A Conversation with Shell
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Adam Newton
Manager,
Global Strategy Team, Shell
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A conversation with Shell: How can we create a future where every city has reliable energy, clean water and enough to eat?
In 2050, an estimated 6.6 billion people will live in cities. Up to half could live in slums. What solutions would create a future where all city dwellers have reliable access to energy, clean drinking water and sanitation, and a secure food supply?
Shell has used scenario planning for 40 years to gain a deeper understanding of the world's energy supply, use and needs. In 2008, we published Scenarios to 2050 -- proposing alternative paths for the energy future in the coming decades. Our latest update, Signals and Signposts, takes into account the impact of the global economic and financial crises. It also looks at some of the looming stresses of our planet, such as freshwater shortages and rapid urbanization We're using these reports to inform our conversation.
Our global population is rapidly urbanizing. By 2050, 75 percent of the world’s population could live in cities -- up from 50 percent today. Scientists predict that managing energy use in cities will be a critical factor in affecting climate change.
Essential services are increasingly addressed at the city level, rather than at a national or regional level. Smarter development could mean compact cities with high population density, mass-transit infrastructure and energy-efficient combined heat and power (CHP) developments. Integrating transportation, energy, water and waste systems will be crucial.
This drives us to ask: How can early intervention and investment in cities lead to more sustainable long-term outcomes? How can better urban infrastructure be achieved? What governance mechanisms might support effective city development?
Ianitza (Iany) Ianachkova
Anna Lebedeva
www.verticalfarm.com
Now I may not be a scientist or an architect (yet), but I believe that this idea would be very successful in a bustling world like ours, especially in our most crowded (therefore needy) cities. Thank you.
Mark Hurych
Hi,
I am a student of the TED talks. My opinions are my own but they have been shaped over the years by hundreds of their wonderful presentations.
You ask, in part:
How can early intervention and investment in cities lead to more sustainable long-term outcomes? AND How can better urban infrastructure be achieved?
If we see our long term as humanity thriving in the centuries to come, and if we take the big picture view of the whole biosphere of our spaceship Earth, then I must say, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Adam Newton, I believe that only by adopting a C2C strategy where “waste equals food” will we be able to put the “long” into “long-term.” (See http://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html )
What governance mechanisms might support effective city development?
Willie Smits has one excellent example of including governance on the local level while transforming an economy and an eco-system. His point is that the local governance must be included to give people a voice and ownership of what they are doing.
And Michelle Holliday has a good idea about the sort of patterns that green businesses ought to have. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUIStx-nZ3I
Mark
lucas du croo de jongh
Shell considers itself an energy company (fact). Solar energy is economical viable around the equator (fact). Let me zoom in on northern Africa; there thermo solar is economcially viable (fact, see desertech.org). The size at which this can be done is material (fact, deserttech talks about 15% of total energy consumption of europe from nothern africa). ... so far everything is the green
Issue is stability of these countries and guaranteed demand over the next 10-20 years; (thermo) solar energy requires a significant upfront investments that has to be earned back over 2 decades; debt holders of such an undertaking want to be sure they get their money back with the required interest (no nationalisations, no physical collaps of the plant, not evaporation of the demand). Shell has -almost unique- experience in dealing with instable countries with mostly good success (fact, Nigeria, Russia)
My question: What would make Shell go for this opportunity in a big way?
Hubertus Schubert
Hubertus Schubert
Bruno Kapetanovic
• Not be Involve in abused a local countries tax regulations
• Accepts responsibility for the disastrous environmental issues .
• Do not treat poor non developed countries , countries resources and people as their own property
• Not spend cash on marketing to improve corporate reputation but to contribute to innovative solution locally
shawn disney 10+
Paul van Zoggel
So the challenge is; who is going to show the megacity/nationstate number crunchers that this is the solution, better alternative. For sure - from Sorenson his ted talk, environmentally it looks for the better alternative. Though number crunchers first look economically, than socially, than environmentally (still).
