Cooperation, skills, and risk management all key to powering a just energy shift worldwide

Realising a fair energy transformation in both the Global North and the Global South requires a dedicated effort to support varied communities and economic landscapes, making certain every group benefits from the move to renewable power frameworks, panelists at Milan's Gastech 2025 conference said. 

“If you look at the gas exploration of life and the industrialisation of Africa and its importance to its people, the value that creates for Africans, I'm talking four in five Africans don't have access to clean cooking,” stated Ainojie Irune, Managing Director at Oando Energy Resources. “African economies require their populations to be well educated, live as equally as any other person in the Global North.” 

Gathering the $1.2 trillion necessary to bring power to an estimated 1.8 billion individuals currently living without it worldwide necessitates focused strategies and funding. These plans must weigh climate objectives against the imperative of delivering dependable energy to communities lacking access and driving long-term growth.   

‘Value Chain’ 

“We see a situation where for Africa and its development, gas plays a strategic role, from a cost perspective, but most importantly, because the entire value chain must see Africa extract or create energy at a point that is sustainable,” Irune also said. “We see probably today an 80% gas rich asset and the remaining 20% more tilted towards the solar and any of the other new energy sources.” 

Worldwide, pursuing long-term goals in sustainable businesses requires significant technical innovation, the panelists said. It means also looking at a sustainable energy mix. 

According to Hugo Liabeuf, Programme Manager at the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, “even if oil and gas is here to stay, the very long-term perspective of that is some reduced amount, and therefore some impact on the industry.” 

Liabeuf leads the Initiative’s Natural Climate Solutions and the Low Emissions Opportunities workstreams, working closely with experts across member companies to support the scale up of high-integrity nature-based solutions. 

‘Highly Skilled’ 

He stressed that “the industry is full of highly skilled and very talented people because of the nature of the industry -- those people are often located in geographies where there are limited alternatives when it comes to enrollment.”  

While advancements have been made in broadening the reach of renewable power and cutting carbon output, major inequalities remain. Obstacles like funding shortfalls, an imbalanced distribution of new technology, and insufficient local expertise impede advancement and threaten to worsen disparities also in the Global North, said Nobuo Tanaka, Chief Executive Officer of Tanaka Global, IEA. 

“Data centres and AI need much more gas for the electricity; in the future, gas market will be very turbulent and very tight.  How can Asia, as a net importer of gas, continue to make that kind of stable and very harmonious growth in the future?” he asked.  

Tanaka is Chairman of the steering committee of the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum (ICEF), which was established by Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2014. He also served twice as Director for Science, Technology and Industry (DSTI) of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

Central to surmounting today’s hurdles – he said - is encouraging cooperation between public agencies, commercial enterprises, and global bodies. It is also about gender, he said. 

“I created a working group only consisting of women to decide the future of the nuclear power in Japan,” Tanaka said. “Our reason is very interesting, because women are much more concerned about their risk, and they know how to avoid it.”