Iberdrola to invest €290 million in digitalisation in 2024

Iberdrola is investing €290 million ($312 million) to boost digitalisation, chairman Ignacio Galán has announced.

Speaking during the company’s digital summit, Galán said that digitalisation initiatives aligned with its strategic plan that are seeing the investments include accelerating renewable energy projects and the development of smart grids and improving operational excellence and the customer experience.

“In the same way that we were pioneers decades ago in the commitment to renewable energies, we have also been pioneers in the digitalisation of electricity grids and now we are pioneers in the use of artificial intelligence and big data,” he stated.

“And now that we are immersed in an unstoppable process of electrification around the world, we must invest even more in digital infrastructure and support innovation and the adoption of these new technologies to cover more and more energy uses of millions of consumers, always with the highest standards of cybersecurity”.

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Alongside cybersecurity as one of the key topics of focus, others include AI and the journey to the cloud, as well as the human side of digitisation.

These are closely interrelated with the process of electrification of the energy matrix through renewable energies, smart grids and energy storage.

Suzana Curic, country lead for AWS in Iberia, says that over one-third of companies are already using AI and generative AI and that if the 30% adoption rate is maintained it could unlock an additional injection of more than €55 billion into the Spanish economy by 2030.

“For this to happen, critical issues need to be addressed: fostering innovation through public-private collaboration, working with regulators to establish a regulatory framework that helps us to make ethical use of this technology, democratising access to AI for all types of organisations and individuals and helping to reduce the digital divide in digital skills.”