The president and founder of South Summit Madrid, María Benjumea, noted during the open that AI is redefining countries' industry, business models, and strategic capabilities and already accounts for 61% of venture capital investments. The organizers also wanted to focus on the energy transition and sustainability, so the relationship between artificial intelligence and energy occupied several talks and round tables of the program.
In this regard, the Director of Technology, Projects, and Services at Moeve, José Manuel Martínez, gave a presentation entitled 'Innovation to Drive Sustainability', in which he analyzed how innovation enables acceleration of the energy transition and progress in industrial sustainability.
Martínez emphasized, in his conversation with journalist Elliott Gotkine, that the 2030 Positive Motion Strategy is the roadmap they have chosen to promote decarbonization and the production of renewable hydrogen and second-generation biofuels.
The Andalusian Green Hydrogen Valley, in Huelva, is an example of this, as well as of innovation, since its plants were designed to integrate technologies such as AI, digital twins, and data layers that can be used to predict behaviors, simulate scenarios, and improve processes in real time. The first part of the project, known as Onuba, will be the largest green hydrogen project in southern Europe with a capacity of 300 MW and a joint investment of more than 1 billion euros.
For the Moeve executive team, decarbonization of society is a critical point for every company, so any application of innovation, whether through their own development or through collaboration with startups specialized in the energy transition, is fundamental. One of the examples mentioned is the storage of hydrogen in MOF (Metal Organic Frameworks), and he believes that in sectors that are difficult to electrify, such as heavy industry, green molecules will continue to be relied upon for their decarbonization.
He wished to highlight the opportunity that Spain's unique combination of wind and solar generation represents. For the first time, the country has a competitive advantage in the energy field that should drive its reindustrialization.
Urban AI at South Summit Madrid 2026
Other talks at the event addressed topics such as the benefits of urban AI for managing energy and transportation systems, and the need for Europe to develop its own urban AI solutions. The panel discussion "From smart cities to sovereign cities: why Europe needs urban AI" featured Juan Corro, manager of the Madrid City Council's Autonomous IT Agency, who highlighted Madrid's Digital Twin—a real-time representation of the city that, thanks to its algorithms and the data collected via sensors and imagery, enables the development of municipal policies to manage certain resources, such as lighting systems, more efficiently.
For his part, the CEO of the urban AI platform EIRA, Miguel Alexandre Barreiro-Laredo, insisted that we must understand all this progress "from a humanistic perspective" and that all technologies or twins must "solve the real problems of people," citing, among others, water management and the heat islands that affect many cities in the global South.
A breakthrough for the energy sector with AI and data
In this conversation about the balance between digital development and economic and social sustainability, different professionals from the sector asserted, during the panel discussion on 'Green by design: How AI, data, and people are rebuilding energy', that AI and data are not just a technology, but also a way to help society.
The co-founder and CEO of the Hiluz electric company, Carlota Pi, stressed that, in her case, they have been collecting real data on their clients' energy demand for 15 years, and that this has enabled them to create an adjusted offer for each consumer in terms of efficiency.
For the CEO of the solar panel installation company Lumio, Alexis Las Heras, data is the way to train AI to make decisions faster and again apply efficiency to actions such as how many panels to install for each client, request materials from the most suitable suppliers, or develop execution plans. "And with that, you can operate more and, therefore, obtain more data. It is a virtuous circle that helps to excel and have more opportunities."
All these examples presented at South Summit Madrid 2026 reflect that companies are betting on disruptive technologies to drive the energy transition through innovation and, moreover, improve the lives of people in their daily lives. AI, big data, and digital twins are a strong bet for the sector to continue contributing to environmental sustainability.