The next decade will belong to the consumer and the decentralization of the energy sector cannot be done without digitalization, said Corina Popescu, general manager of Electrica.

“This decade is the decade of the consumer. We are talking about decentralization, but decentralization cannot be done without digitalization. I think the big challenge for this decade will be how the energy industry will meet the challenges that smart customers will lay in front of it. Today we are talking about storage methods that are very diverse and we are talking more and more about hydrogen,” said the director of Electrica.

“I don’t know how ready Romania is to absorb these new technologies, to develop them so that we, at the country level, can have an ad value on that horizontal industry and face this decentralization. I believe that this decade, if we talk about decentralization, hand in hand with digitalization, in the conditions of decarbonization, I could call it a smart customer decade,” said Popescu, according to Agerpres.

A PwC Net Zero Economy Index report released late last year showed that limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, as agreed in the Paris Agreement, requires the decarbonization rate to reach 11.7% annually, almost five times higher than in 2019.

According to the document, by 2020, fossil fuels continued to dominate demand, with 57% of the increase in energy consumption being generated only by natural gas and oil. CO2 emissions from energy production have risen by 0.5% this year, as global energy consumption has also risen by 1.3%.