Jens Madrian is executive director for Neom Energy, a renewable energy-focused initiative for Saudi Arabian government-backed $500bn smart city scheme Neom, which intends to build a 26,500 km2 environmentally friendly city and an economic free zone – a country within a country – in the desert without roads or cars.
“Neom is the largest infrastructure project in the world,” Madrian said. “Neom stands for ‘new future’.” He mentioned the four strategic pillars of Neom, which are 100% renewable energy system, integrated customer experience, clean energy-intensive industries and energy innovation ecosystem.
Neom – which Madrian describes as a “governmental startup” – serves as a hub for embracing the latest technology and innovation and turning into a producer of green hydrogen and green ammonia.
“Designing a 100% renewable power system from scratch is challenging and triggers fundamental questions,” according to Madrian, who said generation and markets, transmission and balancing, distribution and retail as well as regulation are questions to be addressed.
Madrian is designing and delivering an integrated energy market and effective business models. The initiative leverages artificial intelligence technology applied in managing and optimising renewable and distributed energy resources in real-time and at scale, from renewable energy trading, microgrids, energy storage and electric vehicle fleets to demand response and corporate PPAs (power purchase agreements).
He oversees all strategic, commercial and operational matters regarding renewable generation, flexibility management and storage, carbon management, power transmission, regulation, commercial system optimisation, energy market analytics, and venture investments in innovative startups and technologies, having designed and set up full organisation from scratch.
He additionally leads multibillion-dollar investment programmes in transmission grid and generation – including solar and wind – assets to ramp up renewable infrastructure and supply to meet projected demand requirements by 2030.
Madrian is also building up global innovation hubs in Silicon Valley in 2022 and in London and Singapore the year after and a multimillion-dollar innovation and venture investment fund to acquire technology access into promising companies based on Neom Energy’s strategy and business model needs.
The venture fund is not yet operational but will start investing from 2023, providing between $5m and $10m per deal from series B to C stage, targeting companies with stability in technology and the ability to scale with existing productiveness.
Madrian said: “We are trying to embrace uncertainty and innovation in a different way – not just for the sake of having an activity, it is a needs to an end. We are looking for companies with strategic optionality – it could be working on something other than solar and wind.”
