Your Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Chairman of the Presidential Court, Your Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, partners, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the United Arab Emirates, to Abu Dhabi, and to the 40th edition of ADIPEC.
For four decades, throughout a fast-evolving energy landscape, this forum has been a catalyst for action, transformation, progress, and real impact. And with everything that is happening in the world today, your presence demonstrates your real commitment to enabling a secure, sustainable, and prosperous future. Colleagues, we are meeting at a time of complexity and conflict. And against this backdrop, allow me to say that we in the United Arab Emirates will always choose partnership over polarization, dialogue over division, and peace over provocation.
Colleagues, given these dynamics, our industry's role in providing sustainable energy security is more essential than ever. Energy is the spinal cord of economies, a key driver of prosperity, and fundamental to every aspect of human development. And let me be clear: we need more of it. In fact, we need to deliver more energy with fewer emissions to more people than ever before. Ladies and gentlemen, it is evident that we stand at the dawn of a new era of hope and possibility, defined by three megatrends: first, the rise of the global South and emerging markets; second, the transformation of energy systems; and third, the exponential growth of artificial intelligence. These three megatrends present mega opportunities that demand mega solutions. Colleagues, by 2050, 1.7 billion people will join our planet, mostly in the global South. As a result, energy markets must shift and grow, and energy systems must be transformed. Wind and solar will expand seven times, LNG will grow by at least 65%, and oil will continue to be used for fuel and as a building block for many essential products. As the world becomes increasingly urban, demand for electricity will double. Adding to this demand is artificial intelligence. AI is one of those era-defining breakthroughs that is changing the pace of change itself. It is redefining the boundaries of productivity and efficiency, and it has the potential to accelerate the transformation of energy systems and to supercharge low-carbon growth. But the exponential growth of AI is also creating a power surge that no one anticipated 18 months ago. That's when ChatGPT took off. A single prompt on ChatGPT needs 10 times more energy than a Google search. As AI expands, it will rely on a massive scale-up of data centers for its huge and fast-growing computational needs. Over the next six years, data centers will more than double, requiring at least 150 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2030, and double that again by 2040. No single source of energy is going to be enough to meet this demand. We need to integrate renewable energy, nuclear energy, and gas in the most cost- and carbon-efficient way, and we need everyone who can provide solutions working closely and more collaboratively together. Colleagues, that's why only yesterday here in Abu Dhabi, we brought together some of the world's leading minds in AI, energy, investment, and finance, and climate. This engagement reinforced how interconnected the megatrends are and helped identify the solutions needed to ensure socioeconomic growth. Here are some of the key takeaways: we need more infrastructure that is fit for purpose and fit for the future; we need investment in the power sector to grow to at least $1.5 trillion per year; we need enabling policies and regulations to accelerate and protect those investments; and we need to leverage AI's potential to optimize energy sources, predict peaks and dips in demand, and enhance battery storage. In short, we need an integrated response that brings together expertise from all sectors. Colleagues, when everyone is included, progress is not just possible, it is inevitable. The same spirit of inclusivity was crucial to the delivery of the historic UAE Consensus at COP28, where this industry not only contributed to solutions but was instrumental in driving them. We proved that the future of humanity depends on the future of energy, and together we proved that we are what we do, not what we say. This is the ethos of the UAE leadership, and this is what guides our strategy at ADNOC. We are pivoting towards new opportunities across the value chain and across the world. We are expanding our global gas footprint in Africa, Asia, and the US. We are making strategic long-term investments in the global chemical space, and we are playing a leading role in the transformation of energy systems, from renewables to next-generation battery storage to low-carbon fuels and carbon capture. And our entire strategy is being accelerated by the adoption of AI. For us at ADNOC, AI stands for Applied Intelligence.
We chose to be one of the earliest adopters because we saw it as a strategic imperative to drive efficiency, unlock value, enhance growth, lower emissions, and more importantly, future-proof our business. Today, working in partnership with AIQ, G42, and Microsoft, I am pleased to announce a new transformative solution in our AI journey: Energy to the Power of AI. This solution will, for the first time, apply agentic AI at scale to the whole energy industry. It will not only analyze petabytes of data, it will proactively and autonomously identify operational improvements. It will perceive, think, learn, and act. It will speed up seismic surveys from months to only days. It will increase the accuracy of production forecasts by up to 90%. And it will be a powerhouse for value creation, efficiency, and sustainable energy production that can benefit the whole industry, so that together we can deliver maximum energy with minimum emissions to the people and communities we serve.
Your Highnesses, Excellencies, colleagues, and friends, the megatrends are mega drivers of opportunity that our industry must seize. So let me leave you with this final thought: the train is leaving the station. In fact, it's already picking up speed, and it is high time to get on board. What we decide right now will decide our destiny. This is a moment that will separate leaders from those who are left behind. And when called on to lead, this industry always steps up. At every inflection point in history, from the Industrial Revolution to the digital age, you have been the pilots of progress. Today, at this new hinge in history, let's show the world that we can do it again. Let's use this ADIPEC as our launchpad for action, transformation, progress, and impact. I thank you.
