Event report

The 3rd edition of the summit took place in Brussels (20-22 Sep) and was co-located with the Go Hydrogen Business Summitt.
The 3rd annual Go Net Zero Summit gathered 200+ sustainability and energy transition professionals from oil & gas, renewables, EU government bodies, NGOs, banks, consultancies, cleantech, CCUS, geothermal and digital technology providers.
The energy industry is facing a growing
demand to increase productivity and build
a more resilient industry ecosystem while
at the same time delivering on long-term
commitments to fulfill stakeholder
expectations through a low-carbon economy
transition pathways.
This new context redefines the strategic imperatives that shift towards sustainability and adds energy transition elements to strategic roadmaps.
All of them have different methodologies, but it is clear that the green transition is moving forward and the energy sector is with it.
In light of the current energy crisis, the industry faces three major challenges – energy security, sustainability, and efficiency of all assets.
In order to make a wise long-term investment, energy companies need to start by implementing state-of-the-art digital technologies to make their assets the most efficient possible.
Moreover, digital technologies will be essential for the management of carbon capture and storage (CCS), decarbonizing assets, and optimising the energy mix.
According to BloombergNEF, achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require up to $173 trillion of investment in the energy transition.
However, the supply of that is already covered, and demand is not coping. We need more well-thought-out green projects that will allow us to
move forward but will meet the pressure from investors in the future and will be able to scale up.
Despite the growing concerns and pledges from some banks to cut the funding to fossil fuels, the situation is more complex, because we can not make the transition tomorrow. For that, we need funding for those transitional projects that
will provide a clear decarbonisation strategy and prove to get us closer to net zero.
Because the current transition to net zero slowed down by energy security issues, it is even more important for businesses to reorganise and act fast together.
In the growing concern that we could actually
lose the net-zero battle, we should start from our own operations first, assess our strategy on where we can decarbonise and then work together with peers and suppliers on building new value chains and industrial ecosystems that will help us become carbon-neutral.
When industry experts talk about scope one and two emissions, they look at them more like an ecosystem, where companies work in an integrated way and talk to each other to develop collaborative models to optimise the energy efficiency of operated facilities and reduce routine flaring in production activities.
However, the scope 3 debate is more complex, and companies need to further extend it to this outing. The industry needs to understand what
methodology companies will follow and what are the impacts that they are responsible for.
There’s a need for clear measures, there’s a need for standardisation, but that shouldn’t stop the industry from acting.