TED 10+
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TED Conversations Admin
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Hubertus Schubert
Good question about the incentivising of managers you raise! This can only be addressed if the make up of the boardroom is changed and a 'social' element is introduced. In the German model of boardroom representation the workers of the company are represented - so why not having some other representation to assure the interest of the public ... Only when such influence is leveraged, it gets done in a company! but that seems to be harder then to find the technical solutions ...
Paul van Zoggel
Decision makers : people living in the region, the buyers; social+environmental incentive is quite strong.
Board room/field : netcentric, due to transparency overview is not in a handful of people.
Share holders : Are the people in the region as well; non-financial reward / quality of life plays a role in being happy with less gold in the bank.
All this was not possible on city level due to the amount of people 'involved' and complexity of interactions, cause and effect. Maybe because of communication and gaming/collaboration technology it is possible these days..
Bruno Kapetanovic
….and quietly using poor/non develop countries national resources to maximize company profitability !
Question from Shell which fit better is probably: What was the biggest environmental disaster cause from Shell and can innovations prevent this to happen again ?
Paul van Zoggel
It is an interesting phenomena if a corporate logo is next to a person, we are talking to the legacy of a corporation.Ifit is just a person posting a question, we talk about his/her dreams.
on your point;
I am not defending Shell here, or any corporation, though is this way of thinking about a corporation/this thread not the same as saying every christian is a crusader?
Probably you know, the problem in the energy domain is free market economics, megasaurus against megasaurus. It is like playing Simcity/Civilisation the numbers matter not the smiles on peoples faces. If Shell and the like would be offered a better model to do their job in, wouldn't they do it?
Where lies the potential for a better model? Any suggestion?
( P.S. of course it is a poverty to exploit for profit, but that is another conversation as you mention)
Thanks for sharing!
Lukas Müller
I don't wish to be gloomy, but unless we find an alternative to that, our cities will inevitably collapse. Not knowing - but having to believe - that such alternatives are out there, what is our biggest problem?
In the short term, evading and postponing tactics appear to be a good solution. But they aren't in the long run. As an example of such:
In the face of rising commodity prices, subsidies may help a politician in becoming reelected, by giving the short term impression of having solved the problem. But this does not just postpone the problem, which in itself might be a good thing, as it would give developers, companies and inventors more time to come up with solutions. No. Once the problem strikes, the changes will be far more rapid, hiting a less aware society, that is less prepared and has less resources left to react.
While there are food, energy and fuel subsidies in some countries, in other countries these subsidies may occur to some extent indirectly in the form of wars, welfare and bailouts.
So what can Shell and others do? A few ideas to create awareness and distribute knowlege of solutions:
- Creating awareness of the reliability of our modern systems to fossil fuels, by conducting and publishing a study on the effects a deprivation of various fossil fuels would have on various modern cities as they are.
- Transparently financing new or existing open initiatives in linking up cities and sharing of best practices. (funding of "TED cities" conferences with significant players attending only)
- looking for new economic paradigms that bridge the gap of what fiscal figures should stand for indirectly and what is actually happening on the ground.
If you want your goals to be acknowledged openly, act openly.
Adam Newton
Our existing scenarios work (www.shell.com/scenarios) looks at a range outcomes for energy use and considers the ways in which shifts in demand and resource availability can accelerate or surpress the diffusion of non-fossil fuel energy technologies. As we work towards the next set of scenarios we place the urban environment at the very forefront of our thinking as we recognise that cities will be the environments within which a majority of the resource constraints will occur as will the innovation to create sustainable solutions.
On funding you make an excellent point. The type of consortium that could effectively plan and execute new city development against a model of better integrated urban infrastructure does not currently exist. It is clear that in such a consortium the array of skills - from planning and design, to financing and construction would be required. Already we are working hard to establish a dialogue between companies like our own and other in the technology, electronics, mobility, water and waste spaces, to consider how to create effective relationships that would be able to address the challenges that rapid urban development pose.
It is a long road.....
Lukas Müller
Due to the unrenewable nature of fossil fuels, one might be inclined to believe that rising prices will eventually solve the incentives problem, arguing that the performance required of renewables in order to succeed on the market gradually declines inversely proportional to the rise in energy prices, making renewables sooner or later an economic imperative. (to the extent they don't need unrenewable resources themselves...)
