Neither green nor digital means only positive aspects. Accelerating any process in any direction will never bring the expected result at the desired time, BRD Chief Economist Florian Libocor said on Wednesday at the “Reindustrialization of Romania” conference organized by ZF.

What else Libocor said:

• Before achieving the desired results, this will bring problems that we did not initially consider and that we will have to solve. Haste, as they say, spoils the work. And I think doing it in small steps is much better.

• That’s all well and good until you run into the problems you’ve encountered. Neither green nor digital means only positive aspects. For example, when the banking sector, say, aims to finance such projects, it faces the problem of risk management in this sector.

• My point is that the transition to the sustainable economy that everyone wants brings with it a problem similar to the one we see in the macroeconomic sphere, namely the double deficit. I’ve been talking to a few friends about digitization and its beneficial effects and obviously the so-called green economy, less pollution, oxygen, etc.

• It may not be known, but the hubs or the famous data storage “containers” for the entire digital realm are stored somewhere at the poles because they create a very high carbon footprint, a very high temperature, and then they have to be stored somewhere cold. There is already a trade-off to what I was talking about earlier.

• Everyone wants to go green, everyone wants automation. Question: the factor of production that we now call labor – in the perspective of the next 15-20 years, and taking into account the fact that we are automating an extremely large number of processes – what will this factor of production do?

• Also, whether we are green or not, digital or not, we will need food. Therefore, we will need a productive agricultural sector. And for successful agriculture, petrochemicals and fertilizers are needed. In short, you need two things that are not quite the same as “green”: oil and salt.

• What I mean is that speeding up any process in any direction will never bring the desired time, the expected result. But before that, it will bring problems that we did not initially consider and that we will have to solve. Haste, as they say, spoils the work. And I think doing it in small steps is much better.

• We are talking about electric cars. Has anyone wondered what happens to batteries when EVs fail? In Europe, there is an initiative aimed at innovative management of electric battery stocks, which is to give a car battery approximately three life cycles: the first cycle is 8 years, the second is 5 years and the third is 3 years. That means 16 years of battery life. Please let me know if you are willing to keep an electric car for 16 years. I think NO.

• Then, also from friendly discussions, we came to less pleasant conclusions about sustainability. Managing the stockpile of spent electric batteries requires costs and efforts relatively similar to managing nuclear power plant waste. What greens are we talking about? I think we need to be a little realistic. I agree, nature should be protected, but as in any other situation, as in many other situations, the sword has two edges. And again I come and say, let’s take our time, take our time, because we may get the opposite of what we want to get.