The global imperative to decarbonize has rightfully placed the new energy transition at the center of our economic and industrial focus. At B9F7 Parvis Trust, our thesis is firmly rooted in the belief that this transition—powered by investments in renewable sources—is non-negotiable.

However, as we move with necessary speed to build this new energy future, we are overlooking a profound and systemic risk. In solving for carbon, we are creating an entirely new and far more complex vulnerability. The new energy grid is not just a green grid; it is a digital grid. And we are building it with a 20th-century security mindset, creating what may be the largest cybersecurity blind spot of the next decade.

The energy grid of the past was secure through its simplicity. It was a “dumb” grid. It was centralized, with a few large power plants. It was “air-gapped,” meaning its operational controls were often physically disconnected from the public internet. To disrupt it, an attacker needed physical access.

The new energy grid is the complete opposite. It is “smart.” It is decentralized, with millions of new, interconnected endpoints. Every solar inverter on a roof, every wind turbine sensor, every smart meter in a home, and every electric vehicle charging station is a new node on the network. This network, by design, is connected to the internet to optimize energy flow, manage demand, and process payments.

In cybersecurity terms, we have just replaced a single, guarded fortress with millions of unlocked, internet-facing windows. This is a catastrophic expansion of the “attack surface.”

At B9F7, our investment thesis sits at the intersection of New Energy, AI, Network Infrastructure, and Data Security. From this vantage point, we see a clear and present danger that is not being adequately priced into the market: the risk of cyber-physical attacks.

The threats are no longer theoretical. We are not just talking about data theft; we are talking about kinetic, physical-world disruption. A sophisticated attacker doesn’t need to bomb a power plant. They can simply execute a “load-altering attack” by compromising a few software platforms that control thousands of EV chargers, forcing them all to draw maximum power at the exact same instant. This digital command would create a physical demand spike so large it could destabilize an entire regional grid, triggering cascading blackouts.

Alternatively, an attacker could infiltrate the AI-driven management platforms of a wind farm, feeding them subtle, false data to mask a physical problem or degrade performance over time.

The problem is that we are investing in these sectors in silos. The New Energy companies are focused on building hardware. The AI companies are focused on optimization algorithms. But we are failing to build the connective tissue—the hardened Data Security and resilient Network Infrastructure—that must underpin the entire system. We cannot treat cybersecurity as an “add-on” to the new grid; it must be the foundation.

Our investment philosophy demands that we fund this integration. We are focused on the next generation of “secure-by-design” grid technology. This includes funding companies that are building “Zero Trust” architectures for utility networks, where no device or user is trusted by default. We are backing AI-driven threat detection platforms that are specifically designed to monitor the unique data flows of energy systems, identifying anomalous behavior that would be invisible to traditional IT security.

The energy transition is, and must be, one of the greatest capital deployments in human history. But if we build a decentralized, smart, green grid without making it a secure, resilient, and defensible grid, we will have merely traded one existential risk for another. The future of energy is inextricably linked to the future of cybersecurity.