Renewable energy deployment, investment in clean power and the implications for energy transition are part of the agenda at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026
Renewables are moving from aspiration to infrastructure. Moderator Godfrey Mutizwa opened with lived evidence: solar has brought “spots of light” to his Zimbabwean village and is “silencing some of those generators” in Nigeria. India’s Minister Pralhad Joshi argued the strategic debate is over: “future is renewables.” He cited a jump from under 3 GW of solar a decade ago to 136 GW today, with 52% of power capacity now from non-fossil sources—achieved five years ahead of target. Falling costs underpin momentum: solar tariffs down roughly 80%, and rooftop and farm programs are turning consumers into “Urja Datar,” sellers of power.
ENGIE CEO Catherine MacGregor emphasized scale and delivery certainty: renewables are “not for the poets anymore,” citing rapid build times, low capex overruns, and declining wholesale prices—while warning bills rise mainly due to grid and taxes, not renewables.
CATL’s Pan Jian positioned storage as the linchpin, noting battery costs down 85% in 10 years and lifetimes up to 18,000 cycles (25+ years). ACWA Power’s Marco Arcelli said the main bottlenecks are “leadership” and grid buildout, plus payment delays that raise capital costs. For data centers, the panel converged: renewables paired with storage can meet fast-growing, volatile demand—if safety and quality standards keep pace.
A very good evening to all of you, and thank you very much for your time to join us. After probably one of the most anticipated speeches in history. I'm hoping I can keep your attention long enough for us to generate an exciting debate, perhaps as exciting as the topic that was addressed earlier. My name is Godfrey Mutizwa. I'm a journalist. I was born in Zimbabwe, in a little village some 62 years ago where there were no lights growing up. We used wood. We used paraffin for studying and cooking. So. The other day when I went back home after a period of about two years, I was amazed to see these spots of light in the village where I was born. And I was thinking, what the heck is that? Are the ghosts back? We used to have ghosts back then. No, they were not ghosts. They were lies. What had happened was that in the two years that I hadn't gone home, solar had arrived in our little village. It was solar that was dotting all the homes. So instead of paraffin, instead of those candles, instead of that wood, it was now solar. I was amazed. So for some of us, solar is already transforming our lives. It's changing the life of a villager, the way they conduct their lives, the business that they can do. So when we speak about sustainability, we are late for some of us who are already in this journey already. The other day I read on Bloomberg it's one of our competitors, and they spoke about the revolution also that's taking place in Nigeria. If you've been to Nigeria, you will know the sound of the generators. Well, solar in parts is silencing some of those generators. Now, when you look at the numbers, they show staggering growth in renewables, $2 trillion. It's a record amount invested in there, but it's not a straight road. And I think this is what we are here to do. And the question that we are asking here. Let me frame it properly. We are asking the question whether renewables, together with the grid storage and flexibility, can move from the record investment that I'm talking about to reliably anchoring the next wave of secure, affordable and low carbon energy systems around the world. So I have a panel. Let me introduce my panel. Minister Pralhad Joshi. He is from India. Minister, thank you for your time. Thank you. We absolutely appreciate your time today and we look forward to your participation. Let me give his title. Minister Joshi is Minister of New and Renewable Energy and is also Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution in India. We also have on our panel today Katherine MacGregor. She is chief executive officer, Angie Group. Thank you Catherine. Thank you. And we also have Pan Jian, his co-chairman, contemporary Amperex Technology Co, or CA. Seattle. Seattle. Thank you for joining us. And last but not least, we've got Marco Achilli, his chief executive officer, ACW power. Thank you, sir, for joining us. Minister, let me start with you. Thank you. You run a successful program in India. Let's talk about what it takes to put together a national, sustainable, renewable energy program and the work that you have had to put in.
