• Home
  • News
  • In-depth
  • Opinion
  • Energy
    • Wind
    • Marine
    • Solar
    • Biomass
    • Nuclear
    • CCS
    • Infrastructure
  • Policy
    • Politics
    • Legislation
    • Taxation
  • Management
    • Marketing
    • Risk
    • Skills
    • Incentives
    • Carbon Accounting
  • Technology
    • Waste
    • Recycling
    • R&D
    • Efficiency
    • IT
  • Investment
    • Carbon Trading
    • Offsets
    • Venture Capital
  • Net Zero Now
  • Events & Awards
  • SDG Hub
  • Industry Voice
  • Newsletters
  • Sign in
  •  
      • Newsletters
      • Account details
      • Contact support
      • Sign out
     
    • You are currently accessing BusinessGreen via your Enterprise account.

      If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.

      If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.

      Phone: +44 (0) 1858 438800

      Email: [email protected]

      • Sign in
  • Follow us
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Newsletters
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • Instagram
  • Free Trial
  • Subscribe
  • Events & Awards
    • Upcoming events
      event logo
      NZF Pathway - Finance

      This exclusive half day online event will investigate how all businesses can support and accelerate the transition to low and net zero carbon buildings, while maximising the financial and productivity opportunities that will result.

      • Date: 16 Mar 2021
      • Online Event
      event logo
      Net Zero Festival 2021

      Net Zero Festival is the world's first business festival dedicated to exploring, advancing, and celebrating the global transition to a net zero emission economy. Join us at BusinessGreen's Net Zero Festival – for leaders who won't wait until 2050 to build a better business, and a better world.

      • Date: 27 Sep 2021
      • Worldwide
      View all events
  • SDG Hub
Business Green
Business Green
  • Home
  • News
  • In-depth
  • Opinion
  • Energy
  • Policy
  • Management
  • Technology
  • Investment
  • Net Zero Now
 
    • Newsletters
    • Account details
    • Contact support
    • Sign out
 
  • You are currently accessing BusinessGreen via your Enterprise account.

    If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.

    If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.

    Phone: +44 (0) 1858 438800

    Email: [email protected]

    • Sign in
  • Hot topics
  • Green recovery
  • Net Zero Now
  • Net Zero Leadership
  • Net Zero Finance
  • Technology

A day in the life of a future energy consumer

Cate Trotter speaking at the Shell Summit last week | Credit: Shell
Cate Trotter speaking at the Shell Summit last week | Credit: Shell
  • Madeleine Cuff
  • Madeleine Cuff
  • 09 July 2019
  • Tweet  
  • Facebook  
  • LinkedIn  
  • Send to  
0 Comments

Trend forecaster Cate Trotter offered delegates at the Shell Powering Progress Together Summit a glimpse of what life could be like for energy consumers in 2040

It's July 3rd 2040 in Manchester, it's raining, and the UK government is still negotiating Brexit. "Some things," notes trend forecaster Cate Trotter with a sigh, "don't change at all".

But other aspects of life in 2040 look radically different from today's world. Gone are mobile phones, for example, replaced with "thinking caps" users can don to fire off messages to friends, order cabs, or search the internet. City centre parks no longer have lawns - instead they are covered with a 50/50 mix of astroturf and bamboo. It costs just one pence to sequence your DNA. Ariane Grande is President of the United States.

Related articles

  • Outdated carbon credits from old wind and solar farms are threatening climate change efforts
  • Scaling up sustainable finance: How can investors accelerate the net zero transition?
  • What will it take for 2021 to be a groundbreaking year for circular fashion?
  • The real thing: Coca Cola European Partners' Joe Franses unpacks the drinks giant's net zero agenda

Actually, that last detail perhaps does not seem so implausible.

This vision of the future is being presented by Trotter, founder of agency Insider Trends, to delegates at last week's Shell Powering Progress Together Summit. It is billed as a snapshot of life as an 'energy empowered' consumer in decades to come.

