Cambridge Energy Research Associates: CERAWeek 2016 Daily Summary: Friday, 26 February

The final breakfast of CERAWeek 2016 fittingly focused on "Reflections on CERAWeek 2016: Where Do We Go from Here?" IHS authorities on oil, gas, power, finance, and corporate strategy and management teased out key themes, messages, and next steps from the conference's discussions.

In Friday's "Demographics and the Second Machine Age" plenary, Zbyszko Tabernacki, Vice President, Economics & Country Risk, IHS; Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute; and Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist and Cofounder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of The Second Machine Age, discussed the rapid progress in artificial intelligence and what this means for global productivity growth, jobs, education, and human welfare. They agreed that technology is leading toward a new machine age in which human-to-human interaction will remain a key component. However, social mobility and income/wealth disparities remain a central concern.

IHS Senior Vice President for Global Energy Carlos Pascual welcomed William Burns, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to a morning plenary session discussion of geopolitical trends and flashpoints, with particular focus on the Middle East. During their conversation, Ambassador Burns noted that above all, it is important that the United States continues to engage the world, even in areas where its direct influence is not possible but where it can make its preferences known. Ambassador Burns spoke at length of the particular challenges posed by the Iranian nuclear deal, Russian power projection, and China's continued rise in world affairs.

Daniel Yergin, Vice Chairman, IHS, chaired the Friday morning MIT Plenary session "Frontiers of Science and Innovation: Future Technologies to Meet the Energy and Climate Challenge." Joining him were Robert Armstrong, Director, MIT Energy Initiative, and Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering, MIT; Yet-Ming Chiang, Professor, Materials Science & Engineering, MIT; Jeffrey Grossman, Professor, Materials Science & Engineering, MIT; Kristala Jones Prather, Associate Professor, MIT; and Yogesh Surendranath, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, MIT. The panel discussed the ways in which MIT has played an important role in technology innovations in the energy industry. The talk focused on technologies that include material design, conversion of carbon dioxide to valuable fuels, biological synthesis, and ultralow-cost electrical storage.

CERAWeek 2016 concluded with "The US & Global Energy Future: Policy Plenary." Daniel Yergin was joined by Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas), Majority Whip of the United States Senate, and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chairman of the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The discussion covered past and upcoming energy policies and their effects on US global influence. The senators expressed their hopes that energy policy would take a different direction with the impending administration change.

This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.