What is the Digital Energy Transition and why is it important?

10. Cybersecurity and Energy Security

As we have seen, and as our world becomes increasingly digitalised, it is vital that people feel comfortable and safe using digital technologies for everyday tasks. In this week’s video on digital inclusion, we saw that trust in technology is a key issue to address. 

To increase cybersecurity means we need to ensure that our data and systems are safe and secure. Minimising the risk of hacking, data breaches and malicious attacks is essential. It is an ongoing effort to ensure that our energy infrastructure is secure and that risks are minimised. This involves everyone in the energy infrastructure, from energy consumers to producers.  

Digitalisation is also important to energy security, which focuses on minimising disruption to energy production and supply. The war in Ukraine is an example of where energy security was impacted, with price rises and disruption to the availability of energy. Ensuring that countries have a range of different sources for their energy needs or are not overly reliant on one source of energy (e.g. coal or gas) requires flexibility that only digitalisation can provide.