FROM: Xinhua

[Xinhua - August. 28, 2019]

Global energy industry in transition to knowledge-based one: WEC chair

SEOUL, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- The global energy industry was currently in a transition to a knowledge-based one mixed with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution era, World Energy Council (WEC) chair said Wednesday.

WEC Chair Younghoon David Kim told a meeting with foreign correspondents in Seoul that the global energy sector had moved from the resource-based one, where oil exporting countries dominated the most, to the capital-intensive one.

Kim said the energy sector was currently in a transition to the knowledge-based one, where a county with advanced energy technologies can dominate without energy resources such as crude oil and natural gas.

Under the Fourth Industrial Revolution era, energy efficiency could be enhanced exponentially, for example through the convergence between electronic devices and artificial intelligence (AI), which automatically controls temperature at home with a machine-learning solution.

Microbes can be used to create clean energy and raise prosperity, Kim said, citing the radiation-eating bacteria, an extremophile that can survive cold, dehydration and vacuum while eating nuclear waste.

Kim said a variety of microbes had been found such as the ones creating electron and hydrogen.

However, commercializing the microbes as energy sources may take time as it requires technological breakthroughs.

Kim took office as WEC chair three years ago. The 24th triennial World Energy Congress will be held in September in Abu Dhabi under the theme of "Energy for Prosperity". It expected to attract about 10,000 delegates from around 150 countries.

The WEC was launched in 1923 in the name of World Power Conference to rebuild the war-torn electricity networks at the post-WWI Europe, led by electricity engineers from 24 countries. It renamed it the current WEC in 1989.

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