How often do we stop to consider the lifecycle of the products we purchase?  We may think about acquiring an object and its usefulness in our lives, but rarely do we stop to reflect upon the item’s “life” before it arrives in our possession, and where it goes when its time with us ends. Can new levels of reuse be employed, thus limiting the impact of our current resource usage upon future generations? The role of designers as the creative spark in transforming production may be the key to unlocking new levels of product reuse and recycling.

Investigating the Role of Design in the Circular Economy from the Royal Society of the Arts Action and Research Centre [1], explores The Great Recovery Project, an initiative launched in 2012 to build a cross-disciplinary community that is equipped to support the development of an economy based on resource-efficient principles.  In the circular economy, products are developed in a cyclical manner, with consideration of the past, present, and future of the fabricated object.  Through tear down and build up workshops, exposures to waste management and recycling facilities, and increased dialogue and networking across disciplines, The Great Recovery Project seeks to move production, use, and disposal to a new cyclical structure, embracing the circular economy to lessen our footprint upon the planet.

How can we move to circular thinking with products built upon simple, straightforward means of appropriate second-lives, deconstruction, or discarding?  Presently, the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates that around 540m tonnes of products and materials enter the UK economy each year but only 117m tonnes of this gets recycled. If an equivalent of a mere one-fifth of that which enters the UK economy is recycled, can this hurdle be overcome?  Without thinking more holistically about how elements and components can be reused, we face an uncertain future in which valuable waste may be lost to us where it could otherwise be reused.

Are we creating an insurmountable amount of waste? 90 percent of the raw materials which go into making durable products become waste even before the product leaves the factory, and about 80 percent of what is made is discarded within the first 6 months of life. When about 80 percent of a product’s environmental impact is ‘locked in’ at the concept design state, can we shift to thinking about design as a starting point for thinking circularly?  Designing products from a circular perspective empowers all levels, from early raw states to post-life break down for reuse.  Limiting the product’s impact in the early phases will ultimately save our resources in the long term.

If we stop to consider the life-cycle of a product from early design through to disposal, we can reduce our resource footprint, lessening our impact upon the planet. It is likely that we may need to do so in the decades to come, and that could become the enduring legacy that we pass on to our children.

Kate Burgess-Mac Intosh
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

References:

[1] The full report can be accessed through the following link, along with further information about the RSA Great Recovery Project:  http://www.thersa.org/action-research-centre/enterprise-and-design/design/the-great-recovery2

Earlier this summer, I had a piece published about wild cards [1]. It was an academic piece that appeared in an academic journal, which, at times, can be a fairly dry read. What would liven up the issue would be a good practical example of wild card futuring at work.

Recently, a colleague of mine - Lloyd Walker, to whom I am indebted - brought to my attention a page of 40 maps that might interest a futurist [2]. The accompanying map was one of them. Apparently, a cargo of rubber dolls was lost into the Pacific in 1992, and this map charts where they made landfall, and in what volumes. It charts not only the route of the flotsam, but also an idea of the time scale used in reaching the eventual destination.

So what, you might say? Wild card thinking involves the connecting of apparently disparate data points so that we are not surprised by apparently unlinked events which combine to give us a nasty shock. A recent story about Fukushima caught my attention, and as I read it, I thought of this map [3]. Apparently, the highly radioactive and highly toxic water that has been used to cool the reactors at Fukushima has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean. The water is so toxic that can deliver a 5 year dose of radiation to casual bystanders. 400,000 tons of water are held at the site, 300 tons of which have leaked into the Pacific Ocean.

Much of the radioactive waste will initially stay close to the coast of Japan. However, over a period of time, a combination of wind and tides will disperse it, but to where and when? The model provided in the map gives us a clue about the eventual destination - initially back around the Pacific via the west coast of the US and Canada as early as this year, then eventually the Great Barrier Reef, the Spice Islands, then perhaps the east coast of the US and Canada by the end of this decade, before eventually arriving off the coast of Europe from 2025 onwards.

