ACCEPT’s sharing session has evolved from an internal sharing to a public event. ASEAN Centre for Energy (ACE) collaborated with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and conducted the Sharing Session-Phase 2 session 2 with the theme of “Energy transition and the cyber challenges of future energy system”.

On this particular occasion, WEF as guest speaker delivered topics with respect to energy transition and the cyber challenges of future energy system represented by Harsh Vijay Singh and Lousie Anderson respectively whilst in ACE’s side, Hoyyen Chan guided the session as a moderator. The session was attended by 260 participants and held remotely via an online webinar.

The sharing session began with welcome remarks from the Executive Director of ASEAN Centre for Energy, Dr. Nuki Agya Utama, and moderated by Dr. Hoyyen Chan, the agenda was followed by two presentations and ended with a Q&A session. Two interactive pools were conducted, which each question was posted before the presentations.

The first speaker, Mr. Harsh Vijay Singh, a project lead at the WEF shared the “Insights from Energy Transition Index 2020”. He briefly introduced to the audience about the profile of the World Economic Forum. Then, he discussed the energy transition challenge. He explained historical data related to energy demand, the impacts of climate change, and the barriers to the energy transition. He also shared the approach and framework of the Energy Transition Index (ETI) and elaborated on the two main components that were used in constructing the ETI, i.e. system performance and transition readiness.

This followed by the review of the ETI global scores and ranking by countries. He also highlighted some key energy transition enablers and key insights from ETI 2020, including the performance of the ASEAN’s ETI 2020. Mr. Harsh inspired the audience by showing the opportunities and challenges of the with the Covid-19 impact on the future energy transition.

Moving to the second topic, Ms. Louise Anderson, who is the leader of the Electricity Industry at the WEF delivered her session on the topic of “Enhancing the cyber resilience of critical electricity infrastructure”. She started with a video that capturing the real historical cases on how cyber attacks would harm the energy infrastructure and security. She then showed more evidence and cases across the globe. She introduced the “Systems of Cyber Resilience: Electricity Community” that initiated by the WEF, which further elaborated on the importance of having dialogues with the electricity industry around the world in enhancing the resilience in critical electricity infrastructure.

Ms. Anderson also shared several recommendations at different levels, i.e. international, national, and organisational levels to address the cyber resilience challenges. She emphasised that each individual or organization needs to work together in ensuring the whole system is safe from cyberattacks. In order to keep pace with the dynamic electricity ecosystem in the future, it is also a need to consider and act on navigating the regulatory space, supply chain security, collective situational awareness, and emerging technologies.

This sharing session ended with an exciting Q&A session. It was an inspiring learning session, which has widened our knowledge in terms of energy and technology. We are looking forward to learning more from the WEF in our future event!

For more details, please see the presentation file here, and access the recording here. Feel free to contact the ACCEPT team if you need any further information. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out our COVID-19 page for more information on impacts of COVID-19 to energy and climate sector in ASEAN!