Guest: Christophe Villemer (LinkedIn)
Organization/Company: LF Energy (Twitter) | Savoir-faire Linux (Twitter)
Show: State of Energy @ Open Source Summit North America

The pressure is on for all companies to focus on reducing their carbon footprint. While this comes with a myriad of challenges, it is also ushering in a new era of digital transformation within the energy sector, bringing with it new opportunities. In this episode of State of Energy, Swapnil Bhartiya catches up with Christophe Villemer, Executive Vice-President at Savoir-faire Linux while at Open Source Summit in Vancouver. He discusses Savoir-faire Linux and the open source projects they are currently working on. He goes into depth about SEAPATH or Software Enabled Automation Platform and Artifacts (THerein) project and why LF Energy is crucial to bringing the community together to tackle decarbonization.

Note: LF Energy is hosting LF Energy Summit in Paris this week to bring together the community around these open source projects. 

Key highlights from this video interview are:

• Savoir-faire Linux is a Montreal-based company with offices in France, focusing on open-source software engineering. Villemer explains how the company helps customers build secure, cutting-edge software. He tells us they are members of the Linux Foundation and LF Energy.
• Villemer talks about the different open-source projects they are involved with such as the Yocto Project. He discusses their contributions to the projects and the areas they invest in.
• Savoir-faire Linux joined LF Energy three years ago for two main reasons. Firstly, because the executives at Savoir-faire Linux were concerned about global change and sustainability. Secondly, they see that it is a game changer for the young developers and young engineers that they recruit to join the company.
• Villemer feels that there are a lot of challenges for companies to meet the goals of decarbonization and that it is crucial for everyone to play their part. He discusses how Savoir-faire Linux is contributing to the project.
• The SEAPATH project is working to develop an open-source real-time platform to run virtualized automation and protection applications for the power grid industry. Villemer goes into depth about the project and how they are helping the industry harness virtualization.
• Villemer talks us through some of the use cases for the SEAPATH project and what stages organizations are at in testing and using the platform. He discusses the multi-vendor ecosystem around the platform and how this is enabling a lot of flexibility for end users.
• The energy crisis is not just affecting the US and Europe but other parts of the world too but new vendors are coming on the market and LF Energy is working to provide a framework of collaboration for all players. Villemer talks about how LF Energy is bringing people together and how they are stronger when working together.
• The energy sector is going through its own digital transformation journey. It is a good place for a tech company to develop new business since the utilities outsource some projects but they also need some people to enter the industry out of the project to offer support. Villemer talks about the importance of the ecosystem around the project.
• Villemer explains why they need more community growth as it helps them solve more problems when everyone is in their niche sector where they can bring their specialty into the project.

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.