This is a nightmare scenario in itself, but it could get a lot worse. There is minimal earthquake protection afforded to the tanks holding the water. Another round of seismic activity in their area could well spill a much larger volume of the toxic water into the Pacific Ocean. That would make things a lot worse. At the moment this remains a remote possibility, but that is the core territory of the wild card scenario. The consequences of this happening would be so bad that surely we would want to protect ourselves from it happening?

If so, we could start by bullying the Japanese government into acting to make the water tanks resilient to further seismic activity. We could also act to create an international framework through which the eventual clean up of the toxic waste, when it makes landfall, is paid for by the Japanese authorities. Much harm will be done to marine life in the intervening period as the waste makes its way around the globe, and that ought to be compensated as well. We live in a highly interconnected world and these small events in far off places can have profound consequences upon us. That is what defines wild card events.


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

References:

[1] http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/wfr_june_2013_aguilar-millan.pdf for my article 'Playing The Wild Card'.

[2] http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/ for the set of 40 maps. We have used Map #19.

[3]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/radiation-crisis-at-japans-fukushima-nuclear-plant-deepens-as-threat-level-raised-to-serious-8778137.html for the background story about the leakages from Fukushima.

Shell’s New Lens Scenarios mark the company’s 40th year of working with scenarios that anticipate the future.  Their newest set of scenarios seek to consider what the world may look like in the year 2100. In honor of their 40th year of crafting scenarios, it would be worthwhile to review just what Shell anticipates for the future.

According to Shell, “The world in the future will be defined by how people and governments meet the challenges posed by institutions, inequality, and insecurity in relation to the paradoxes of prosperity, leadership, and connectivity.”  Keeping this statement in mind, New Lens uses two very different scenarios to explore the future: Mountains, and Oceans.

In “Mountains”, Shell sees a world where those in power seek to maintain and promote the status quo. Economic development is moderate, while environmental and energy policy transforms our global transportation network to create cities that are more compact. Shell sees natural gas as the foundation for the world’s energy, with demand in oil peaking around the year 2035. Towards the end of the century hydrogen and electricity will be the energy source of choice to run automobiles.

Shell sees the world not achieving the goal of limiting global warming by 2°C, despite a decline in green house gas emissions beginning after 2030.

In “Oceans”, influence and power are more diffused. The world is more prosperous, but also more volatile. Market forces and society shape the world’s energy system, much more than government policy. Both oil and coal continue to play a major role, while natural gas and nuclear power, hampered by public resistance, slow technology adoption, and policy inertia, experiences limited growth. High energy prices and demand cause oil resources to be developed in hard to reach places, but demand plateaus around 2040. In the 2060s, solar becomes the largest primary source of energy, spurred on by the high prices which helped to encourage increased efficiency.

Shell’s glimpses into the future are intriguing, and Shell certainly puts much rigor into New Lens. Their outlook on the balance of power is very interesting, though there are a few things left that need resolution. Both shifts to alternative energy sources take place after peaks in demand. In making the transition to the next energy source in both scenarios, one can wonder how that transition will play out in the energy markets. Another observation is that presenting only two visions of the future, over a very long time horizon and with a very broad remit, seem a little limiting. The future may turn out to be more pluralistic than two scenarios on their own suggest.

In the end, 40 years of exploring the future is very admirable. Shell has set an example for other companies to follow in their ongoing efforts of studying the future. While there are some minor issues with the New Lens scenarios, both Mountains and Oceans present interesting views of the future and equally interesting implications. As a Futurist, but more importantly as a human being, I wonder which of these two futures we shall actually enjoy?

Jason Swanson
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

Resources:

The scenarios can be accessed at: http://www.shell.com/global/future-energy/scenarios/new-lens-scenarios.html

When futurists ply their wares they usually make a lot of assumptions about the future. This is very much the case for those futurists who undertake single point forecasting of future events. The concept of the Singularity - a point in time where accelerating change is occurring so fast that we are unable to keep up with events - is of the single point forecast variety. At some single point in the future, it is argued, it will happen.

Once we start to unbundle some of the assumptions n that position, we come across some interesting and surprising futures that normally don't enter into the discussion about the Singularity. For example, there is often an assumption that we will continue to enjoy an abundance of cheap and readily available electricity. Much of the argument about accelerating change assumes this as a base assumption.

