Exclusive: Nayef Bou Chaaya on Balancing Energy Security and Decarbonization

Nayef Bou Chaaya, Vice President for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Central Asia at AVEVA, discusses the challenges energy companies face in maintaining production while cutting emissions, and the decisions shaping the industry's future.

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The energy industry is facing a period of change, with growing demand, shifting market conditions and changing expectations placing new pressures on producers. For the Middle East, where energy remains central to national economies and industrial development, the stakes are particularly high. Countries across the region are looking to strengthen their position in global energy markets while preparing for an industry that is becoming increasingly demanding.

These changes are also influencing how the energy sector approaches its future. Investment decisions, long-term planning and the ability to respond to changing market conditions are becoming increasingly important as producers navigate a more demanding business environment. For industry leaders, the challenge is to keep their businesses competitive while preparing for what lies ahead.

AVEVA works with energy and industrial organizations around the world, providing software and digital solutions that support the management and operation of complex industrial assets. In the Middle East, the company works in a sector where the demands on energy producers continue to grow, making the relationship between technology and industrial operations increasingly important.

In this exclusive interview with Tech Revolt, Nayef Bou Chaaya, Vice President for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Central Asia at AVEVA, discusses the pressures facing energy companies, the practical challenges of running industrial operations and what businesses need to consider as the industry moves forward.

Driving Efficiency and Decarbonization Through Industrial Digitalization

1. Energy companies are under pressure to maintain production while reducing emissions. From your experience, what is the most difficult operational trade-off this creates, and why can't technology alone resolve it?

One of the hardest operational trade-offs is in the daily running of the plant. You are asked to keep production up, and at the same time run the asset in a way that burns less energy and produces fewer emissions. Those two goals pull in different directions on any given shift, and safety stays number one through all of it, so the room to manoeuvre is smaller than people think.

Technology alone cannot resolve this, and the reason is simple. Today, the engineering team, the operations team and the business leaders still look at different data, so the decision ends up going in a direction none of them wished for. You need everyone to operate from the same set of data, with the design intent and the real-time asset context side by side.

When that is in place, optimization starts driving results on both fronts. In our deployments, process and energy optimization typically reduces energy consumption by 5 to 20% and improves operational efficiency by 3 to 10%, which lowers emissions and operating cost together. AI supports the decision, and the people running the plant still own it.

2. Can you share a specific example from AVEVA's work in the Middle East where its technology changed how an energy company operates? What problem was it trying to solve, what changed in practice, and what measurable results followed?

A good example is ADNOC. Like any large energy group, they have data coming from production assets, pipelines, terminals and operations teams, and the challenge is getting all of it into one place where decision-makers can act on it quickly when market conditions or supply chains shift.

They brought the data into one shared operational environment, ADNOC’s Panorama Digital Command Centre, built on AVEVA System Platform and AVEVA InTouch Operations Management Interface, with more than 10 million data tags and over 120 dashboards, so the leadership has a single operational view of the business. AVEVA Unified Supply Chain supports optimization across the value chain. In practice, the teams are no longer reading separate reports. Everyone works from the same live picture, and they can adjust operations faster when something changes. The result is savings of $60 to $100 million through optimised operations across 14 subsidiaries.

And this is the point I keep coming back to. When the data sits under one roof and is contextualised, everything on top of it brings value.

3. An energy company can reduce its emissions per unit of production while its total emissions continue to rise. How should operators assess whether they are making genuine progress on decarbonization, and what do you think the industry is still getting wrong about measuring it?

I believe we need to distinguish between producing energy more efficiently and genuinely decarbonising. A company can reduce emissions per barrel while its total emissions continue to rise because production is growing faster than efficiency improvements.

Intensity is a good indicator, and it shows the asset is being run better. However, it can mask rising absolute emissions if overall production expands. Operators must track both transparently and clarify which metric they are referencing when reporting progress.

The second part is how you measure. If emissions are reported periodically, you find out about problems long after they happen. You cannot manage what you cannot see, so we need near-real-time visibility of fuel use and emissions at asset level, with predictions on top of that data. Canada Steamship Lines is a good reference. By consolidating data across 40 vessels on AVEVA PI System, they reported a 29% reduction in carbon intensity and around 8,000 tons of CO2 avoided.

The industry's biggest misstep is treating emissions as a standalone reporting compliance exercise. With carbon pricing expanding globally, emissions carry a direct financial cost. It should come from the same trusted data that runs the plant, so we all read from the single source of truth.

The real question is not just how much less carbon we emit per unit of production, but whether we are actually reducing our total footprint while meeting the world’s energy needs. That is where digitalization can make a measurable difference.

4. When an emissions-reduction project competes with other investment priorities, what makes the financial case compelling enough for an energy company to proceed? How do decision-makers weigh the expected returns against the cost and uncertainty of achieving those reductions?

For me, the case becomes compelling when sustainability directly protects or generates margin. Predictive maintenance is a clear example. If you prevent an unplanned shutdown on a compressor, calculate the production saved by preventing an unplanned compressor shutdown, and the ROI speaks for itself. Optimization works the same way. In our use cases, it reduces energy consumption by 5 to 20%, so you lower the fuel bill and the emissions at the same time.

Our customers quantify this impact. Customers are putting numbers on it. A2A Calore & Servizi estimates around €200,000 of potential margin impact for every 1% drop in thermal efficiency. LANXESS estimates low seven-figure euros of avoided damage and lost margin from predictive maintenance in its first year. To manage uncertainty, start where trusted data already exists, prove the value on a single asset, and let those verified savings fund the next stage of the digital roadmap.

5. Even when an industrial technology proves its value at one facility, expanding it across an entire operation can be difficult. What are the main obstacles to scaling these solutions across energy companies, and what have you seen successful companies do differently?

The biggest obstacle I see is the data. It sits in different systems, it is not clean, and it is not contextualised, so every site ends up reading a different version of the truth. A pilot works because a few people know that asset well. To scale, you need one industrial data foundation that everybody shares, and you need to build that first, before you add applications on top.

LANXESS is a good example of getting this right. They standardised on AVEVA PI System across 49 sites in 15 countries, and that single foundation now supports 225 predictive maintenance models.

Successful companies tie every rollout to a measurable business outcome, building a digital twin from the design phase onward so that each new site plugs into an established single source of truth. Each new site then starts from a much stronger position.

The Road Ahead for the Energy Industry

The energy industry's future will not be defined by production capacity alone. As the sector continues to change, its success will also depend on the decisions made today about investment, infrastructure and the direction of industrial development.

The Middle East has built its position in global energy markets over decades. Protecting that position will require producers to keep pace with changes in the industry, while making decisions that account for both immediate business needs and longer-term priorities.

The region has an important role to play in shaping what comes next for the global energy sector. How its producers approach the years ahead will have implications not only for their own businesses, but also for the wider markets and economies that depend on them.

About Nayef Bou Chaaya

Nayef Bou Chaaya is Vice President for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Central Asia at AVEVA. Based in Dubai, he brings extensive experience in industrial software, digital transformation and business development. He focuses on regional business growth and helping energy and industrial organizations improve operational efficiency through digital technologies.

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