is great. You know, we know our fossil fuel as well. But I think, for the people of Indonesia, the 285 million people, this electrification is very close to our heart because it has something to do with, equitability. And also, I think welfare of the people coming back to the same point.
Yeah, yeah. You made a really important point there about the demand side. And, in the city where I live in Oxford, when I, when I moved there, 17 years ago, all the buses were diesel buses, and you could smell it in the streets. Now, 100% of the fleet has been electrified. The bus operator was very skeptical to begin with, but they now learned that they can do depot charging overnight. They get cheap electricity rates. It's good for the grid. And there's less air pollution. Are there similar attempts in South Africa to maybe not in the transport sector, maybe it's in the industrial sector or in the building sector, but to try to shift the demand side to maybe switch from technologies that rely on combustion, usually to use electrification.
Yeah. Look, we're not short of demand necessarily. The lack of adequate supplies in the in the last few years has undermined confidence in investments. But there's absolutely room for an increased uptake in terms of EV. There's a big appetite for data centers. That movement is is growing. And it's also in our backyard. And we need to do more to support it. Our performance operationally can only go towards the restoration of the confidence. From an investor perspective, manufacturing has suffered. We have capacity then more capacity than what we're currently seeing. And we expect we've been in excess of supply. We expect to see confidence coming back and uptake in terms of available capacity, our mining output, there's a lot of critical minerals and the focus is really on beneficiation within the countries that we can only provide, and stimulate with enough electricity. We're dealing at the moment, we're quite topical with, you know, our chrome smelting industry. We have a lots of reserves in the country, that are quite high up there in the world, if not the, you know, the, the top ranking, capacity. We need to enable, mining and smelting to happen within the country. So there is enough demand. We just have to unlock the infrastructure through this construction of the 14,000km of transmission network. And that will start seeing us, you know, moving and shifting the dial in the right direction.
Yeah. Maybe, if I may say a word, because I think what also, if we want to, you know, massively scale up and we want that everywhere in the world, you see that also here I think we talk about technology and politics and regulatory and taxes and all the aspects. But in the end, I think trust, you know, it's really important people need to to to trust. And I think it requires leadership. I would say with capital letters, you know, from the industry, from the grid companies, from from the politicians, I think, leadership and then combined with the right incentives, like serious incentives, you know, to to move along when, you know, with the wind or the sun while we expand the grid. I think, and that leadership part and awareness part, that, that as an industry, you know, yeah. How there are it's actually a new business also for many industries when you are able to be flexible. So I think this leadership aspect is very much underestimated. I would say that soft part is probably the hard nut to crack here to, to scale up.
Let me share an experience from a South African perspective. You know, the recovery in terms of energy security has been a program or project that has been, executed by both the government in collaboration with the private sector. So the performance that we're seeing today, both in, across infrastructure spaces, comes from collaboration, between government and the private sector. So state owned entities work with the private sector. We do have now a very clear integrated resource plan in terms of where we're going. We have to hold ourselves accountable to deliver, as promised, do course corrections where necessary. But that plan is on the table. And I agree that leadership is everything here, and it is leadership of society as a whole, as opposed to looking at government.
When you're on the way to the North Sea summit, Henrik. And this is going to be discussed, I guess, at least in part. What's your take? Have the politicians or society at large, have we, have we understood this transformation, the scale of the transformation and the potential opportunities that it brings when it comes to electrification? Or is there still a lot of work to be done on making the case, making sure people actually understand the transition and how it may unfold.
