When asked why they chose Tado, he said customers’ main reason was: “I want to save money. The second reason is that I want to make the planet a better place. If we cannot fulfill the first,” he stressed, “the second becomes less relevant.”
China seems to offer many solutions. Although coal consumption is increasing, it will peak in 2026 as renewables come online, and MingYang Smart Energy president Qiying Zhang described how floating and fixed offshore wind turbines are replacing fossil fuels. . In August, the company installed the world’s largest single-capacity offshore wind turbine in Hainan, the MySE18.X-20MW, which can generate 80 million kWh per year, offsetting 66,000 tons of CO.2.
Meanwhile, the electrification of the country’s road transportation is advancing apace, thanks to heavy government subsidies. “In China, 570,000 electric vehicles were purchased in August, and if you don’t drive an electric car in China, you are considered a very boring person,” Stella Li, vice president of Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD, told the room. The new Z9 GT offered “smart driving,” which meant the car could park itself, even sliding sideways in a tight space, thanks to its flexible rear axle.
“The epicenter of the energy transition is China, which has a beautiful historical symmetry,” explained Arthur Downing, chief strategy officer at Octopus Energy. “Until the 18th century, the economic center of the world was China. It was the first energy transition of the industrial revolution in Great Britain that shifted that economic center of gravity to Europe. So we are coming full circle at a ridiculous speed.”
Ann Mettler, European vice president of Bill Gates’ sustainable energy organization Breakthrough Energy, and Sabrina Schulz, a strategic expert on climate, energy and biodiversity, agreed that while Europe was making progress, it was falling behind and needed a combination of efforts. public and private. funding to catch up by connecting and renewing networks and considering decentralized or even virtual power plants. “Political security and public guarantees for investment in, say, green district heating are an absolute condition for investors,” argued Schulz.
Sana Khareghani, professor of AI practice at King’s College London, suggested that AI could help, managing and optimizing energy networks and helping to develop new batteries to store energy for when it is needed most, helping to reduce dependence on generators of last resort that run on fossil fuels.