Thank you for having arranged this forum for the discussion of the renewable that is unstoppable removal renewables. First of all, to my introduction, I will add one more thing. Previously, I was the Ministry of Coal in India. For the entire five years I was Minister for coal and now Prime Minister Modi has transformed the minister himself to the renewables. So having said that, I know both sides. So what is the issues in thermal? I mean, that is fossil fuel and what is the issues here and how we are progressing. But I can tell you one thing really in this context, if I can tell the unstoppable march of renewable, it is perfectly right. So as far as whether future is renewable, this discussion is over. Now future is renewables. This is what India firmly believes. And accordingly we are acting. We are not. We are executing. We are not just telling sustainability. These are all not for our speeches. Whatever we are telling what Prime Minister Modi said once and one grid. These are all our conviction. One world, one sun, one grid. This is our conviction. So keeping that in mind, we are working today, in last ten years, from three gigawatt less than three gigawatt from solar. Today we are 136 gigawatt and wind. It was nearly about 25 gigawatt. Today it is 55 gigawatt and overall renewables including hydro, small hydro all put together. Today we are 267 gigawatt installed capacity today.
Sure.
Ten years back it was not so. So keeping these facts and figures before you, what I would like to. This has been this 50%, 52% of our total energy is generated today. It is through non-fossil sources. And this honorable Prime Minister Modi committed that we are going to do it by 2030. This has been done in 2025. Sure, five years ahead of the time. So even the question of affordability also that in between you you referred it. Yeah. In India, I can very confidently say affordability, affordability. It is better than fossil fuel energy. Sure. See, for now, the price of the only for the figures I am referring this tab. The tariff based price discovery of the solar power has come down almost 80%. That is 20.026 per unit today. So whereas thermal and other fossil sources, it is at least ₹8 means that is $0.08, I believe. Sure. And the same is true. Bids are related to wind. There also, the prices are not per unit. Cost is not much high. And for reliability and affordability.
Yeah. That was my next question.
That before I can answer or you will ask next.
No no no I was coming up for you. You have answered the affordability part. So I wanted to follow up and ask about the reliability part. How have you addressed.
So according to me before to that the affordability, when we speak of the renewable energy affordability is in India, according to my experience, it is ruled out in India. Some people in the rooftop solar, we have made a big program for 10 million people. We have drawn a program scheme where 10 million households, they can install rooftop rooftop solar, where not only they are saving from the electricity bill that is tariff and they are selling it and they are earning money. So so this is the success story. So there is no question of affordability as on date in India. That is what we planned. And next about reliability. Reliability. Yeah of course we need to do something more on that. But in that what we are doing, we are planning for the battery storage, pump storage and the bid C1. What we are doing is we are bid is hybrid bid and round the clock bid. Whoever developer comes, he should draw the electricity either from wind, either from battery or from the pump storage or from the hydro and all put together round the clock. He should supply the electricity without fail. Sure. So this is the about reliability. I am speaking and this slowly it is becoming successful. And also now we are bringing up some of the technology driven things. All our are meters, 250,000,000m are converted into the digital meters. Sure. So that program is on now.
So things are becoming better.
That will become better. And we are using the AI tool for that. That is being now the program. Of course it is not yet implemented, but it is. We are in that direction. Thinking is going on because we are not that large scale to think all these things. But now, since more than 52% we are generating from the non-fossil that is, there is a variability in that. When there is a variability, naturally we need to see the grid stabilization. Yeah. So for that also we are very seriously working for the technological solution, deploying AI tools, including for the accurate demand forecasting, grid balancing and using the digital twin for the improved design and distributed renewable energy system and smart metering.
Let's bring in Catherine into the conversation because she is an operator, right. And before we ask you about perhaps enhancements and all those other things that we require to make it more reliable, just speak to the subject, please. Indeed. Our renewables unstoppable.
Yeah. I think.