Trotter's vision follows a day in the life of Joan Bloggs, a 47 year old Manchester resident of medium build, medium height and medium brown hair. Bloggs, Trotter says, is "Miss Average", and it is through her it is possible to understand how the nascent, pioneering technologies of today could become tomorrow's taken for granted infrastructure.

Bloggs earns her keep as an 'AI coach', schooling artificially intelligent bots in ethical decision making. She can work when she wants, where she wants, and on July 3rd 2040 she does just that, picking up some work in the back of an autonomous one-person car while on the way to her local 'Pick Your Own World' centre, which sees vertical farming re-imagined as consumer entertainment.

En-route she stops at a motorway services to use the bathroom, but this rest stop isn't quite what you might expect. "In the past, everyone thought that this forecourt would be filled with cars charging themselves," Trotters says. "But actually now cars can charge themselves so quickly and in so many places, they don't actually need to spend much time on the forecourt. Instead these rest points are mostly used by humans and to store cars overnight."

Before she hops back into the car Bloggs spots a new energy source - a skyscraper acting as an energy storage device. It winches heavy concrete blocks to the top of the tower using solar power during the day, letting the blocks drop during the evening when energy is scarcer so as to release the stored energy. Other innovative energy generating technologies are also present, such as a public bus powered by human excrement from the service station toilets.

Trotter describes a world in which 3D-printing technology has gone mainstream, goods all come with a blockchain-enabled carbon offsets built into the price, and miniature energy-gathering devices come embedded in shoes for on-the-go device charging.

"All in all, life in 2040 is pretty darn awesome," she concludes.

Futurology is always as much art as science, and the only thing that can be certain is that the next two decades will not pan out precisely as Trotter or her future-gazing peers predict. But while her vision of life in two decades' time may seem fanciful, it is all powered by technology which exists today. Using suspended weights to store energy is being pioneered by UK start-up Gravitricity, for example, while the Bio-Bus really did run on human poo as it ferried passengers around Bristol in 2015. Blockchain company Poseidon is working on a system to connect carbon credits with specific purchases, partnering with ice-cream giant Ben & Jerry's for real world trials. Meanwhile, ultra-rapid EV chargers are already delivering an 80 per cent charge to cars in the UK in less than 10 minutes.

"We think that change happens in a linear fashion," Trotter argues. "We think that things get a little bit better each year... But actually as the world is digitising, the forces shaping our world don't follow this trajectory anymore."

According to Trotter, exponential change enabled by technology means we might be about to experience a century's worth of change in a little under 25 years. And although Joan Bloggs' life is at least as energy hungry as that of the average Manchester resident today, Trotter argues if it is powered by renewables it could still be compatible with global climate goals.

"If we can embrace this way of living, and we can encourage people elsewhere in the world to live in this way, the targets of the Paris Agreement will be within our sights," she says. "And actually, I think the main barrier between where we are now and making something like this take place is not in fact, the technology, it's our behaviour."

Trotter paints a vision of a world that, technologically at least, seems possible. But whether it is plausible - whether all this potential innovation will be harnessed to reduce emissions - is another question altogether. It is a question that demands rapid and unprecedented economy-wide reforms at a policy, infrastructure, investment, technological, and consumer level. "I think I wanted to show a future that completely is possible," Trotter admits. "But it's very challenging to get there."

The BusinessGreen Powering Progress Together Hub is supported by Shell. All the hub's content is editorially independent, unless stated otherwise. 

Further reading

EV100: Centrica, SSE, and Mitie pledge to turn vehicle fleets electric
  • Automotive
  • 08 July 2019
Carbon pricing and the journey towards an 'energy constrained world'
  • Policy
  • 08 July 2019
Shell boss: Net zero is 'the only way to go'
  • Investment
  • 04 July 2019
Shell cuts ribbon on first 150kW forecourt charger
  • Automotive
  • 04 July 2019
  • Tweet  
  • Facebook  
  • LinkedIn  
  • Send to  
  • Topics
  • Technology
  • Energy
  • Infrastructure
  • energy storage
  • smart energy
  • Electric Vehicles
  • autonomous vehicles
  • biogas
  • gravitricity
  • blockchain
  • Powering Progress Together Hub
  • Powering Progress Together
  • In-depth

