WEC Inside 

   

15–31 January 2014 

Welcome to WEC Inside, your exclusive briefing from your WEC network

News 

World Energy Leaders’ Dialogue to start in Abu Dhabi

The WEC will be holding its inaugural World Ener-gy Leaders’ Dialogue this month (21 January) in Abu Dhabi, the UAE. The event will be co-hosted by H. E. Suhail Al Mazrouei, the UAE Minister of Energy, and Marie-José Nadeau, WEC Chair.

The WEC expects that its Dialogue events will provide a more frequent, regionally focused plat-form than its more established twice-yearly World Energy Leaders’ Summits.

The event will continue to be held in a roundtable setting, where participants can address critical issues in an interactive and informal peer-to-peer dialogue. Session summaries will not contain attributed quotes unless with the explicit agreement of the contributor to encourage an open exchange.

The Abu Dhabi Dialogue will have three ses-sions centred on the theme, “balancing the trilemma and rethinking resilience”.

It will open with welcoming addresses from the co-hosts, followed by a trilemma ministerial dia-logue which will focus on the challenges to balance the trilemma and sharing some key success stories from around the world.

15–31 January 2014 WEC Inside 1

What would you consider to be the WEC’s achievements in 2013?

I think we should measure our success in three areas: network, content, and impact.

Our network is getting stronger. Strong events in India, China, and the huge success with our Congress are very solid proofs of the increasing strength of our network. We also have new mem-ber committees in Iraq and Bahrain, three new Global Partners, and renewed all existing Global Partners and Patrons.

Our content is stronger than ever. In our Trilemma work we have gone from using weighting to scoring countries on their energy sustainability performance. Governments love rankings, while the finance industry is more used to ratings – we have to cater for both. For the first time we had a Trilemma Summit where ministers talked about the trilemma at the Congress, and we had exposure at COP. The trilemma has resonated stronger than ever. The same for our Scenarios study. All our flagships have grown this year.

We have brought our content to our network and regions – this shows our impact. We have

Interview 

created vocabulary that was picked up and used by a great number of energy leaders – our vocabu-lary of the trilemma, and our Jazz and Symphony language for scenarios.

In terms of being a thought-leader in energy, WEC has had a very good year. We have certainly strengthened our position, and I’d like to pay trib-ute to our former Chair, Pierre Gadonneix, for his leadership.

What are some examples of our work being noticed and adopted?

There have been numerous anecdotes at the Congress and elsewhere. At the Congress, the President of Korea referred to the trilemma repeat-edly in her speech; Saudi Aramco CEO Kalih Al-Falih referred to our Scenarios study in his opening keynote speech; the CEO of ENEL, Fulvio Conti, made his whole speech around Jazz and Sympho-ny. We also had a Trilemma summit attended by 48 of the 50 ministers at the Congress, and a CEO roundtable with about 50 CEOs discussing our Global Electricity Initiative.

Outside the Congress there were many such moments as well. For example, recently I had the privilege to be invited by a small group of senior policy and business leaders around the German environment minister Peter Altmaier to meet and discuss the Energiewende. The WEC is increasing-ly being asked for an opinion by other organisa-tions, with our reports being well received and I know that our member committees are actively engaged in supporting governments and industry in guiding energy strategies.

What does 2014 have in store for our member network?

In every place that we are to hold an event this year – Abu Dhabi, Johannesburg, Astana, Cartagena, and FOREN in Romania – we are dealing with the question: how can we re-orient our government policies, make them more robust, sustainable, and

2013 was a phenomenal year for the World Energy Council. Christoph Frei gives his take on the WEC’s achievements and looks ahead into this year.

News continued on page 2 ...

The second session will explore how energy infrastructures can become more resilient to risks. These risks, such as unpredictable weather pat-terns, growing challenges of the energy–water nexus, security and geopolitical risks, the increas-ingly active role of public opinion, and cyber threats, have become the “new normal” in the energy sector. The session, building on the dis-cussion at the 22nd World Energy Congress, will look at these challenges in the context of the energy trilemma, with a special focus on the Mid-dle East and the impact on policies.

The third session will cover unconventionals and their impact on the Middle East’s energy land-scape. It will look whether the shale gas revolution has undermined the business case for renewa-bles, and how Middle East gas producers can stay competitive to avoid losing out to the rise in un-conventionals.

About 60 high-level participants from more than 20 countries in six world regions are con-

Christoph Frei is Secretary General of the World Energy Council.

.

Interview continued on page 4 ...

Abu Dhabi: city for the first World Energy Leaders’

Dialogue

HAPPY NEW YEAR!