Some of the numbers that we are now facing are just a proof points in terms of their magnitude. In 2024, I think it was 600 gigawatt that were installed across the globe, 600 gigawatt, in Europe, it was close to 50% of the energy that was produced from renewables in 2024. That's a tripling since 2004. Maybe the few things that remain a bit unknown with renewables is that it is serious stuff. Now, it's not, you know, for the poets anymore. It's not small projects. It's the magnitude of project that strikes me the most. Yeah. The scale up that we are, that we are able to deliver, we're just starting the construction in the Emirates, for example, in terms of solar size, it's 1.5GW. Just pure solar technology. When I look at the batteries and in India, we're just going to be developing a project that is 100MW, but it's 600 megawatt hours. And sorry, it's a bit technical. What that means is that we are going to be storing the electricity for six hours on this 100 megawatt project. And for those of you who have been here, you know, I've been seeing this press release from my group. At the beginning, it was 20MW, one hour storage, and that was two years ago. And now, you know, in two years the technology is moving so fast. So when I see in the Middle East around the clock project with just solar and battery, it's becoming in reach. The technology advance, the cost, competitiveness, the size, the R&D, the technology behind and the pace is very impressive, which makes me indeed really say the renewables are not for poets anymore. It is real. It is. It plays a key role in, obviously, the energy demand that we see growing in most of the countries. You know, we talk a lot about energy transition in energy, but for a lot of regions now, it's more about energy additions. And renewables are indeed, you know, the fastest to come to market and also in terms of scale are really impressive. The other thing that I want to point out is that renewables have a characteristic today, which is also, I think, ill understood, which is reliability you mentioned, but also certainty of delivery. Right. Because the project themselves and not due respect to, to the, to the suppliers, they are not that complex compared to other technologies. So for example, we are starting we are finishing the construction of an offshore wind project in France and France are not super known for being super rapid in developing projects. But from the moment we start the construction to the end, it's two years and it's certain and it's green power for 800,000 people that live in that department. So those big projects that are really big in magnitude, they are also quite certain in terms of delivery. And if I look at energy, just last year, we installed 5.6GW on average. We were below budget on CapEx. So we do not overrun our CapEx budget when we install renewable. And I think I like that. And in terms of delays, we were less than one month across all of our portfolios, all regions, all technology, which shows you that if you want to have electrons with certainty at a given time, at an affordable cost, renewables actually are really, really good bet. Yeah, of course you need to think systems because it's not, you know, you're not going to do everything you want with just solar or just wind. You're going to have to build the systems. Hence the need to deploy the right technologies, the right portfolio to integrate them and to think of cost of the system. That's very important.
Absolutely.
What we see, and I'll finish here, is that when we look at countries that have deployed a lot of renewables, you see the wholesale market price tend to go down. There is studies that show that. And then the issue is that the the customers or the the final end users doesn't necessarily see that in their invoice. Why is that? Why? Because because the invoice is made of several aspects. You have the electrons, the price of the electrons that is being produced. But then you have taxes and then you have of course, grid and grid is obviously a big topic. It needs to be deployed, it needs to be developed. And that adds additional cost, which sometimes blurs the picture. So people say, oh well, my invoice increases because of renewables, but it's not because of renewables. It's because grids need to be reinforced, be built to support the electrification. And that's very important that we explain that. So we don't just blame renewables for higher costs in certain circumstances.
You can look at the minister for the taxes and stuff. But and also you didn't mention it, but you're allowed to mention renewables are not a hoax. You didn't say it. I said it, Ben, let me come to you. Your thoughts. Are we there yet? In terms of beginning to declare mission accomplished, renewables are here to stay.
I think we're on the road. But very promising.
How far up the road?
The road is, the wrong way is very long. And that means, you know, great potential for the future growth. But at the same time, the technology is ready, despite the fact there is still a lot of challenges to overcome. But it's all engineering questions. And from perspective, we've been putting a lot of resources, and we are confident all this engineering challenges will be tackled along the way. But before I started, I just like to point out, like, I like this stage. It's it's a circle. You know, in Chinese culture, we love circles because circles means, equality means harmony, right? And that's probably very important in this, you know, today's world. Very turbulent and chaotic. But anyway,
So we will thank our organizers, the World Economic Forum, for bring us.
Bring us together.
In South Africa. We say make the circle bigger. Yeah, we're making the circle big.
