Sustainable Energy without Fear : The Role of Artificial Intelligence

The words ‘sustainable energy’ usually provoke both hope for a cleaner future – and doubts. How can the whole world make a fast, fair and affordable transition away from fossil fuels? The doubts are there for good reason. Never has the world experienced such a sweeping change of such a fundamental aspect of living. Energy markets and electricity infrastructure were designed to provide flexibility in supply: energy was centralized, reliable and predictable. Sustainable energy technologies, many of which are getting cheaper by the year, supply electricity that is often decentralized, variable and more difficult to predict. The result? The more ‘sustainables’ we introduce into our markets and grids, the more we suffer unintended consequences like price and grid instability. The answer? Flexibility in demand – we need to create markets that support real-time dynamic pricing, virtual storage capacity and nimble, trackable localized trading in smart cities. In this speech, Professor Wolfgang Ketter will show examples of how AI and machine-learning agents can run these fast and nimble markets for us.

Professor Wolfgang Ketter is Director of the Institute of Energy Economics and Chaired Professor of Information Systems, University of Cologne as well as Director of the Erasmus Centre for Future Energy Business and Professor of Next Generation Information Systems, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He leads a team of interdisciplinary researchers in discovering how we can rapidly exploit advances in computing power to create a faster, more sustainable transition to clean energy and mobility. Ketter is advancing a new paradigm that builds communities of researchers who learn from each other in fast-paced competitive environments that model important societal challenges, such as the future of energy markets. He is co-founder of one of the world’s largest AI-driven market simulation platforms, Power TAC.
As fellow and member of the WEF Global Future Council on Mobility and Energy Policy Advisor to the German government, his focus is on developing collaboration with business and policymakers to field-test digitalization of the energy landscape in projects such as the EU’s Ruggedized smart-city initiative and the Rotterdam Port Energy Cooperative.

Masaru YARIME is Associate Professor at the Division of Public Policy in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He also has appointments as Honorary Reader at the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy in University College London, Visiting Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy in the University of Tokyo, and Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Environment and Society in the Tokyo Institute of Technology. His research interests center around science, technology, and innovation policy for energy, environment, and sustainability. He has contributed to many international initiatives, including the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative on Environmental Risk Integration in Sovereign Credit Analysis, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III Fifth Assessment Report, and the Expert Group on Policy Support Tools and Methodologies of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Currently he is serving on the editorial board of the international journals, Sustainability Science, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Frontiers in Energy Research – Energy Systems and Policy, and Frontiers in Sustainable Cities – Governance and Cities. He received B.Eng. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tokyo and the California Institute of Technology respectively and Ph.D. in Economics and Policy Studies of Innovation and Technological Change from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. His previous appointments include Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy. Personal Web Page: http://yarime.net/