Surveying the Asian Skies

“If one person consumes 300 gigajoules of energy [in developed societies] over a year and there are billions [of] people in the world now, what’s going to happen in ten years?”

With this question, Jeremy Bentham, Vice President Global Business Environment and Head of Shell Scenarios, launched the Sky Scenario to an audience comprising government delegates and partners from businesses and academia in Singapore.

The lens was cast on Asia as the Lecture coincided with the week of World Cities Summit (WCS) 2018 earlier in July, where Jeremy was also part of a panel discussion on “What does it take to be an environmentally and economically resilient city?”

Through the event, Jeremy highlighted two key takeaways:

• Cities will be critical in achieving ambitions. Urban development must be compact, integrated and collaborative.
• The biggest global story in achieving the Paris Ambition has to be Asia. Industrialised regions like North America and Europe, and developing nations in Africa will have different energy consumption and growth stories, but Asia already provides a substantial base with the potential to grow even more (read more on “Moving Asia’s cities towards Paris”).

The Lecture was followed by a panel discussion with Lim Pei Shan, Centre for Strategic Futures and moderated by Dawn Yip, Director of Soulbreath Consulting, and former lead strategist at the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

About Sky Scenario

The Sky Scenario illustrates a technically possible, but challenging pathway for society to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Sky builds on previous Shell scenarios publications and is our most optimistic scenario in terms of climate outcomes.

Read more about the Sky Scenario