And also going back to a very touching story about your, hometown village. Just like to point out the solar, the solar, basically at night, they cannot they can't light up the lamps, right? Because the solar dies down at night. It's the storage battery that powers the the lights. Yes, yes. So, any storage is, is going to be a has been will be a very critical component of the future power generation and power transmission also power usage. Right. Because it's it's, it has many features that make it really critical and integral, part indispensable part of the future power. You know, I think it's it's fast. It's, in response at the minute, second level to the grid, it's bidirectional. It has bidirectional dispatch capacity. And also, as you mentioned, it's fast to deploy, right? Because most of it, it's preconfigured at factory rather than being built on site. And it also has great flexibility means, because battery or energy storage, electrochemical storage can be deployed, from power generation to power transmission to behind the meter applications. Yeah. Meaning that, you know, at home you can install ten kilowatt hour storage. And on the grid, the largest one we are working on right now is ten gigawatt hour project, meaning it's a million times bigger than the the home storage. And you can do anything in between. Right. So it's very flexible from small to large to ultra ultra large projects.
Yeah. You actually in part answered what I was going to be a follow up question for myself, which is to what extent would you say we are far up that road in terms of developing the technology around batteries and storage? Because one of the frustrations, as you can imagine in villages is the capacity of those batteries.
Yeah, the capacity today is not an issue. And I think as long as if we put enough big size battery, there will no, there will be no issue for the, the cost. Yeah. We've been able to, put putting a lot of R&D efforts to bring down the cost. In the past ten years, we've been able to brought down the bring down the, the average cost for battery for by 85%, sure, just in the past ten years. And it will continue working on new technologies like sodium ion batteries, like, you know, condensed state batteries and in the long run, solid state batteries to continue to improve the performance of the battery while pushing down the cost. Yeah, absolutely. And, one thing about the cost is also at the grid level, especially, to, operators like NGO and also Aqua. We need to look at the cost from shift from looking at the cost from dollar per kilowatt hour to dollar per cycle or per cycle use. Because we in the past couple of years, we've also been able to improve the life cycle of the battery. Right now we we can produce battery up to 18,000 cycles. Sure. Which means, you know, even.
Put that in terms of years so people can connect and.
Understand, put it in context, right. If we do charge full charge and discharge twice a day, it can be used for almost, 30 years, 25 years plus.
Wow.
Okay. And also degradation, is very important. You need to have slow degradation batteries, meaning that over the years the capacity will not drop significantly. Right? A lot of, advanced technology at the material science level has to happen to make it a reality. Yeah, right. But then at the grid level, as we increasingly embrace renewables as the power generation source. Yeah. We cannot just look at solar or wind alone as the power generation source, as the as the, the percentage from all these intermittent power generation sources go up to if they're below 15%, it's perfect. Fine. When they go up from 15% to 20% to 30%. If you don't look at the new renewable generation as a system, meaning that you have to couple pair the solar and wind with energy storage, they will create trouble for the power grid. They may because, if you think about the traditional power generation, like coal based or natural gas based or nuclear, yeah, it's more like analog device and renewable power generation. Solar or wind has tremendous volatility and intermittent inherent intermittency. It's more like a digital device. And you have very large digital device switched on and off from the grid. That creates a lot of trouble for the grid.
Analog, analog versus digital. That's the comparison we're getting. Marco. Come in. I want your thoughts as well to, whether we are there yet. And then, of course, we'll go into whether these things are now at a stage where they are bankable and they make it worth your while.
Yes. So the short answer is, I think we're beyond there on power and on other sectors. We are way behind. But let me step back one second. You made me think when you spoke about your little village, about my youth, because I grew up in Italy in the 70s, which was already a G7 country, and we had rolling blackouts. We had after the summer, even we didn't have water because, you know, infrastructure was not there. And I remember going to my grandmother heating and stove where wood fired. No. So we're burning wood. Okay. So in 20 years this is a G7 country in the 70s in 20. Yeah, that's that's true. That's why we have smoked hams now. Because basically as you heated, you also wood smoke and put the hams there to to smoke. Yeah. So it's called positive externalities I guess. So in 20 years, in the space of 20 years, all the problem was solved, and it was solved with the technology of the time. So it was nuclear, it was oil fired, it was coal fired. Then technology came and it was gas fired. I would argue today the technology that you installed by default is renewables, because, as Catherine was saying, it's the cheapest, the fastest, the most secure, the most predictable. And thanks to our Chinese suppliers also becoming cheaper and cheaper by the day. Yeah. So it's really it's really effective. And I think.
