ADIPEC 2025, the world’s largest energy conference and exhibition, opened today in Abu Dhabi, uniting world leaders under the theme ‘Energy. Intelligence. Impact.
At the Opening Ceremony, His Excellency Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO, delivered the opening address before an audience of global leaders, where he called for a balanced and inclusive approach to meeting the world’s growing energy demand that embraces reinforcement of energy sources, not replacement.
HE Dr. Sultan called for policy pragmatism, embrace of artificial intelligence (AI), capital investment, and infrastructure development to optimises energy, attract capital, and advance technology to enable progress.
Held under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, and hosted by ADNOC, ADIPEC 2025 brings together more than 205,000 attendees from 172 countries across the energy ecosystem, including over 45 ministers and 250+ C-suite executives.
Also speaking at the ADIPEC Opening Ceremony was Doug Burgum, 55th Secretary of the Interior and Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council, United States of America, who spoke about the transformative power of AI and the rise of data centres.
Secretary Burgum said: “For all of history, knowledge has been power. But today, for the first time, a kilowatt of electricity can be converted directly into intelligence. We now live in a world where we can manufacture intelligence. That is a first in human history. …I’ve stopped calling them data centres. These are factories manufacturing intelligence. This manufactured intelligence is a general-purpose technology, capable of transforming medicine, education, and every industry, including ours.”
The keynote was followed by a ministerial panel on national energy priorities, featuring His Excellency Suhail Mohamed Al Mazouei, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, UAE; His Excellency Saad bin Sherida Al Kaabi, Minister of State for Energy Affairs, Qatar; and His Excellency Karim Badawi, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Arab Republic of Egypt.
Speaking about the importance of partnership, HE Badawi said: “Collaboration is key…I thank Dr. Sultan and ADIPEC as a great example of really having an environment to foster this collaboration between different members, whether policymakers, different industries, and also how we’re leveraging collaboration with different countries right in the region.”
Against a backdrop of surging artificial intelligence (AI) energy demands, new economic powerhouses rising and a global transformation of energy systems, ADIPEC 2025, and its diverse perspectives, serve as a nexus for cross-sector dialogue, collaboration, and action to unlock long-term value.
As day 1 of ADIPEC unfolded under the theme of ‘Geopolitics, Strategic Resilience & Energy Security‘ discussions spotlighted the shifting dynamics of global power and the urgent need to embed resilience into energy systems.
During a session titled ‘Redefining the energy major: Competing and thriving in a new energy order’, attendees heard the perspective of one of the energy sector’s biggest companies when Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies, shared his insights.
Pouyanné said: “This transition is not about less energy; it is about more energy with fewer emissions. The planet needs more energy, full stop. And when we move from thinking in terms of oil and gas to thinking in terms of energy, that still means more oil and more gas, because they remain at the core of the system. But increasingly, the energy everybody is looking at now is electricity.”
Continuing on ADIPEC 2025’s AI focus, in the session titled ‘Geopolitics rewired: power, partnerships and the new global map’, Ian Bremmer, President & Founder, Eurasia Group & GZERO Media, said AI presented the world with an unprecedented opportunity for transformation.
“We have very little consensus, except there is consensus today that by far the biggest opportunity for the entire planet is that AI can transform human society. AI can transform every sector of the global economy. That will require much more energy, much more infrastructure, far more electricity than we presently have.”
Unleashing finance and investment to enable greater energy supply was another focus of discussion on day 1 of ADIPEC. In the session titled ‘Trends and shifts in mergers and acquisitions: how to create sustained value’, Reinhard Florey, CFO, OMV; Tom Sikorski, Founding & Managing Partner, Bluewater; and Martijn Rats, Global Commodities Strategist, Morgan Stanley, shared their thoughts on the opportunities of this present moment in energy transformation.
Speaking about the impact of data centres on the finance landscape, Sikorski, said: “There’s a bit of an arms race going on with the monetisation of energy into data. It’s a lot cheaper to ship data than energy. And so where there’s cheap energy, you can build data centres. And so the industrial knock-on for that here and in the US looks very exciting to me.”
ADIPEC 2025 continues through 6 November, with upcoming sessions addressing hydrogen, LNG, digitalisation, and the future of energy systems. Across four days, the event turns dialogue into delivery, catalysing partnerships and showcasing solutions that drive inclusive, sustainable progress at speed and scale.
