Energy security is no longer a background condition – it’s a strategy question.
The session ‘Who is winning on energy security?’ tested a blunt question: who looks better positioned, and why?
Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency, said there were “three golden rules” for energy security: diversification (“don’t put all your eggs in one basket”), predictability for investment and cooperation and partnership. “Choose your partner right… The countries who might the right decisions are the winners.”
“We are entering the age of electricity,” he also told the session. AI and data centres are driving growing demand, as well as air conditioners and electric cars, he added. This demand will be met by: renewables, natural gas and nuclear power.
“I have never seen the energy security risks multiplying (like this)… energy security should be elevated to the level of national security.” Countries should generate their own energy which will give a boost to renewables.
Mike Henry, CEO, BHP, said to electrify the iron ore business alone, it would require five times the energy that they use now.
Rather than winners or losers, energy security is not a zero-sum game, said Andrés Gluski, CEO, AES. The more secure a region is in its energy, it will free up resources for another region. He believes there’s “too much of a politicization rather than technical talk”. There are a lot of technical solutions today including using the existing infrastructure smarter. But time is an issue. AI is part of the problem but also part of the solution, as it might increase the productivity of developing countries. It’s going to be a decade before we have small modular reactors, but we need to think about the pipeline, resources and manufacturing capacity: “It’s not a game-changer today.”
China’s energy strategy has diversified said Meghan O’Sullivan, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, who looked back at historical analogies. Producing countries have more agency now, she added, but it opens the door to more resource competition.
In the past, diversification was about moving away from energy, now there’s a diversification based on energy because AI needs energy in huge amounts, said Majid Jafar, CEO, Crescent Petroleum. A one-minute video is an hour’s use of electricity for an average Western household. One data centre uses the same amount of energy as an average town.
For the Middle East as a region, having the energy resources, the capital, the leadership and the agile policymaking bodes well for the nexus between energy and AI. “It’s playing to its strengths as a region, through partnerships rather than competition.” Resilience needs to come from responsible investment that’s not ideological, he added.
On the US’ energy dominance strategy, O’Sullivan explained the difference between the first and second Trump administrations. In the first, energy became intertwined with trade deals, but now there are new elements emerging, including an aggressive approach against renewables and a focus on price and using foreign policy tools to enhance its influence over global energy markets. She said this would quell rather than enhance investment.
Sir Robin Niblett, Distinguished Fellow, Chatham House moderated.
Forum research like From Minerals to Megawatts (2025) is a useful lens here: it underlines how grids, critical minerals and infrastructure bottlenecks increasingly shape what “secure energy” even means.
Catch up on the session here.
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