Philipp Hildebrand (BlackRock): The war in Ukraine has accelerated the process of energy transition

Philipp Hildebrand, Vice Chairman, BlackRock, and Marie-Laure Salles, Director, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies discussing with Marili Mexi, Special Advisor to the President of the Republic during today, the third day of work of the 7th Delphi Economic Forum, which takes place in Delphi April 6-9 and is under the auspices of A. Ε. of the President of the Republic, Mrs. Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

According to the vice president of Black Rock, in the last two years, successive crises have occurred, which are deeply connected: first the economic, then the pandemic, then the war that brought with it inflation and the energy crisis, although , as he stressed, the beginning of the increase in inflation had already been made, in the midst of a coronavirus.

But the war, in essence, as he said, was the one that accelerated the processes in the energy transition, which must be done as quickly as possible, as we now have a three degree increase in ambient temperature.

He went on to point out that war is radically changing the value system of countries, pointing out that another bad scenario he brought up is that many parts of the world no longer share the same value system and the same attitudes as before.

Speaking in business terms, he argued that one of the interesting aspects from the beginning of the crisis in Eastern Europe was the fact that many companies withdrew from Russia voluntarily, some voluntarily, others imposed sanctions, and thus the market was reduced. in many ways.

Concluding, for Mr. Hildebrand, the most important at the top of the list of problems created by the war is the increase of inflation, with him estimating that the next step in this fluid economic environment is the use of capital by companies for investments. which will accelerate the energy transition, even if no immediate solution can be found for the complete replacement of natural gas.

“We are moving from a world of absolute risk to a world of utter insecurity,” Marie-Laure Salles said in a statement on the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

For Mrs Salles, there are many complex factors involved in this process, such as the issue of costs, which will have to be resolved in a short time, even with political intervention.
Commenting on the role of globalization in changing the world, he added that the challenges were never as great as they are today, in fact what is happening is a globalization of challenges, listing some of them such as climate crisis, cybersecurity, pandemic .

Nevertheless, “this is not the end of the story. We have to reinvent other architectures in our lives when we have issues on which we depend existently,” he said, with the main goal of now strengthening environmental responsibility between citizens and businesses. , in defiance of the different forms of capitalism that have emerged in societies in recent decades.

Source: Capital

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