Energy and innovation
As a moderator I chaired the Energylab of the Club of Amsterdam in Girona held 17 and 18 april. It was really an exciting experience: we had gathered experts from nucleair energy, biofuel, nanotech, fuelcel technology, politics and academia. We redesigned the questions om energy and worked from a standpoint of oportunities in stead of problems. We did a lot of socratic brainstorms and used the scenariomethod (so we did the Eurolab method). The exchange between experts on a philosophical level is bares lots of fruits. The cross disciplined brainstorm needs socartic approaches.
We really emphasized the fact that values should be at the base of the reflection on energy:
Children, free access, the quality of life, open dialogue, the person as part of the community and energy as en enabler to realize goals. We do think that considering human beings as fundamental embedded in communities, is creating models of quality which can lead to meaningfull goals for individuals. Energy is then the enabler.
We have four scenarios which can be situated as bottom up society in an emerging country (harvesting energy), a top down society in an emerging country (central energy planning), a top down society in a developed country ( caps and tax) and a bottom up society in a developed country (communicating energy). We see different routes for different countries, but we will end with a bottom up scenario in accordance with the web 2.0 developments in the world. The file will be published later.