Some time ago, we wrote about how that assumption could be called into question, and pointed to the potential of an energy gap in the UK in this decade [1]. This piece, from 2008, talked about the lights going out and the vulnerability of our information networks. We put together potential brown outs with the operation of the Internet, and found that we had a problem looming in this decade. It now appears that the problem is closer than ever [2]. According to Ofgem, we are on the brink of an energy crisis.

Of course, those organisations that exercise a degree of foresight will not have the problems suggested by Ofgem. They will have an array of back-up generators. They will probably be able to tap into the electricity generation of renewable sources - particularly solar and wind. They will have a contingency plan for when the lights go out and the Internet goes down. They will also be part of a miniscule number of organisations that have exercised basic foresight. The truth is that this development will engulf many organisations, if it were to occur, as so few are ready for this possibility.

One of the consequences of the lights going out is that the pace of accelerating change will slow. Indeed, it may slow the the point where we have decelerating change. If that were to occur, then the single point estimate of when the Singularity will occur will have to be put back. In that respect, the Singularity will be postponed. This could have the beneficial effect of allowing our social infrastructure, such as the legal system or business models, to keep pace with technological changes.

The Singularity won't, however, be cancelled. The prospect of intense energy shortages is likely to stimulate all sorts of new technologies around the issue of energy storage and conservation. It will create a problem that human ingenuity will want to solve. This process has occurred since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and there is no reason to suggest that it will not continue into the future [3].


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

References:

[1] http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/when-lights-went-out.html

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9879442/Britain-on-the-brink-of-energy-crisis-warns-regulator.html?fb

[3] http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/surfing_the_sixth_wave.pdf

Are we entering an Age of Scarcity? For a number of years, our stock answer to this question is that we are. This answer was formed, in part, by the view that Peak Oil - the point at which 50% of the oil resources of the planet were out of the ground - had been passed. A recent report by the International Energy Association suggests that this assumption could be mistaken. According to the IEA, the production of oil in the United States is growing at a pace that will make it the worlds largest oil producer by 2020, and which will leave the US self-sufficient in energy by 2035. The IEA report also suggests that American production of oil will outstrip that of the current oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, by 2020. This forecast is shown in the graph, which originates from The Economist, using IEA data.

There is a bit more to the story than just the changing patterns of energy production. There is also an appreciation of the impact of water resources upon energy production. This is a point made in a piece in the Daily Telegraph, that modern energy production tends to be rather water intensive. It highlights that our future potential energy abundance could be curtailed by water shortages. A different approach was taken in the New York Times, which highlighted some of the assumptions made by the IEA about energy usage in the US. It would appear that the forecast relies heavily on the introduction and widespread use of energy saving technologies in the US, to place something of a cap upon the consumption of oil derived products.

Where does that leave the scarcity agenda? In one respect, we could take the view that the whole issue of Peak Oil has been something of an alarmist position, and that the worst aspects of Peak Oil were never going to happen. There is an element of truth in this view. The concept of Peak Oil, as used by futurists, served as something of a warning of an unpleasant future for which there was time to avoid. We could take the view that this is happening.

In many respects, this reinforces the scarcity agenda. One could argue that, in the face of an impending shortage of oil, the price mechanism has worked to ensure that technologies have been developed to secure a new supply of oil, and are currently working to improve a more efficient use of the oil which we do have. This was always going to be the path out of scarcity, in which case, we could say, the whole scarcity agenda has had an effect.

We are caught between the two positions. The development of new production methods for extracting oil are not cost free. They tend to have a large environmental footprint, the externalities of which are nowhere near being covered in the current market price of oil. It is almost a position where we can continue to drive our cars, but at the costs of the environment. There is also a case to say that we are moving a key scarcity from one area (oil) to another (water). In doing so, we are fudging the problem rather than solving it.

There is a case to say that we have seen the end of Peak Oil - for the moment - but that does not mean that we have grounds to rejoice. We have yet to see the full bill for this development.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2012