It's a universal truth that renewables are now the cheapest.
It's the cheapest everywhere. Would you argue that. Yeah. Yeah.
I give you an example. We are building a factory in China and it's going to be powered completely by off grid renewables. It's it's not a small factory. It's a 40 gigawatt hour factory. When it's done, it's going to generate a revenue annual revenue in the order of 3 to $4 billion a year. And it's going to be completely powered by renewables, coupled with, with storage.
Sure.
And it's sorry. Yeah. Sorry. And it's 15%. The cost is 15% lower than the the power cost we receive from the power grid. Sure. Considering China's electricity price is already very competitive. Yeah.
So, so so the prices are coming further and further down.
The dynamic is basically in a liberalized market like Europe, where the price is set by gas fired plants. Yeah. You build you build renewables and you will be in the money. Then it's a question of how much in the money because it's a volatile market in emerging countries, in Africa, Central Asia or where the demand is still growing a lot like China, GCC, Southeast Asia. What you see is that that's the cheapest, the fastest. So that's what you do. So that's why I would argue. And what you saw is that even in the US, which today everybody says they stop renewables, 90% of the new capacity is still renewables. So that's going ahead.
Somebody needs to say something or tell the man in charge.
No, but you see, I mean, you need all the energy that you can because the fortunately the growth, the world is growing now. Prosperity is growing and that takes energy. Yeah. Yeah. So that is I think something where today it's limited the speed, you know. And that's why we talk about the quadrillella. So it's affordable secure sustainable. But you need to be fast. And the two limiting factors today is one leadership. Okay. So leaders in the country taking decisions permitting regulation whatever it is. And the second is the grid. Because the grid needs time to keep up with the power plant. Because the power plant is there. It's in a single location. It's easier to do than grids that span and crisscross and maybe sometimes go over villages and communities and people don't want them.
Yeah. Yeah. So so this is my follow up question then. Redundant bankability of these projects now within renewables. Yeah. Is it a question.
So it depends country by country. So if you go in developed country it isn't. I think that the point is really the amount of return that you make, because if you are affected by a volatile commodity and it affected by regulation. So how much is the price of CO2 is the stroke of a pen. It doesn't exist. So if you say, I want to decarbonize €100, if you say I don't care about it, it's zero. So what's the margin that you make on your renewables? So that's why I'm saying it's about the leadership, the commitment and the predictability for the bankability in developed world bankability in emerging markets. I think that is affected by not so much the level of defaults, but two things speed. Because if I need to stay there for years and years to develop a project, I don't allocate the people and then the project is less bankable, let me say. Or if you go ahead and then you have the project online, it's not so much the default, but delay in payment. If you have six months or a year delay in payment at the thin margin that you have. Because what we're saying is relatively easy technology. Yeah, your return is wiped out. So we need to find a solution for the stability of payment, regularity of payment.
It's actually one of the points that we need to to to go to everyone to get their thoughts on. But finish your thought and then we'll get the others.
No. And that's a product that today doesn't exist because you can take a political risk insurance, but it covers for the default. It doesn't cover if you get paid after six months or a year even, because for the complexity, you don't initiate a default three months or six months after you don't get paid. Yeah, and that is the biggest thing that increases the cost of equity, which, by the way, increases the cost of energy in these developing countries. If the payment were smooth, if we could find a solution to protect that, then the cost of equity for infrastructure project will come down, the cost of energy will come down and the local economies would really accelerate.
Absolutely. Come in. Catherine.
Yeah. No. The key theme is indeed predictability, stability, clear framework, ambitions being set, sometimes even reached ahead of time. Yeah. All of these are very, very important because, you know, as a utility, you know, the returns that we make on each project is not huge. So, so the risk reward balance need to be right. And so in emerging countries, what we're finding is that often it is indeed the the framework, the fiscal, the fiscal stability, the regulation that is not mature. And that makes it difficult for a developer like Engie to invest in, in quite a few of those countries. In contrary, when we have a government that really sets the goal and listens to all the actors, the players and start to work together overcoming some of the hurdles, then we are able to progress. And, you know, India is a good example.
