Talking Scenarios

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We hear so much about climate change, the need to switch to renewable energy and the expected future resource shortages, that it can be hard to process the information, let alone decide on a sensible strategy to deal with the challenges.

Shell uses a tool called Scenario Planning to look at the sea of possibilities and define two or three clear scenarios, which are 'internally consistent' and show plausible, distinct views of how the future could play out. Of course these cannot cover all eventualites, and there is also no attempt made to decide which is more likely, or guess which one will 'win'.  Instead these scenarios are used as backdrops to test stategy decisions against. 

Nicola Gordon, Managing Director of Shell Exploration & Production, Denmark, talked BCCD & Benelux Business Club members and guests through Shell's current set of Scenarios to 2050 - Blueprint vs. Scramble.  She explained that for the first time since Shell began working with scenarios, one of the two had emerged as clearly preferable over the other, and Shell has therefore decided to work to create the 'Blueprints' scenario as much as possible.  One example of this work is the production of this video and it's distribution on YouTube.  Take a look for an overview of the two scenarios:

More details of the 'Scenarios to 2050' are available online and you can also see details of their past scenarios.

Discussion of how these scenarios would influence our own company strategies, and what impact they could have on Denmark's future covered a lot of ground, and resulted in many mixed opinions.  Perhaps rising energy production costs won't really affect Denmark because the price we are used to paying for our electricity is already so high, and made up of such proportion of tax that we'd barely notice the difference??  Perhaps Denmark is so small that it cannot have any influence in which scenario develops and will be at the mercy of external events: or perhaps because it is small, and has a strong knowledge economy, it can be an effective test market and demonstrate workable solutions that the rest of the world can pick up on. Perhaps it will take much less than usual 30 years to implement a new technology and 5 years from now we'll all be wondering what the fuss was about as we drive around in our fission powered cars!  With all this to chew over, the Marriott's invitation to continue the discussion in their Midtown Grill restaurant was very welcome.


 
Tummas Hansen, Nicola Gordon and Mariano A. Davies, outside the Midtown Grill at the end of the evening

Philip Lafeber, DONG Energy, has also been involved in using scenario planning in the past. He pointed out the UK government 'Foresight' project. This looks at possible future developments across many sectors. The 'Sustainable Energy Management & the built Environment' project may make interesting reading alongside the Shell Energy Scenarios.

Photos by Hugh Mayo and Pamela Juhl. Used with permission