The energy transition represents a context of more radical change than most of us think. There is evidence that humanity is in the vortex of a deeper and more comprehensive transformation, a geopolitical, anthropological, demographic, ethical, social and economic transformation, significantly expanded by digital democratization.

A change that is affecting and must reform human relations and therefore also all economic, commercial and work relations.

If on the market side, the energy transition represents enormous expansion opportunities for bioenergy companies, on the “inside out” side, it also requires updates in governance taking into account the entire global context in which it operates. In this space, I would like to pay attention to trends and opportunities in 4 aspects of companies: purpose, products, people and processes.

Purpose, Freeze principles and unfreeze strategies: Watching the booms of expansion that have occurred in my 35 years in the sector, I would say that the first thing to be careful about would be not to repeat the same mistakes.

With an optimistic scenario for investments and an abundant supply of capital, the temptation is to relativize some principles, such as limits on financial leverage, the practical consequence of which history shows can take time, but one day arrives, destroying decades of work, culminating in the closure of units and with companies undergoing judicial recovery and bankruptcies.

But I believe that companies have already learned their lesson and will be more prudent in the face of market promises.

If, on the one hand, principles should not be relaxed, I understand that we must be open to discussing and updating any other strategic factors, including the main business. In my perception, given the opportunities and threats generated by the energy transition, I would extend the understanding of the main business as a central activity, which generates the most value for the business, to the operations in which the company must have competence and, therefore, mastery to guarantee the delivery of results.

In this sense, some traditional operations of a sugarcane mill can be expanded or excluded as the main business. Some examples come from a group of mills that included in their core the commercialization of sugar in the form of cost, insurance and freight, aiming to capture commercial and logistical gains, while other mills understood that their core is just the industrial processing of sugarcane, and not agricultural production nor the marketing of products, which are the responsibility of strategic partners and cooperatives. The core is restricted to the production of bioelectricity, sugar and ethanol, and the internal logistics of the raw material.

In the case of corn ethanol, we have the example of Inpasa, which incorporates ethanol logistics into the consumer market as its main business, as a fundamental factor for the competitiveness of its business.

Product, Sustainability as a product: More than just producing energy and food, plants now offer sustainability as a product. It's not just ethanol, bioelectricity, biogas, biomethane, biodiesel, sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen... it's the decarbonization that this energy brings from its origin to its destination.

The same goes for sugar, yeast , dried distillers grain, oil... It's not just food, but food security, socio-environmental development that these foods add to their chain for the consumer.

The strategy is to transform the growing requirements of environmental, social and corporate governance into competitive differentiators, investing in measurement and certification to add value to the business.

People, Training and revitalization of Councils: Investing in the formation of Advisory and Administration Councils, or revitalizing established ones, with a diversity of perceptions and skills appropriate to the major transformations underway in the business environment, is a way of capturing the opportunities generated by energy transition and legal requirements and benefits.

The idea is to overcome the traditional composition, which favors advisors with financial and marketing skills, and follow the trend of large global corporations, with the inclusion of advisors with diverse skills, such as in digital transformation and cybersecurity, and in people management, considering that this is the company's greatest asset and the main origin, means and end of sustainability.

The objective is to gain openness to unfreeze the strategic vision (moon shot) and add skills to freeze this strategy (roof shot), permeating all layers of the organization.

Process, Dynamic Standards: Well-defined dynamic strategies will require increasingly assertive agility and flexibility in the management and operation of companies. It will no longer be possible to work with static logic and parameters, no matter how assertive they may be.

And in an activity as complex as bioenergy production, it is only possible to adopt assertive dynamic patterns with the help of digital technologies, especially facilitating technologies, which allow strategies to be deployed into tactical actions and real-time actions.

Considering that the strategic objective of every plant is to reduce costs and increase liquidity, the role of companies in digital transformation must focus on customizing existing applications for their demands and not developing systems, a mission that requires broad expertise, high investments and risks.

In this sense, the adoption of enabling technologies should grow rapidly, considering that they have the function of incorporating all of the company's conceptual, technical and managerial knowledge into digital logic, almost always through the use of specific Artificial Intelligence.

Uber and iFood are generic examples of facilitating technologies, which incorporate all the logic to serve each user of the activity, be it consumer or supplier. In the corporate environment, these are technologies that encompass automation of any analog logic or process workflows, whether financial, accounting, industrial and agricultural, considering that most activities are governed by universal standards, such as thermodynamics; mandatory, such as inspectors; or company specific, such as agronomic.

The role is to automate repetitive tasks and facilitate the work of everyone involved, according to each person's role. Management gains agility and flexibility to adjust logic according to the company's goals and operating conditions. Leadership and supervision receive insights into improvements and alerts on route adjustments or anomalies to be addressed and which parameters must be adjusted to achieve goals. The operation is adjusted in real time through automatic adjustments by the system, or through recommendations of optimal points to employees.

An important role of enabling technologies in companies is technological humanization, reinforcing human characteristics such as inspiration, creativity and solving new problems. After all, creative intelligence is in people, they are the ones who define logic.

With the help of enabling technologies, employees become more productive, assertive, cooperative, doing more, better, with greater peace of mind and security. Using an intelligent tool is a reward for employees and greater flexibility for the company to retain talent.

And these internal virtues will be increasingly valuable in times of human revolution and energy transition.