And I see you're looking at the minister. Let's give you an opportunity, right.
Because India is a place where we we had actually stopped investing because we were really struggling. And now we started again with, you know, benefiting from indeed the improved framework. Land acquisition, for example, is less risky. It's makes it it's a bit easier for the developers. And so the conditions are improving. Therefore indeed, you know, we are we are progressing. We're very proud of what we do in India. Also on the technology side.
Yeah. Minister, let's talk about how you've approached it from the Indian perspective.
The Indian perspective, if I can tell you one is the important issue is the cost of the capital here today. But otherwise, as far as India is concerned, we are one is we have made it as a people's movement, mass movement. If you see, as far as farmers is concerned, we are giving them solar panels with the most affordable cost and they themselves, they are generating the electricity in their farm and for the irrigation, initially, ten, 20 years back in country like India, they used to go for irrigation in the night because the power was available only in the night. Today that has been made available in the day. Yeah, they are generating. And also not only they are doing that much, they are selling that electricity. This is what we call PM Kusum for that. It is a very affordable finance. And also as as I said, for 10 million people, we are making the rooftop for that. Also there is affordable finance and that we are. It is a very huge success story which has been conceptualised by Prime Minister Modi. So far, we have installed 2.7 million rooftop solar and 3.1 pumps have been solarized and excess energy in the both the cases, whatever they want to use, they will use it. And further, whatever is excess is there. They are selling it. So third, they are making money. One is their income means per capita income is increasing because of that. See, even many of the World Agency has acknowledged 25 crore people means 25 million crore, 2.2 50 million people. They have come out of extreme poverty. This has been acknowledged. This is this is also one of the reasons because so many people, they are generating the electricity and whatever the cost for the irrigation they are using for the fossil fuel, for example, diesel, they are using it and now they have stopped it.
How have you addressed the issue of payment that he was raising as part of the.
Payment in.
The down.
Payment for the.
By by, by, by customers? Reliability in terms of payment systems and.
Payment is normally now it is routed through the discoms. For the generator you are speaking. Whoever generates you are asking, am I right? If I mean your your my concept is right. Payment for whom?
Payment for the for for for OIC. Because the the person who bought. Do you want to explain the issues.
To the generator, to.
The generator, the generators.
Along the chain from the consumer to the system, from the system to the generator.
Now they sell it to the these discount discounts through grid. They are selling it. And there is a system there is a regulatory system. So the person who is selling by either through rooftop or through his farmland, he is getting payment every month. So by that his income levels are increasing, his comfort is increasing. So with many of these schemes for the downtrodden, along with that, what Prime Minister Modi has done is one is he is creating this awareness. One is it is economically good. That is proven beyond doubt in India as far as renewable is concerned. Yeah. Another important thing is for the sake of the better earth for the next generation, you have to come into renewables. So this people has to accept it. Entire community has to accept it. Community.
That's where leadership comes in.
Receive it positively. What we have done is what Prime Minister Modi has done is he has made it a people's movement. So 2.7 million households, if they are installing the rooftop, then everybody feels that, yes, there is some sense in it. And a farmer, poor farmer who wants to generate the electricity for his own sake, who was fighting for the irrigation purpose to generate the energy he used. He used to depend on the diesel. Today he is generating the electricity and he is also selling the electricity. In India, farmers are called Annadata. That is a Sanskrit word. Annadata means they are provider of the food. Today he has become the Urja. Datar means he is providing the electricity also. Okay, this is the change India. In India it has come in last seven eight years and only what you said is affordability. That is there. Only thing is the technology sharing of the technology among the developed countries and the developing countries is most important thing. Okay.
All right. Let me open the debate to the floor. If you've got a question or a comment perhaps that you'd like to contribute, please raise your hand. We should have, I think a microphone. That's our roving. There's a hand at the back, and, can we get the microphone to him, please? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for this session. My name is Hussein Matar. I'm with the Amea power. We're doing renewable energy projects across Africa. We have today around 6000MW in the continent at different stages. We know Ng and Acwa very well, and, we certainly procure a lot of our equipment from from China. And I just want to understand from your side the impact of this rebate that's we're hearing that's coming to place. How is that going to change the picture in terms of tariffs and prices? Thank you.
