Utilities for The Energy Transition

The power sector landscape is undergoing a transformative change driven by increasingly urgent decarbonization goals, falling costs of digital technologies and data storage and processing capabilities.  Digital and data-driven transformation of utilities and smart grids are enabling greater operational efficiency, enhanced customer engagement, and new service delivery models. These technologies enable utilities and system operators to view, measure and manage the demand and supply balance on the grid with greater speed and accuracy, key to deep decarbonization efforts. This, more flexible grid, enables greater penetration of variable renewable energy production and improved efficiency across the supply chain. Associated new business models are also giving rise to new market players, especially those on the “grid-edge” to deliver improved service quality and customer engagement through distributed energy resources.

The ESMAP Utilities for the Energy Transition program supports utilities in the journey to harness the opportunities to deploy digital and decentralized technologies, design and adopt new business models, leverage the value of data, build capacity of sector practitioners, enhance regulatory frameworks and policy, and enable the emergence of new service providers in the energy sector. The program does this through a combination of technical assistance, knowledge work, peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, and partnerships.