Characteristics Influencing Digital Technology Choice in Digitalization Projects of Energy Industry

Abstract

Digitalization projects are actively underway in the energy industry, such as the power industry and oil and gas industry. However, there has been no in-depth and quantitative analysis of the relationships between the participants, industry, and technology of digital projects. Therefore, this study focused on which technologies are invested according to key characteristics such as the types of participants and industries driving digitalization projects. This study also examined whether there are differences in technology choices depending on the degree of clean energy exposure. Based on statistics from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), a total of 711 projects were analysed using multinomial logistic regression (MNLR). As a result, the proportion of Analytics software was generally higher in the whole industry, and the energy industry was more likely to invest in Analytics software than in other industries. Comparing the power, oil and gas sectors, there was a high probability of investment in Internet of Things (IoT) in the power sector and Automation in the oil and gas sector. In the type of cooperation between energy companies and industrial companies, the probability of investing in Analytics software was significantly higher. In the case of cooperation between energy companies and information and communications technology (ICT) companies, in the oil and gas sector, Analytics software and Cloud/Data accounted for a large proportion. This study provides insight into the effect of characteristics of energy digitalization projects on the technology choice.

Keywords

• digital technology choice
• digitalization projects
• energy digitalization
• oil and gas industry
• power industry