But I think here it's as a as a leader and as an energy professional. I'm, I'm not sort of polarizing in, in any of these things. But I think here it's often that we can be accused. We're sitting here, I think if we respectfully said, probably with a regular frequency on a national radio, television or others and shared some of the upsides and downsides of doing a transformation, there's no never happened. That transformation, whether it was to the to the IT or digital or AI without there will be some fears and there will be some up and down sides that needs to be managed under the way. And I think we sometimes lack to talk about that. The absolute breach of trust in the energy transition is if there is a blackout, because that means then we disconnect a society and the trust of anything else that comes from leadership after that is actually questionable. And as I come also to Australia quite a lot, and there was a lot of discussion to Australia and and Daniel Westerman, who is the chief executive of Aemo in Australia, has managed that over a 3 to 4 year period to remove that sort of fear of that. And that meant that then you can start talking about how do you then get the society to be part of the play. And let me give you an example, because we all we all talk 1000ft up here and we talk about 100GW, and I have 200GW. And but a gigawatt is approximately a million households. So every time we do that, then we have access to bring a million households in, to what we are doing. And at that point in time, and I look at and I sort of say, actually, I have two electric cars back home. Right? But every day, only a fraction of those day, I need 100% capacity of that car. So in reality, I could give that back 80% probably to every day. And you can then play with that storage. And that means as a society, how do we become part of the solution? How do we become part of that baseload that actually secures that other people can have access to energy at a constant, and that means we start dealing with the baseload of all of this. That's not rocket science, because funny enough, your car suggest with 80% likelihood you're going there again because that's what you normally do on a day like this. And then you can see, okay, I need maybe 80km in the car. So the biggest storage thing we have right now actually gets closer and closer to us as consumers. Therefore, trust has to be the one thing that we assure each other of. Secondly, infrastructure. Five years ago, all our employees said electric cars and the infrastructure is there charging point. We said we cannot have an office, we cannot have a factory where we don't have unlimited access on charging. If all private companies did that, as of tomorrow, stop blaming the government of investing in charging infrastructure, because as a private company, if we are in an office, it's 24 over seven available and we probably have only usage of that between 8 and 5 or 6:00 in the evening, then there are plenty of availability there. So why don't we hear a sort of a little bit of an invitation out of Davos 26 private companies invest in your charging infrastructure. So at least you make it available for everyone else to participate in it, because that structure will help enormously in actually having a decentralized storage and a much broader base load going forward.
And that's where electric vehicles become a new power plant. That's where the North Sea becomes, you know, a green, green power plant. And I think to build trust, you know, we need to, to show what is already happening. We, and I think and we need AI, of course, in order to accommodate all of that. So although we, we have a challenge with AI, we need it big time to scale up and to utilize the grid better, you know? So that's kind of.
One of my always I always comes back in any company of a decent size or anything else. You normally have a chief operating officer who is sort of saying, come on, this is a bit crap and difficult to get together. Here is the thing, he fixed it. So that means and when it gets to grids to get to infrastructure, when it gets to the have a coup somehow and I mean the CEO title as such, have a person that is the go to person that aligns these parallel tracks, because otherwise you are out of sync. So that that I'm and that will be the same. I'm not taking the the storm away from North Sea, summit on Monday, but I think the most important thing of all of the countries that are working together is to have one joint person that actually sit down and say, let's get this into sync and let's work on it. And then sometimes that CEO, also a lot of people not now, later, because this is the priority to be successful in this.
Yeah, we have a few more minutes. And I want to make sure that we bring in the audience as well and make sure that you have a chance to ask a question or make a very short comment. So I will invite you in a few seconds to do that so you have a bit of time to think about that, but maybe just, sort of what I hear is that there's, I mean, there's a whole range of issues that all come together that we talked about the grid as being critical in innovation, in how to manage the grid. We talked about the demand side and the importance of mobilizing demand there. And then you brought in flexibility. I mean, this is one of my pet topics. We could talk about that for a very long time because it's so often underplayed in the discussion but so critical, and there's so much potential. But clearly there seems to be a lot of optimism that this can be done. It will be difficult, but it can be done. But the solutions are out there. We just have to deploy them. So maybe I now turn to the audience, and see whether there's anyone who wants to come in, ask a question or make a comment. And if not, then I will ask some more questions because I know that you have more to talk about. But I see a hand up. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you. I'm Alfred Stern from OMV and you talked about grids. You talked about storage. You talked about grids being overdimensioned, and so on. There's a lot of talk all the time about all the investment that we need into the grids. And I would just like to hear your opinion as real experts. Is this really necessary with this new technologies, with AI, with storage technologies? Like you said, Henrik on on cars, storage distributed. Is this really necessary that we have such a massive investment in grids in Europe? And how should something like this be optimized?
Maybe, because you are what you work for a big company that does grids as, as your day job. Maybe you want to take that on.
Yeah. And we were just able I think if you look at, yes, I'm afraid there is a massive amount of money required to invest in the grids and we need to utilize them better in, in order not, not not to, invest even more if, if I just look at Tennet, we have a 200 billion investment agenda in front of us for the next ten years. I believe also the capital is out there. I think we've seen it because we are in the, you know, we we have been financing the company. And I think it's really important in order to well, you need to get, how to call that, you know, in order to get, institutional confidence. I think it's really important that you have clarity on the regulatory framework, that you have really a long term planning and that you do that we do it smartly together. So utilize the grid better, but also collaborate. Nordsee, you know, to to really work together on a smart grid, but nonetheless, yes, I think it's hundreds of billions to be invested in the grid because there is no energy transition without transmission. Yeah.