There are good reasons to believe that. Let the market decide as some say. But that only works smoothly if all external costs are taken into account and the market is not distorted in one way or the other, e.g. by direct or indirect subsidies.
But as I stated in my previous posting, there is a danger of short term "thinking" trying to bypass these high energy prices, that are in fact needed by decision makers to justify the inevitable change in strategy.
Not just can such subsidies become a problem for society, but also for traditional energy suppliers I would argue, as such short term evasion tactics eventually lead to a more rapid, more challenging shift towards renewables.
As the time runs out, let me just conclude with a few ideas:
- Experience in renewable technology gained in more advanced markets (with renewable tech subsidies) can help overcome rapid changes in markets that have been held back by subsidies of fossil fuels.
- Criticism concerning the paradox of beeing a fossil giant while at the same time advocating change can best be adressed with total openness.
shawn disney 10+
Erol Toksoy 10+
Comment deleted
Paul van Zoggel
Naive as I might be; Tesla also had some good ideas but the global crisis is not big enough yet to adopt them.
I believe the crisis is getting big enough for companies like Shell-like collaborations take the great ideas from their shelves and calculate investment potential on them. As for starters, this thread, energizing the future cities with oil, food and water.
Yes, marketing budgets and profit reinvestment budgets should be used, and are more and more used for 'authentic' projects. It is still small, but we are slowly getting somewhere :)
Bruno Kapetanovic
• Stop abused a local countries tax regulations
• Accepts responsibility for the disastrous oil spills and environmental issues .
• Do not treat countries , countries resources and people as your own property
• Stop spending cash on marketing to improve corporate reputation but use this cash to contribute as much as possible …….that every city has reliable energy, clean water and enough to eat !
abc abc
Then, the second step is investment on urban argriculture, which is a method who is currently being tested, in countries such as Singapore, and which can minimize the cost of food by eliminating the need for distant transportation; in adiition to that, genetically engineered food, and specifically meat, can make the production of protein based food, conceivable, in an urban environment.
Finally, water sufficiency can come from two places, and non of them are rain water, because it is clealy insufficient to support the populations of modern megacities. Therefore, cities are going to have to use recycling technologies, to clean, and recycle, the water which has being consumed, and then they need to invest on desalination plans, which are going to allow us to access, the virtually abudant reserves of the oceans of the planet.
Therefore, in conclusion, the conjunction between smart grids and renewable energy, urban argiculture, disalination, and recylcing, are going to create the cities of the future.
Paul van Zoggel
Adam Newton
On the waste point we haven't explored the many and various ways in which that can be managed. It's clear that different categories of waste water can be reused in many different ways - only some of which are currently happening in a few places. Ditto the by-products of refuse - both gas and liquids - which have a role in providing sources for power in models for modern co-generation.
Paul van Zoggel
I simply wonder on what Lary Page from google once said;
"If enough people are working on a challenge, the solution will arise".
Are enough people and companies working effectively on the future of megacities? I read in one of your replies today not enough stakeholders are working together yet so there is the answer.
Bruno Kapetanovic
• Stop abused a local countries tax regulations
• Accepts responsibility for the disastrous oil spills and environmental issues .
• Do not treat countries , countries resources and people as your own property
• Stop spending cash on marketing to improve corporate reputation but use this cash to contribute as much as possible …….that every city has reliable energy, clean water and enough to eat !
Bruno Kapetanovic
jaeyun hwang
Bruno Kapetanovic
• Stop abused a local countries tax regulations
• Accepts responsibility for the disastrous oil spills and environmental issues .
• Do not treat countries , countries resources and people as your own property
• Stop spending cash on marketing to improve corporate reputation but use this cash to contribute as much as possible …….that every city has reliable energy, clean water and enough to eat !
Hubertus Schubert
Paul van Zoggel
I know of senior managers who try very hard, but in the end they are nailed down on delivery of results and numbers. A vicious circle between decision makers - board members - shareholders.
How to break it?
In EU there is a lot of civil society law enforcement, but pushing this through to the max would result in "police state capitalism". Is that the solution...
