Digitalization and long-term investment in energy assets

Session 1 of the FSR Global Energy Innovation Week

Technological innovation may just increase the efficiency of industry, significantly transform it, or even disrupt entirely it. To transform or to disrupt, innovation needs to change the industry players and the way they interact. We focus on smart contracts and the link to the discussion on open energy markets. The rationale behind it is that the political discussion on digitalization and the technology discussion on Distributed Ledger Technologies and the Internet of Things comes together in the form/type of contracts in the future.

Clarifying the form/type of contracts will help to clarify what needs to be done in terms of market rules in the future. We may think the digitalization of energy industries as made up of three levels: i) challenges of data production and management; ii) the design of a digital energy marketplace; and iii) the consumer side of the new marketplaces, i.e. how these changes add value to consumers. In this debate, we deal with the changes in market design, and our proposal is to articulate the analysis on smart transactions, in the sense that they represent the bridge between the data side and the consumer side of the change associated with the digital transformation. We will discuss three aspects of regulatory learning:

• The needs of data that is not available, and also to disseminate what data is available but stakeholders do not know
• Potentially anti-competitive behaviours
• Standard clauses for automated long-term contracts, and the associated financial aspects

FSR Global Energy Innovation Week

Energy Innovation Week will be comprised of 3 sessions, which intend to contribute the identification of common elements of the population of challenges that conform the current regulatory landscape, in order to define a framework that facilitates regulatory learning to realize financing of energy transitions.

Session 1: Digitalization and long-term investment in energy assets

Session 2: Public financing of green innovation: Matching offers and demand for financing

Session 3: Mobilising private investment for green, climate-resilient energy assets: The role of innovation in finance

Learn more about FSR Global’s Energy Innovation Week.