I think that's yours.
Sorry. The rebates what rebate are you talking.
VAT rebates. The abolition of VAT rebates.
VAT rebates in China.
Yeah.
China is cutting down the, the VAT rebates, refunding for battery products, I think. Is that the question you you meant.
How is that going to change the overall pricing.
Yeah, I think the, the rebate the VAT tax rebate itself, it's, it's not that significant in the long run because we're going to continue to drive technology to drive down the cost. But in the short term, of course, the, the, the rebates, sort of phasing out from the, from the supply chain will increase the price, most likely in the short term.
Thank you.
The next six months.
For the next six months at least.
And thereafter, who knows? Technology will have advanced. We can take it. More questions or contributions? There's a hand here.
Thank you very much for your excellent panel. I'm coming from Sumitomo Corporation. We have some connection with Aqua or LNG. Thank you very much. And and my question is related to the, wind turbine. I mean, in the, in the very big discussion here in Davos, there was some kind of, some kind of against wind, for the, for wind power generation. So how how that kind of change in the very big country in the world, against the, wind turbine, wind power. How do you see the effect of such kind of change? Over very big country related to the renewables, especially wind? Maybe energy or Aqua may have some kind of comment.
Okay, okay. Who wants to.
Take it? I mean, you know.
The way we manage our project, is we have quite a large pipeline, which is split by geography and by technology, and we constantly adjust our capital allocation decisions based on where we see we can do the best project. The best project are the ones where that are the most certain in terms of delivery. I mentioned execution is very important. And so whenever we think permitting is going to be complicated for whatever reason, then obviously we'll do a little bit less wind technology in that region. And then we will reallocate capital, correspondingly to other areas where, for example, wind is a bit more welcome. Now talking about wind, you know, I guess you mentioned the comments on on wind earlier. We see that also in Western Europe quite a bit in my country, in France, there are some people who passionately hate wind. And so in fact, we had to as energy group, we had to do some communication to fight fake news on against wind, because for some reason it had become so political and there was some really crazy stuff, including that wind turbines were slowing down the rotation of Earth. I mean, this is, you know, how far, but this is how far fake news can go. And this is where we are taking, you know, we're entering the debate and say, look, we have to be rational about that. So I understand that some people think it's ugly. I personally like it. And, you know, we can debate, but we should remain rational about it. And I think that's quite important. The point is that, you know, as a group, we do have optionality in the way we allocate capital, which, you know, is a little bit of a lesson, I think, for, for all companies today is that you need to hedge your bets a little bit. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and having a bit of diversified geographical, geographical footprint and technology. Also exposure is, is, is proving indeed quite, quite handy. And then maybe the last point I'll add on wind is that I'm personally convinced that because we did a poll in France, and what we saw is that people who have wind farms next to their place actually like wind farms better than the ones who don't. Which, you know, when you think about it, it's a bit counterintuitive. And my interpretation of that is that I think that when people have windmills next to them, most of the people they see sovereignty and self dependency, i.e. you see that this thing is turning, it produces electrons, but it doesn't need any, it doesn't need any fuel, whatever. Forget about fossil or not, it doesn't need any fuel. So here, you know, you have the very vivid representation of what sustainability means. So you are producing power without the need of anyone. And yes, of course your turbine comes from somewhere. And maybe you do have, you know, Chinese content or whatever, but once it's installed, you don't need anyone to produce. And I do think that people and it's true also on solar, by the way, and this is one of the big benefits of renewables that we didn't talk about once it's installed, you don't need any feedstock any, you know, and that's that really creates more yeah, better sovereignty and security of supply in today's world. That's important.
Yeah.
