The European Commission has launched a public consultation on its Strategic Roadmap for digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the energy sector, to support system optimisation and the EU’s climate and energy objectives. Energy Efficiency for Europe answered this consultation, noting the Roadmap as an important step to ensuring that the green and digital transitions advance one another.
In their response, Energy Efficiency for Europe makes the following points:
• Digitalisation and AI carries great potential to accelerate the energy transition by optimising energy consumption. Used effectively, these tools can enhance energy systems, improve demand-side management, support predictive maintenance of installations and enable more efficient and flexible use of resources across the value chain.
• Human oversight must, however, remain at the forefront of the energy sector’s digitalisation. The expertise of qualified energy professionals who can validate, interpret, and translate data into reliable performance gains remains indispensable to the successful implementation of digital and AI-based solutions.
• Cybersecurity and data integrity must become central priorities, as the risk of cyber threats for energy service companies (ESCOs) and their clients greatly increases when energy systems become more interconnected. Preventing breaches of data will require investment in robust security protocols and new integration models across technologies, thereby striking the right balance between ensuring cybersecurity and enabling access to the environmental and energy data that companies need to drive the energy transition.
• Though AI can bring major benefits in critical sectors such as energy, environment, health, transport etc., the environmental implications of the high electricity consumption of data centres and advanced AI models must be assessed, explained, and integrated into the Roadmap.
To mitigate the additional strains on the EU’s energy system posed by digitalisation and AI, Energy Efficiency for Europe calls on the Commission to to embed energy efficiency at the core of the Strategic Roadmap, by making use, for example, of energy efficiency solutions such as waste-heat recovery and reuse.