First-ever virtual CERAWeek highlights diverse perspectives on energy transition
For nearly 40 years, CERAWeek has brought energy ministers, oil executives and professionals from around the world to Houston every March to discuss the pressing issues facing the energy industry.
After a brutal year marked by a historic oil bust and last week’s catastrophic power failure in Texas, CERAWeek by IHS Markit organizers say there has never been a
more important time to gather industry leaders to discuss the changing energy landscape — even if it’s virtually because of the ongoing pandemic.
“CERAWeek has often been called the Super Bowl of energy,” said Jamey Rosenfield, a conference co-founder. “And if you think about the Super Bowl, it’s a very important event to be there physically, but it’s also amplified and seen by millions of people around the world. CERAWeek is a conference, but it’s also a global community.”
The 39th annual CERAWeek, which begins Monday, will feature more than 140 online sessions covering topics on oil and gas, alternative energy, the energy transition, geopolitics and emerging technologies such as carbon capture, electric vehicles and battery storage. There will be more than 400 speakers, including Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance, Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.
After last week’s winter storm that knocked out power plants and caused widespread blackouts in Texas, CERAWeek organizers quickly added a session on the impact of the power failure on electric grids and making
energy sources more resilient to extreme weather conditions.
“One of the hallmarks of CERAWeek is bringing together this critical mass of expertise and perspective,” said Dan Yergin, IHS Markit chairman and co-founder of CERAWeek. “So, we invented from scratch a whole new session just focused on the implication of the crisis in Texas.”
The conference also will feature several members of the Biden administration, including the U.S. climate czar, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and White House Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, the former EPA administrator, who has spoken at the conference in past years.
Organizers said Biden administration officials wanted to introduce themselves to the energy industry at the conference and field questions from attendees about their plans to combat climate
change, in particular regulations around carbon emissions and the environment.
“A focus of the Biden administration is to create a dialogue between policymakers and the energy industry,” Rosenfield said. “They recognize that this is the forum to have that kind of discussion, where you’re going to get a lot of diverse viewpoints.”
Organizers acknowledged CERAWeek has become more diverse in its lineup of speakers and attendees over the years, particularly as concern over climate change has driven debate over the future of fossil fuels. The conference, which started out focused solely on oil and gas, has branched over the years to solar, wind, hydrogen and geothermal energy, as well as biofuels.
Innovation and technology also will play a role in the conference as oil majors invest billions of dollars into new laboratories and start-up accelerators researching and developing carbon capture technology and alternative energy sources. Noubar Afeyan, chairman of the biotech company Moderna and a biofuels investor, is slated to speak about lessons the oil and gas industry can learn from the pharmaceutical company’s rapid development of the coronavirus vaccine.
Although the conference is virtual this year, organizers said they believe CERAWeek will have a larger scale and impact because attendees won’t have to hop on a plane to learn from the world’s top energy leaders. Organizers said they are expecting higher attendance this year, especially from Southeast Asia and Africa.
Still, CERAWeek organizers said they plan to bring the conference back to Houston next year. The conference, which typically draws some 6,000 attendees from 85 countries to Houston, has been a boon to the local economy, particularly downtown hotels and restaurants that have struggled this past year to survive the pandemic.
“We’re building back better and bigger in terms of impact and reach, but we do intend to be back in Houston in 2022,” Rosenfield said. “We’re very committed to being in Houston. Our partnership with Houston goes back decades and will continue for decades.”