100% agreeing to that. What today panels were manufacturing modules. We are manufacturing by that once. If it is installed even in whether it is wind or it is in solar, it goes for 25, 30 years, 35 years. He need not bother. It is almost the majority of times if I can say it is maintenance free, especially in solar. It is just a cleaning and cleaning also. Now mechanical cleaning has also come. Some people say it is a robot but other than robot also there are very easy cleaning systems are there. So for 2530 years, once it installs then you can forget about it. This is the beauty of it. And only thing is, as I said, sharing the technology and blended finance, multilateral banks, support of the for the developing or underdeveloped countries because pollution or the climate change. What we are talking. Yeah. If one country successfully does that it cannot over to keep the earth safe for the next generation because we feel India was Kutumbakam means world is one family. Everybody should be happy. When we born on this earth. This earth was safe for us, for the next generation. Also, we should keep the earth safe. Thank you. That is the overall concept of India.
Thank you, thank you. Spoken like a true politician. Can I squeeze in one? Question one very quickly.
Hello. Very quickly. I come from Texas. I work for wood plc. So we are developing solar and wind and etc.. My question is related to data center energy demand. In Texas we have the development of data centers are causing, the increase of 14, data centers, are equalizing on demand, similar to the city of Austin. So my question is, how do you envision renewables capturing, some of this growth? Because they are also trying to equalize this with combined cycle. And how do they meet that demand? How do you see renewables capturing some of this growth.
Yeah okay. Very quickly.
Yeah. I think renewable will play a very important role in, meeting the demands of ever growing, insatiable, power demand from AI native data centers in the next 20, 30, 40 years. We have been, for example, Catherine mentioned in the past, you know, it was like one hour duration project was the mainstream, right? But we've already last year, last November, we've already installed eight hour long duration project in Australia. So for AI data center, the challenge for power is very severe, for the on the grid because it other than the the amount of electricity needs, the fluctuation or the volatility of power needs from AI training models and inference models is more than ten times of the traditional internet data center power. Power needs, right? So huge, huge amount of electricity and a huge amount of volatility. And then only storage can come in coupled with renewable generation, which as Catherine and also, Marco mentioned, it's fast to deploy. Right. That's one of the very important advantage of renewables. Yeah. To meet the immediate demand of AI data center. But in this process, I think one thing we we are a little bit concerned about, it is really the long term safety of, a lot of energy storage projects ongoing because the in the past couple of years over emphasize on upfront, price from the procurement standards have been leading to a lot of supplies in this industry to cut corners, resulting in lower quality storage products, batteries, low quality, presenting long term safety issues. Yeah. We are concerned that, you know, the hard earned trust in this industry and investment momentum could be could be undermined by the future safety incidents. So that's why we've been, you know, relentlessly focusing on making sure the quality is high. We've been pushing the you know, Six Sigma is very, very well known in the industry as the sort of the utmost, product, quality standards. Yeah. That means defect parts, you know, ppm parts per million. Sure. We've been we've been trying to push it to PPB, for defect parts. Parts per billion. Yeah. Right. So bringing it up to three orders instead of six sigma. Now we are doing Nine Sigma with only one cattle. Is only one in the industry to do Nine Sigma product deficiency. Right. So only with this we think we can.
Make sure you know the safety, because safety is really for storage products. It's the lifeline and foundational commitment we need to have.
Absolutely. Thank you very much. Yeah. In the GCC you can have round the clock renewables with battery storage or concentrating solar power at a cost that is comparable to a ccgt in the US and much cheaper than a ccgt in Europe. So I think the answer is come to the GCC. Thank you very much indeed.
I have to say, thank you very much to my panelists for joining us today and contributing their thoughts. My takeaway is, I'll tell you, is that I'm taking one phrase that you used. I think, of the previous technologies as, obsolete, not quite obsolete, but certainly not as advanced as the digital things that we are seeing in these days. It's analog versus digital. Digital is today. One takeaway technology is advancing. It's changing the way we have traditionally thought about energy and the way we have used energy. And this technology is further set to improve and change things. I'm also taking the view that, think about where we were with, the contribution of renewables to national grid supplies versus where we are today. The equation is tilting very, very gradually, whether these are ugly or not. There's no question that, equation is changing. And so can I answer the question? We started with renewables are unstoppable. Thank you very much indeed. To all of you, my panelists, and to all of you for sitting here and listening and contributing your thoughts. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you.