Maybe if I could just say, I mean, a place to go and sit down and maybe spend a few days is is part of, of northern Europe, the six countries that in reality have built a joint access to grid. They also share both generation and and therefore supply and demand out of that. It's called North Pole and it's northern Germany and into the UK, Nordic countries. They all have different strengths in terms of asset generation and demand cycle. So I think that's where we got to learn, because in reality, a grid is a living creature 24 over seven 365 and how do we use the not so busy hours? And there are actually in most grids, more and more, I call them a little bit idling hours rather than the absolutely capacity constrained hours. So how do we start using that? And therefore, I think when you look 20 years ahead, I think we will have as AI, we will have seen that there will actually help us do some of these things. And just like when we talked about copper and other things, the recyclability of things will also mean that that will dilute some of the demand side. And I think the demand side of grid, if you only dimensional for the very few hours where your capacity constrained, that is the decentralized storage we talked about here. That will start compensating for that.
But then I think also back to Indonesia and South Africa in the end, you know, investments in the grid, it's about happiness. We talked about it yesterday. It's about prosperity.
In that case. In that case, the renewable resources are, as I said, needs to be unlocked. And the only way to do that now is through expansion of our existing grid. Well, how I take the question that's been raised is that you need to start thinking about integrated planning here. For countries that are adjacent to each other, if anything, this is calling for a much more common template in as far as the planning and the future is concerned. In Southern Africa, we're talking about the importance of interconnectors, because that will start, you know, putting us at a point where we can start optimizing, grid utilization. And technology plays a very important role in that. The adoption of AI will certainly lead to, you know, squeezing a lot more out of the infrastructure that is already in place than building one. It's just that for now, we are starting from almost a zero base in as far as the connectivity, of generation resources to loads is concerned.
I know I need you to come in on this.
Point just quickly.
No, I wish we don't have to build more, whatever, 10,000km of, transmission. But being in archipelago of 17,000, I think we need to do that. But, yes, I think, technology with AI will help a lot on, the productivity of the current system. But also we see this as an opportunity to have a lot of special economic zones. Right. One of the initiatives from the World Economic Forum is to have net zero industrial park, for example. And that works quite well in Indonesia. You know, whether you have in Sulawesi, which is the eastern part of the country, focusing on the downstreaming of nickel, that will create a lot of, employment. That's good. And another thing, also, this energy, resilience has a lot to do with food resilience in the country, right? For example, Indonesia is just embarking of the eight 0 million free, nutritious meal, which will create a lot of downstreaming of 80 million eggs, 80 million drumsticks and so on. So those electricity definitely are needed. So I agree with Hendrik. It is not so much only about the industrialization to make, battery materials, for example. But also, I think for something as close to, you know, being able to power, the fishing vessels going to the sea, that's also very relevant for Indonesia.
And we owe it to our generation to come, come out and see where potentially schools don't have electricity and other stuff. That means we are, in reality, not empowering our next generation with electricity to learn and electricity. Energy is one of the most important thing besides health to actually be growing up under those, those assumptions. So I think you are you're absolutely 100% and I love, love your country in Indonesia to go there and see.
So you're all welcome.
Yes.
You clearly asked a very good question that, you know, got a lot of debate going here. We have only a few seconds left, but I think I can take one short question, and then we need to have short answers so we can wrap up on time. But is there anyone else who would like to come in and maybe add another layer to the discussion? Another issue that we haven't? Oh that's excellent. Please. I think there's a mic coming.
Hello, my name is Stefan Reuter from Copper Data. And I would have a question to Manon. In particular, you spoke about utilizing the grid better with the help of AI, and I was wondering, how are you going to do that, considering all the legacy equipment which is installed, in a historical grid?
Well, just to give, one example, you know, you could imagine, in the control room of the future, you could imagine a digital twin, next to you, who then, you know, in combination with still colleagues, humankind, you know, would work together where you can much better grasp the complexity and the speed that that is needed. So just to give an example, but dynamic line rating out there in the high voltage line, well, there is hundreds of examples where I think even with, with legacy in place, you know, that would would not hamper you to at the same time innovate. And I think the good news is the, the crisis situation in the Netherlands, it's a crisis in slow motion. Well, the good news about that is that, you know, it really forces you to innovate contractually. So I think, all the doors can be opened. You can talk to politicians, regulatory. So that is the good news about the crisis situation that we become frontrunners, I would say in the solutions.
Yeah. Thank you. I'm afraid we have to leave it there because we are out of time. And I promise that I will run this session in a way that we can wrap up on time. And I think we have succeeded. Of course, there's a lot more to talk about. But but I think we we need to have another session next. Davos. On electrification, there's, there's so much potential and, thank you so much the panelists for for coming for contributing. Thank your audience for asking really good questions and enjoy the rest of Davos. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you.