Companies and governments have been urged to embrace disruptive technology, as it can contribute to decarbonising energy and make it cleaner, greener and more accessible.

Executives and experts attending the Africa Energy Indaba, in Cape Town, this month, outlined huge advances in electric vehicles, hydrogen production, process heat and energy storage, which could create new business models and opportunities.

“In ten years’ time, most of us will have at least one form of battery and rooftop solar photovoltaic [system], which we will at times be consuming and at other times selling electricity from,” Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Energy Centre head Clinton Carter-Brown told delegates.

He said entrepreneurs would drive markets and create opportunities.

“Millions of entities will have to be conducted in an orchestra, and digitalisation will be key.”

Carter-Brown said the world had turned on its head over the past seven years, as renewable energy and the reduction in its cost had become a game changer.

Change was difficult but necessary.

He said renewable energy and digialtisation were “not going to transform coal miners into data analysts, but we can provide a different future for their children”

Carter-Brown said an option would be to turn Mpumalanga into a renewables manufacturing smart hub that could leverage digitisation elements, but this required incentives and a government-level strategy to make it happen.

Sasol Chemicals digital lead Oratile Sematle commented that digitalisation would also open up more opportunities for young people.

“We have been bringing matriculants into our digital studio and giving them experience. Some of these kids are super smart. We must take this forward as organisations in South Africa. Digitalisation is [acquiring a negative] connotation that it takes jobs away from people, but we can start to shift thinking to give opportunities to communities to generate value.”

Schneider Electric Anglophone Africa VP for the information technology division Jonathan Duncan told delegates that the rewards far outweighed the risks for companies to adopt artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

“The majority of outages at data centres [result from] from human error. Don’t be afraid of moving to machines. They are a lot smarter than we are 90% of the time, because there are no emotions involved.”

He said digitalisation would contribute to greater efficiency by enabling the real-time monitoring of electrical networks.

Further, Eaton Africa director Seydou Kane highlighted that the current energy model would shift radically towards decentralisation, with minigrid and offgrid opportunities.