Vera Nova
There are quite a few super effective very "clean" methods that can be included in design, such as pipe-less sewage that does wonders using special trees, or a renewable wind power option, with a sleek Propeller-Free design, ultra quiet operation and affordable pricing. We, while designing our project (Nova Town) have found ourselves surrounded by highly advanced architects and engineers. The major road system can be designed very intelligently for providing effective commute for commercial traffic. Hope, dear Adam, you will do something very inspirational, and will surprise skeptics.
Didier Pereira
Hubertus Schubert
Ken Stephens
If a species, any species, grows too fast then it exceeds its resources, sickens and dies out. This applies to us too.
At some point we cannot continue to grow in population. The earth is a limited resource. We can either start choosing to limit our population over the next 40 years or we can do it after that, after the creation of these nightmarish megalopolises and the attendant degradation of the earth.
I suggest we need to accept that we are in fact part of the natural order and not exempt from it. I suggest we need to set a reasonable limit on human population based very much on the society we choose to have, and then work to bring this to the consciousness of all people.
We must change our growth imperative or it will kill us all. Let us do it now rather than when it is far too late.
Paul van Zoggel
"change growth imperative". Without the feeling we need to give up on something consciously, as we will not do that if the neighbor will not do it first.
Therefore I think we should start with understanding global public health, first step what do we need to 'live'
If we see planet earth as Buckminster's spaceship earth - and we should as 'wild-wild' nature does not really exist anymore according to some - we should organize it as space travel.
A collaboration like Shell can bring forward the logic on how to handle spaceship earth it's energy flow. What is needed where to survive the day in central new york and the outskirts of mexico city.
'Pioneer' could tell this globally of food survival
'Coca Cola' on water needs.
This way the general public and the standing self-supporting collaborations can image andmake this spaceship function in spaceflight.
After that we can dream again about luxury and leisure as we enjoy a lot to be lazy.
Elisabeth Buffard 500+
Paul van Zoggel
...The One Mile Backcasting 'Game'...
I'd like to propose the idea of backcasting 9 mega city neighborhoods of a 1 mile radius from 2050 to 2015
One Mile on each mega region;
South America
Middle America
North America
China
India
Europe
Arabia
Africa
Oceania
Pick on each a mile/ km2 in a mega city.
Until 2050 more than 2 generations will grow up in non-regular regions. From outside we want to do something, from inside; how can people grow with the growth occasion?
2030 Durable Survival Quest :
act 1 : We can imagine 'durable survival' by 2030. How much water, food, energy, does a One Mile region need.
act 2 : We can make a 'google map' showing where these resources come from, including the costs of getting to the One Mile in 2030.
act 3 : We can calculate how many people in the one mile region need to have some kind of job to pay for mile-survival, support the people in this region.
2040 Core Comfort Quest :
act 4 : What would the local acceptable basic physical 'health' situation be, hygiene related.
act 5 : What would the local acceptable basic mental 'health' situation be, fear related.
act 6 : What would the local acceptable housing/furniture standard be.
2050 Interdependence Quest :
act 7 : Engage constants : How many people live there now, will live there still 2050?
act 8 : Engage braindev : What and how should the children born now... now... now... learn from 2020 to have a great 50% 'solutionist' mindset in 2040?
In 2030-2040 'fresh' minds can be locally present, ready to live the dream we 'design' for/with them ..
Focussing on 9 miles;
- possibly a 'butterfly effect' for other 'miles'. a continental seed, organic growth.
- exchange wisdom on stopping the talk about fighting poverty, but start talking about collaborating for survival.
- a world view on water, food, energy; if we can understand globally 9 miles in 2050, we can think bigger.
Paul
Michael M 30+
Paul van Zoggel
So one mile Mexico City it is! 8 more to go. Simply communicating about the similarities and differences today can be very insightful ideas worth spreading.
"Fun" is the word I needed to hear, than we have something possible going.
Let's see where it goes to collect 9 miles. No plans/commitments yet on 9 weeks 9 hours 'googlefridays'.
Anybody associated somehow with Mumbai non-regulars on this forum?
Paul van Zoggel
Imagining the structure of a mega city comes with a perfect 'outsiders' view, while we should create a HOW to let locals grow with the growth occasion.
