Bjørn Utgård

Business leader, Change Agent, Designer, Engineer, Industrialist, Technologist, World traveler

Engineer and entrepreneur on a mission to develop and deploy clean, smart energy and mobility solutions. Since 2017 at EVBOX, the world's leading provider of smart, connected EV charging solutions, whose mission since 2009 is speeding up the advent of electric transportation. Electrical/mechanical engineer and energy economist with 15+ years' experience spanning innovation, entrepreneurship, analysis and policy. Hands-on experience from the frontier of energy transition in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin-America and North America. Excited about helping traditional industries finding new business opportunities in the "electrify everything" future.

Electric vehicles, smart grids, entrepreneurship, transformation

Electric vehicles are revolutionizing transport and energy. Electric vehicles offer unbeatable economics and efficiency, that is already cheaper from a TCO perspective and that will become cheaper to manufacture over the next decade. This opens up a host of exciting opportunities at the systems level; - Smart charging of EVs enabling a 100% renewable grid by timing the charging to when there is surplus energy on the grid - Off the bat reducing overall energy consumption by 2/3 from road transportation - Enabling electrification of buildings by enabling better use of grid connections - Creating new jobs in infrastructure planning, realization and maintenance - Saving 100s of thousands of lives by eliminating tailpipe emissions - Improving macro-economics by shifting from imported fossil fuels to locally produced renewables - Reconnecting people with nature by enabling zero-emission, noiseless travel However, electrification of transport doesn't come about at the speed we need without targeted measures to reduce barriers to adoption. The efficiency gains and technological progress notwithstanding, consumers and businesses are much faster to adopt new technology when they are aided and guided. They face real barriers to adoption, such as higher upfront cost (financing barrier), lack of access to charging infrastructure (market barriers), short supply of vehicles, etc. The good news is we know what it takes; the policy and industry playbook has already been proven by pioneering regions like Norway, The Netherlands, China and California, and the majority of parties to the Paris accord included electrification of transport in their emission reduction plans. And companies like my own, EVBox, and our 100s of partners across the globe have shown how to make a sustainable business model in EV charging infrastructure. Now is the time to accelerate the sharing of these best practices and accelerate the electrification of transport!

My TED story is that I have had the pleasure of observing and contributing to the creation, from initial idea through months of tedious practice and refinement through to a final TED talk, behind the scenes.