More on Technology

China has expanded its coal plant capacity to boost the coronavirus-stricken economy
    • Energy
'Economically feasible': New study maps how China could shift from coal to green energy in the 2020s
    • Energy
    • 15 January 2021
The market for smart home technologies is expected to grow in the coming years | Credit: simpson33
    • Energy
Smart home energy market the focus of new consumer protection drive
    • Energy
    • 15 January 2021
Carbon neutral Formula E team Envision Virgin Racing has joined forces with the UN COP26 climate summit to drive the EV revolution
    • Technology
Electric racing pioneers partner with COP26 to accelerate EV revolution
    • Technology
    • 14 January 2021
McKinsey expects oil demand to peak in 2029 if current trends continue
    • Energy
A fossil fuel demand peak is fast approaching, but will it come soon enough?
    • Energy
    • 14 January 2021
A ship leaves the dock at Stanlow oil refinery | Credit: korhil65
    • Technology
Essar and Progressive Energy plot £750m hydrogen CCS hub in Cheshire
    • Technology
    • 13 January 2021
The 18.8MW Tralorg wind farm was switched on in Scotland in mid-November | Credit: RPMI Railpen
    • Energy
Clean power drives Britain's grid to record low CO2 intensity in 2020
    • Energy
    • 12 January 2021
The survey points to bullish confidence in the resilience of green energy to the disruption of the pandemic
    • Workplace
Poll: Renewables workers 'unfazed' by Covid-19 impact on industry
    • Workplace
    • 12 January 2021
Wind and solar capacity worldwide continued to grow in 2020 despite the Covid-19 pandemic
    • Energy
IEA plots 'world's first' net zero roadmap for global energy sector
    • Energy
    • 12 January 2021

More news

250 Bishopsgate: Bringing nature into a London building
  • Workplace
250 Bishopsgate: Bringing nature into a London building

NatWest Group explains how sustainability has been embedded into its flagship building in London

  • 18 January 2021
Outdated carbon credits from old wind and solar farms are threatening climate change efforts
  • Offsets
Outdated carbon credits from old wind and solar farms are threatening climate change efforts

The carbon credit system needs an overhaul to effectively help in reducing climate change, according to a UCL study

  • 18 January 2021
Poll: Two-thirds of adults believe UK government should do more to combat climate change
  • Policy
Poll: Two-thirds of adults believe UK government should do more to combat climate change

New survey reveals 60 per cent of voters agree UK should strive to be a global leader on climate action, as Labour sets out 'crunch test' for government's COP26 climate diplomacy efforts

  • 17 January 2021
Global Briefing: Saudi Arabia plots car-free city stretching 100 miles
  • Management
Global Briefing: Saudi Arabia plots car-free city stretching 100 miles

Plus Danish diets, China climate policy signals, and all the top green business news from around the world this week

  • 15 January 2021
blog comments powered by Disqus
Back to Top

Most read

Mars and DHL plot £350m UK logistics hubs to slash one million road miles
Mars and DHL plot £350m UK logistics hubs to slash one million road miles
Terra Carta: Prince of Wales launches green recovery charter for business
Terra Carta: Prince of Wales launches green recovery charter for business
'Environmentally regressive': UK government approves use of bee-harming pesticide banned in EU
'Environmentally regressive': UK government approves use of bee-harming pesticide banned in EU
Unilever and Alibaba launch 'world first' AI-powered closed-loop recycling system
Unilever and Alibaba launch 'world first' AI-powered closed-loop recycling system
Essar and Progressive Energy plot £750m hydrogen CCS hub in Cheshire
Essar and Progressive Energy plot £750m hydrogen CCS hub in Cheshire
  • Contact Us
  • Marketing solutions
  • About Incisive Media
  • Terms and conditions
  • Policies
  • Careers
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

Incisive Footer Logo

© Incisive Business Media (IP) Limited, Published by Incisive Business Media Limited, New London House, 172 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5QR, registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09177174 & 09178013

Digital publisher of the year
Digital publisher of the year 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2017
Loading