Until 2050 it is about educating 2 generations, that is at least 2 billion people who have not even been born yet.
Until 2040 it is about having the basics solved, core comfort so children can grow up healthy.
Until 2030 it is about solving durable survival (water, earth, fire), for a whole interdependent mega city.
These 3 pathways come together. And I believe the 'only' way to do that is imagining the life in a 2050 one mile region / neighborhood, and instead of forecasting, demonstrate backcasting to 2011. What is step by step needed to get to the 2050 we envision for a mile, slowly mapping the cause and effect.
...
i've followed this thread, put my share of logic towards the question in, the writing and feedback brought me - and maybe you - forward in thinking! thank you all. 99% of TEDconversations close and have a life in search archives. I'd love to be involved and 'adopt' great collections of thoughts, though how to do it effectively...
...Beyond the Teahouse Talk...
I wonder, what if 9 people put each 9 hours a week in for 9 weeks ( or 18 weeks long, each week on average 4.5 hours) what pragmatic solution for this HOW question can we get up with?
After some months on tedc I am up for the experiment on a question like this.
Starttng with optimism;
- As Dag Hammarskjold once said; let us not discus discussions.
- this thread is a starters cloud of wisdom, potentially to become more than a teahouse talk.
- 9 weeks for 2050; what can be solved on this HOW question.
- 9 hours a week; this is the amount of time I can squeeze between projects. See it as a 'google friday'. Promising less means no results, promising more interferes with 'normal' job.
- 9 persons; I have a reason for that, see next post with concept
Andrew Abernathy
I am encouraged by the intriguing conversation you started and applaud your courage in posting such a thought provoking question in this forum. I hope this conversation will have some specific positive results in the activities Shell and other O & G energy companies engage in.
I am working with a small group of people from diverse backgrounds who are seeking to create new urban environments designed to be sustainable and extensible built from the initial economic engines of mining and O & G production. Using the O & G initial economic engine to attract a diverse and sustainable economy which will break the typical boom-to-bust cycle and result in a collective of communities which act as regional economic centers for scalable growth planned to blend the needs of economy, cultural identity, open governance and maintainable environmental support.
Where megacities approach eventual collapse through an entropic cycle of ever faster and dense adaptation, our approach uses local environmental support as a governing factor to maximum size and impact and is used to spawn a new supporting center which eventually creates a balance of habitation to ecology and food production.
Mr. West might have us believe that cities are optimized as megaliths of concentrated development and power, but if we look at past history, I think we find that great cities were magnets of power because the people drawn to them contributed to their success. And survive when they meet needs of a region and continue to support economic growth.
We would invite Shell and the other multi-nationals to join with us to create scalable communities built around initial economic activity based on O & G production and the reformulation and technologies of Gas to Liquid processes at a local level so keep much of the economic value in the communities where the gas is produced and to be a partner in developing a scalable, repeatable urban growth process that benefits all of us.
Eric Berlow 200+
Andrew Abernathy
Ken Stephens
you refer to the work of Geoffrey West re the efficiencies of ever-larger cities. His work does however contain a very large catch. For the city to not die it requires an ever-accelerating pace of change. Fall behind and the city dies.
So to follow this model we are betting the survival of millions of people on the ability for a huge, rapidly growing (and simultaneously aging) city with an immensely complex set of service-delivery hardware to change evr-more rapidly. I contend that is frankly a ludicrous proposition. Nothing can continue to get better and better faster and faster forever.
Smaller, manageable locally and with far lower resource requirements is a far better model. Remember Cuba which reduced energy consumption by 90% overnight and found solutions that work and which continue to work.
Geoffrey West's models do not reflect what happens when a radical paradigm change occurs, they only project evolutionary change from the current baseline.
In sum, it is a radical re-imagining of how we live and manage our population that is needed. We cannot continue as we are and expect an endless exponential growth in the rate of change to save us.
Erik Rakhou
So how do we create that sense of urgency about 2050 challenge now with regular citizens and consumers?
Or are we implying that only central planning (cuba-style) measures can help today 2050 challenge?