Image

Agoria launches “AI in Energy” – an online course about the impact of AI in the energy transition

Today technology federation Agoria launched a free online course about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in the energy transition. The course was launched on 1 October during a virtual event with Priya Donti, co-founder and chair of Climate Change AI, an initiative to catalyse impactful work in climate change and machine learning.

The recent IPCC report made it clear: the earth is warming faster than earlier anticipated. Urgent action is required on many fronts to limit global warming to 1,5°C. Also digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) will play a crucial role in tackling climate change, but its potential impact is not sufficiently know.

That is why Agoria set out to create an online course that demonstrates how AI can contribute to the energy transition. “From energy producers to grid operators, energy suppliers and building owners: many companies can use AI to reduce their energy consumption, improve the operational management of their assets, or
to integrate more renewable energy in the distribution grid while avoiding congestion,” says Pierre Martens, Energy Expert at Agoria.

The Climate Change AI initiative was a source of inspiration for Agoria. "Many people in the AI-community are concerned about climate change, so were looking to figure out how they could use their expertise to make a contribution. On the climate change side on the other hand, various streams of data are emerging, and energy and climate experts around the world are seeing the possibilities offered by machine learning. With the Climate Change AI initiative, we wanted to bring these 2 ecosystems together," says Priya Donti, co-founder and chair of Climate Change AI.

"To accelerate the energy transition, it is important that people in the energy sector develop the necessary data science skills for the challenges that are ahead," says Pierre Martens. “Agoria set an objective to increase the digital literacy of all employees. 3 years after the launch of the Be The Change programme, 'AI in Energy' is already Agoria’s 5th online course that contributes towards the digital retraining & upskilling of Belgian employees.
15 companies contributed to the development of this course, which contains several concrete use cases from Belgian companies and demonstrates the expertise that is available in Belgium around this important topic.

The course is available as of 1 October on: www.agoria.be/aiinenergy.