Dubai: As the energy industry gets through another eventful year, it’s time for the ADIPEC show to open big. As has been the case with energy industry linked events, it’s never just about the price of oil and what it means for the global economy. The sustainability theme is coursing through every action taken by the industry, including, of course, where the next big investments need to go.
As oil remains in sight of $100 a barrel, Christopher Hudson, President of dmg events and organiser of ADIPEC, has his say on where the event is heading.
Climate change and the energy transition are two big topics all over the world this year. How are you designing and organising ADIPEC 2023 to respond to the challenges they pose?
By 2030, the world will be home to half a billion more people, demanding more energy every year. At the same time, the global challenge of climate change calls for urgent, game-changing solutions and partnerships to eliminate emissions.
Every government, industry, business and individual has a role to play in decarbonising quicker and creating the future of energy faster while safeguarding energy security and ensuring nobody is left behind, as we create lower carbon pathways to a sustainable, higher growth future.
It is against this backdrop that we are hosting ADIPEC 2023 under the theme of ‘Decarbonising. Faster. Together.’ with a renewed and strengthened purpose to gather industry decision-makers, innovators and financiers to accelerate collective efforts to reduce carbon emissions to curb climate change.
We are building on our nearly 40-year legacy of innovation and evolution to take ADIPEC to the next level. As the world’s largest and most inclusive energy conference and exhibition, set to welcome 160,000+ attendees from over 160 countries, ADIPEC 2023 will bring together the wider global energy ecosystem while providing dedicated space for more voices including young people, to advance the common goal of a sustainable energy future.
As part of our commitment to that mission, we have placed decarbonisation at the heart of ADIPEC 2023, permeating the entire event. Among our 350 conference sessions, more than 200 are focused on decarbonisation, while our dedicated Decarbonisation Strategic Conference will gather stakeholders from across industries and sectors to foster collective action and make a lower-carbon, higher-growth world a reality.
On the exhibition side, the ADIPEC Decarbonisation Accelerator has been designed to enable organisations to showcase their game-changing projects and solutions driving decarbonisation at scale. Within the Accelerator, a dedicated Start-up Hub will host pioneers presenting groundbreaking technologies that drive the future of decarbonisation and accelerate energy progress.
ADIPEC’s decarbonisation-focused offerings, alongside its new Global Youth Council, expanded Strategic Hydrogen Conference and Future Leaders Programme, enriched Maritime & Logistics Zone and Conference, and all new ADIPEC Awards categories, support the global energy transition by focusing the wider industry’s attention on addressing key needs and solving shared issues.
We are just a few days out from the kick-off of ADIPEC. What is the ADIPEC Strategic Conference lineup looking like, and what sort of topics will its speakers be tackling?
This year, ADIPEC is again gathering the world’s leaders from government and industry to discuss important topics and advance critical issues in pursuit of a sustainable global energy transition.
Among our 1,600+ conference speakers, we have over 40 global government leaders and 120+ C-suite industry executives from the world’s biggest companies in energy and technology, emphasising ADIPEC’s position as the place where the energy industry, policymakers, technology leaders, and more comes together to exchange insights and find solutions to create a new, sustainable energy system.
As part of that, these high-level insiders will be discussing critical topics like solving the current energy 'trilemma' for a net-zero world; the reinvention of new asset and portfolio models; transforming upstream operations to secure lower-carbon value chains; and how to fast-track finance and prioritise investments for the energy transition.
You’ve shared a bit about ADIPEC’s own sustainability journey. What can you tell us about it?
After decades of slowly moving up the agenda of the world’s issues, today sustainability is a key priority for all organisations, governments, and groups. Like the rest of the world, our international energy exhibition and conference, ADIPEC, has been working to integrate sustainability into its focus and practices for some time.
Now, dmg events has embarked on its own carbon-neutral journey that starts with ADIPEC’s signing of the Climate Neutral Now Pledge - a UNFCCC global programme to increase climate action amongst companies, organisations, individuals and the public sector - and includes a long-term robust carbon management plan that kicks off with sustainability practices at ADIPEC 2023 that we will accelerate and intensify in the years to come.
ADIPEC 2023 will see the rollout of a number of initiatives as part of our carbon footprint reduction efforts. This includes sourcing certified clean energy for all electricity used within the ADNEC venue through a partnership with the Emirates Water and Electricity Company, partial clean energy for our external tent structures through our partnership with Aggreko, and enabling our participants to calculate and offset their ADIPEC travel-related carbon footprints through our partnership with CHOOOSE.
