Asia Can Help Lead Climate-Change Fight with Green Dollar Spending

As officials meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a new global climate-change policy, the NGU (Next Generations Utilities) Summit was announced in Sentosa early next year by giants Tata Power and Kepco. Alongside fifty other key Utility providers in the region, the meeting - run by GDS International - was called to discuss the impact of the Copenhagen Conference and to discuss Green Dollar spending in the region.

Such large operators are looking at Asia’s innovative companies like Suntech in China who have taken the lead in producing silicon-based photovoltaic cells and wind-power producers like China Longyuan, who had a strong debut on the Hong Kong stock market, raising more than $2 billion in an initial public offering that rose 9.4% on the stock's first day of trading, to learn how to capitalize on the Green Dollar.

“Asia’s clean technology companies are poised to benefit from their large home markets and expertise in low-cost electronic manufacturing. The success of such companies demonstrates that Asia's scientists and technologists are capable of taking the lead in helping the world make the transition to renewable energy resources. We just need to give them the right challenge,” said a spokesman from the NG20 consortium lead by Colin Tam – CEO of AEI Asia Ltd, who is chairing the summit.

Detractors point out that sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar are intermittent: The wind doesn't always blow when you want it to, and the sun doesn't always shine in a particular location, and that initial capital costs for some renewable sources are still expensive. But analysis from Frost & Sullivan clearly shows the demand for Green Technology. Their results show that the Asia Pacific Fuel Cells Markets earned revenues of $142 million in 2008 and estimates this to reach $1.9 billion in 2015.

“100% renewable energy is obviously the target, says Fraser Jameson, NGU Director, but the future will be fraught with many obstacles to achieve this. The NGU Summit in Asia is a clear illustration of the private sectors willingness to adapt.” Such a transition will require a lot of money, time, and energy. No doubt there will be some failures along the way but with a strong goal-directed strategy from the private sector along with an overabundance of scientists and engineers aiming for one goal and with addition market and government backing Asia stands a good chance of leading the world away from its fossil fueled heritage.

The Smart Money is on Smart Grids

The Smart Money is on Smart Grids
In Asia, the utilities industry is growing at an incredible rate. Investments globally in the sector have lead to more available jobs, predicting the return to pre-recession levels of employment by Q1 2010. However, with such substantial growth comes opportunities which have to be managed correctly to sustain long-term development. With the world’s investors looking at Asia to see how such a developing region can deal with governmental pressures on Green Technology, a meeting of the leading names in Asian and Pacific Utilities firms have agreed to meet at the illustrious NGU APAC summit.

The Copenhagen Climate Change meeting will dramatically change the utility landscape. Carbon Reduction will mandate energy-efficiency upgrades in homes and businesses across Asia. To relieve Government pressures Companies are looking into smart grid solutions and superior technology to improve efficiency, performance and reliability.

“Australia, Singapore and China all have smart grid initiatives underway and Korea has recently announced that it wants its industries to win 30% of the smart grid market globally. The smart grid makes sense for all countries in Asia? “ Rick Nicholson – VP Research, IDC Energy Insights

Estimates vary on how much Asian Utilities are going to be spending to modernize their electricity grids, but the presence of execs from Kepco, PLN, AEI, TNB, EVN and Tata Power at the NGU Summit APAC (hosted by GDS International) is an indication that multinationals see big opportunities to take advantage of the smart-grid push.

Will Smart Grid Solutions keep driving the ever-growing Asian and Pacific markets, or are things moving at an uncontrollable rate? Will it stabilize the market and maintain high foreign investment under such green pressures from global authorities. Whatever lies in the future, the NGU Summit is where the people that matter will be talking, and is set to be the foundation of any development in the region.

Measuring the move to Digital

Marketing Executives admit online initiatives are still a grey area

The economy is putting ever-increasing demands on marketers to make every euro count and demonstrate positive ROI. According to the “iStrategy” a leading program of Business, Marketing and Creative professionals (ran by GDS International), the demand to perform is driving marketers online. More than one-third of marketers attending the iStrategy program were surveyed and believed that interactive marketing ROI would be more profitable than traditional marketing—such as TV, radio and outdoor in 2010. In fact 27% of the marketers indicated they would shift Euro spend from traditional media into the digital space although 34% didn’t know how to measure their online ROI.

Max Ford iStrategy Director went on to explain “The problem with shifting funds to digital initiatives is that consumers are gravitating to areas where the metrics are still pretty shaky, such as blogging, social networking, video and word-of-mouth. Paradoxically, under much pressure and with little choice, the drive for performance seems to be pushing marketers into spaces where they have few means to measure ROI, and we hope to help them find out how to do so”.

The next iStrategy meeting will be held in Berlin early next year and includes Michael Donnelly, Group Director Worldwide Interactive Marketing, Coca-Cola and Michael Buck Global Head SMB Online Dell who will be sharing their success in moving into the Digital Space.

COO of Vodafone talks ‘LTE and the Rise of the Mobile Prosumer’

Kyle Whitehill - COO, Vodafone India leads this year’s NGT Asia Summit in Sentosa.

Leading operators are now finding themselves in the hands of the ever-creative software/hardware companies and the changing consumer culture. iPhone appstore was the first to take advantage and make millions from the operators' customers, creating a financial redistribution within the Telecom industry. Despite this the world’s largest mobile-phone company (Vodafone) has just posted a 2.9 percent rise in profit.

A consortium led by Vodafone COO Kyle Whitehill is currently meeting in Sentosa at the NGT Summit held by GDS International. This closed meeting featuring Zhang Fan - CTO - China Unicom, Anil Tandan - CTO - Idea Cellular, Ravinder Jain - CIO – Aircel and Mu Piao Shih - President - Chunghwa Telecom was called to debate the rapid pace of communication, transforming from the one-to-one (direct) voice communication to the fast, informal and responsive opinion and thought exchange we have today and how operators can reduce the immense cost of a large network but maintain a high level of customer experience.

“The challenge with new technology is that it's big, complicated, expensive and with 3G, 4G, LTE, and TDD making its mark in the industry we are faced with the ultimate threat of being a dumb pipe provider. Our role is to provide fast, effective solutions that meet customer needs.” Kyle Whitehill - COO, Vodafone India and chairperson of the NGT Summit.

Such consumer and technology transformation has distorted the way 'Prosumers' consume their products and services, and interact with their mobile devices. The industry waits to see if Asia's Top Telecom guns can decide on a unified approach to map revenue streams back to the operators.

“It’s not just about the way communication has transformed, but also a revolutionary change of customer behavior. Traditionally, the consumers simply consumed products and services; but now they are becoming ‘Prosumers’ who use traditional services, but at the same time share, recommend and critique these products as well.” Roar Wiik Andreassen Chief Strategy Officer, DTAC

We at NGT are very proud to host the region’s leading telecoms lights and are looking forward to working closely in collaboration with all our CTO's over the coming years in APAC as they diversify and optimize their networks. This has been an exceptional gathering even by our own high standards and much progress has been made by our operator and vendor partners alike.
Nick York - NGT Summit Director Asia Pacific concludes.