The forthcoming summit of the G7 nations is taking place just down the road from the V2G UK office in North Cornwall. According to the G7 UK web site:

In June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will welcome fellow G7 leaders to one of the most beautiful parts of the UK: Carbis Bay in Cornwall.

Other parts of the region will also play a key role in the Summit, including neighbouring St Ives, Falmouth and Newquay airport.

With over 400 miles of coastline, Cornwall’s stunning landscape provides a perfect setting for world leaders to come together and discuss how to respond to global challenges like coronavirus and climate change.

Here’s one of my recent pictures of some of that coastline, including part of Cornwall’s industrial heritage and some large waves!

Climate change is top of the G7 agenda along with Covid-19, and that must mean that UK and global energy policy will be somewhere very near the top as well. Obviously I’ll be reporting on what transpires in Carbis Bay in a month’s time, but for now here’s some topical G7 “tech” news:

The UK Government has recently published the G7 Digital and Technology Ministerial Declaration, which states that:

Our collective recovery from COVID-19 must be rooted in a desire to build back a better, more productive and resilient global economy, with digital technology at its heart. This should support open societies in the digital and data-driven age, and be guided by our shared democratic values of open and competitive markets, strong safeguards including for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and international cooperation which drives benefits for our citizens, economies and global well-being.

We have therefore decided to place the needs of open, democratic societies at the centre of the technology debate and to work together towards a trusted, values-driven digital ecosystem. We believe that such ecosystems must enhance prosperity in a way that is sustainable, inclusive and human-centric. We have also affirmed our opposition to measures which may undermine these democratic values, such as government-imposed Internet shutdowns and network restrictions.

This will be delivered through six important interventions at every level of the technology stack, from the physical infrastructure and digital technical standards that underpin it, to the data that fuels it, and the applications and content with which consumers and businesses interact on a daily basis in order to harness the opportunities that the digital economy presents. The interventions address:

• Promoting Secure, Resilient, and Diverse Digital, Telecoms, and ICT Infrastructure Supply Chains
• A Framework for G7 Collaboration on Digital Technical Standards
• A G7 Roadmap for Cooperation on Data Free Flow with Trust
• G7 Internet Safety Principles
• Deepening Cooperation on Digital Competition
• A Framework for G7 Collaboration on Electronic Transferable Records

The news release goes on to elaborate on those bullet points, mentioning the word “energy” only once, under the initial “infrastructure” bullet:

We also considered how to encourage innovation, and to actively explore the potential of emerging open and interoperable network architectures, alongside current technological offers. We noted that such approaches should maintain or enhance security, performance, energy efficiency and resilience, and could stimulate the emergence of new entrants to the market both now and in the future.

The mention of “energy efficiency” is certainly music to our ears, as is “the potential of emerging open and interoperable network architectures” in the energy and transport domains.

Under their second bullet point the G7 ministers have this to add:

We recognise the significant and positive role that digital technical standards have in supporting the global economy and society. We recognise that the way in which digital technical standards are developed and deployed has a real world impact on citizens and societies.

Therefore, building on the 2017 Italian G7 ICT and Industry Ministerial Declaration, we reiterate our strong support for industry-led, inclusive, multi-stakeholder approaches for the development of technical standards. It is essential that the development of digital technical standards continues to be underpinned by transparency, openness of process and participation, relevance and consensus-based decision-making in line with core principles for standards development.

“Hear, hear!” from the (Silic)Inny Valley in North Cornwall.