Oil and gas is ‘innovation-poor and that needs to change’ WEC is told

Ann Mettler says energy majors must embrace innovation as their expertise is vital for scaling clean technologies

Innovation is the key to unlocking energy security, climate action and regional competitiveness – and the oil and gas majors should not be running scared of start-ups.

That was the message yesterday at the World Energy Congress from Ann Mettler, Vice-President in Europe for Breakthrough Energy.

“Oil and gas is an innovation-poor industry and that needs to change,” she said during the opening day of the congress in Rotterdam.

Mettler knows a thing or two about policy and innovation: Breakthrough is the company founded by Bill Gates to accelerate and scale clean tech solutions and she was previously head of the European Political Strategy Centre and executive director of Brussels thinktank The Lisbon Council, with a particular focus on digital technologies.

Speaking in a panel discussion titled Closing the Technology and Finance Gap, she said: “Coming from public policy, part of the reluctance to really embrace change was that in the digital revolution, so many of the big players were destroyed by the start-ups.

“In energy it’s very different. Energy has a handful of big players who will continue to be big players. The same is true in areas such as steel and cement: it’s very difficult to start a clean cement company from scratch that will go global – that will take decades.”

She explained it is important to “zoom in on the interplay between these big corporations that are here to stay but are not as innovative as they could be, and start-ups at the clean technology frontier”.

“Because I think we haven’t really brought them together in meaningful ways. The start-ups need the big players for finance, for de-risking, for deployment and for testing new technologies.”

Innovation spend

Alluding to her background in digital technologies, she said: “Any digital technology company will spend a large amount of its turnover on research and development.

“However, if you look at the global top ten of corporate R&D spenders, there’s not a single oil and gas company in there, despite all the good work that they are doing.”

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She did note that the biggest spenders on innovation and R&D in oil and gas are all European – “so kudos to them” – however she added: “On balance, oil and gas is an innovation-poor industry and that needs to change.

“If I look at sustainable aviation fuels, geothermal and floating offshore wind, we need the expertise of oil and gas in these areas. And I think from a public policy perspective, we need to really zero-in on how we can provide more incentives for the oil and gas sector help us with these solutions. Not in a punitive way, but to incentivize.”

Mettler also stressed that she believes that “climate and energy security are two sides of the same coin: any investment in renewables is essentially for security of supply”.

And she added: “I would encourage, particularly in a European context, to look at these issues, of course through the prism of climate change, but also energy security and, since the Inflation Reduction Act, through the prism of competitiveness.”

Originally published on enlit.world who are a media partner of the World Energy Congress. A special hub of exclusive content for this week’s congress can be found here.