Electrifying: Volans runs ‘Evergreen’ session at 2009 Skoll World Forum

One highly experienced delegate said it was the best workshop session he had ever attended. It was short, just 1.5 hours, but to a number of participants it clearly felt like a breakthrough demonstration of ecosystem thinking and of new ways of thinking about scale.

The setting was the 2009 Skoll World Forum at Oxford University’s Säid Business School. For our session, we decided to focus on a sector with huge challenges — and even greater opportunities: the shift towards more sustainable forms of urban transport, specifically the development and deployment of new forms of electric mobility.

The reputation of the Forum helped us bring together some of the world’s leading pioneers in the field: Nancy Kete of EMBARQ, Josh Steinmann of Better Place, Peter Head of Arup and Ion Yadigaroglu ofCapricorn Investment Group, all profiled in The Phoenix Economy.

Pathways to Scale

The session, which attracted a capacity audience of well over 100 participants, explored Pathways to Scalefor a range of sustainable mobility solutions. Our panelists discussed their work, their ambitions, and key obstacles to achieving the scale of change to which they aspire. They reflected on how to move their ‘Enterprises’ to create ‘Ecosystems’ of solutions providers and enablers, which our 5-stage model identifies as Stage 4.

Some highlights:

• Revolutionary business models such as those being evolved by Shai Agassi’s Better Place may be on the brink of reinventing the car industry. Just as business models in the cell phone sector are built around the purchasing of ‘airtime’ rather than of phones, Better Place’s network of battery-swap stations has separated the ownership of the car, from the ownership of the battery, enabling drivers to purchase ‘miles’. The model requires the support of governments and the private sector for it to work, a reason why offering win-win deals to other stakeholders within an ecosystem approach is so essential to these pioneers. So far, the Governments from Israel, Denmark, Australia, and the US states of California and Hawaii have made early commitments to the model, backed by public and private finance. Early commitments by the automaker Renault-Nissan have added to the momentum. Significantly, the car batteries potentially become distributed storage units for clean electricity. In Israel, they will store excess power from the growing solar industry, while in Denmark they will store unutilized wind energy.

• Nancy Kete explained how EMBARQ’s investment of $16 million has focused on creating ecosystems where both national and city governments work together with the private sector in public transport projects. These ecosystems have in turn leveraged an estimated $886 million in additional infrastructure investments and well as increased the much-needed political will of city governments to back public transport reform.

• “There is a profound need to connect up the public sector’s planning for sustainable transport solutions that are not only exciting but can actually happen” argued Peter Head of Arup. He leads Arup’s sustainability practice, and is one of the masterminds behind the blueprint for the world’s first zero carbon city in China, Dongtan. “The core problem,” he added, “is the lack of integrated thinking, especially in city design policies.” The solution, for Arup, lies in developing an ‘open source’ system for city modeling, where different professionals, from designers, environmentalists, engineers, anthropologists, and policy-makers, can collaborative assemble the design of a sustainable city.

Building Ecosystems

It soon became apparent to everyone that this conversation was itself the demonstration of an Ecosystem:

• “We need these decision tools,” interjected Nancy, “but we also need more people understanding the political and economic incentives that govern these policy systems.” EMBARQ’s bus rapid system in Istanbul is tackling the deep ‘mobility divide’ that grows as the city expands faster than its precarious public transport system. The new solution, implemented in a public-private partnership with the city government, carries 350.000 passengers a day swiftly across the Istanbul bridge. Based on EMBARQ’s experience in dealing with city governments, Nancy is versed in the politics of sustainable transport and has knowledge on how to promote the political incentives needed for the adoption of new transport blueprints.

• Crucial insights came from Ion Yadigaroglu from Capricorn Investment, which supports start-up companies designing electric cars, such as Tesla Motors and TH!NK. He expressed an interest in looking into investment opportunities in public sector transport, an area which—he argued—can be overlooked by new venture capital firms. Various panelists spoke of underground or metro systems as one of the best investments that cities can make in terms of a sustainable future.

Interestingly, partnerships began to form before eyes as the session continued:

• Arup and EMBARQ agreed to explore how to collaborate to advance this combination of open source modeling and political incentives around sustainable transport solutions.

• A workshop participant from Acumen Fund India spotlighted the transport challenge that EMBARQ had addressed as one he experiences in ensuring the delivery of medicines to hospitals in India. And so EMBARQ and Acumen Fund India agreed to explore how to work together to link transport solutions and health systems more effectively.

Next Steps

Overall, the session provided an eye- and mind-opening opportunity to discuss the magnitude of the transport problem, which involves moving people as well as moving all the products and materials that make up our economy. As the world heads to a predicted human population of 9 billion by 2050, most of whom are expected to live in cities, the intelligent design and management of cities and, especially, of public transport systems, will be increasingly critical. Private electric cars may be winning the spotlight at the moment, but their future needs to be discussed alongside that of public transport systems.

That said, we have been taking a growing interest in the potential of the nascent electric car industry. One concern here has been the cost of batteries. Lithium-ion battery manufacturers like BYD in China (also profiled in our Phoenix 50) are quickly moving to the production of electric cars, while prospects for the large-scale supply of lithium potentially reshuffles the future wealth of nations. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, 50% of the world’s lithium is found in Bolivia, which already nurses ambitions to become the next Saudi Arabia –with a potentially worrying nationalistic outlook on the future of the lithium industry.

Governments will be called upon to play an increasingly central role in shaping both energy and mobility markets through targeted investments, incentives, partnerships and regulations. But to do so effectively, at the speed and the scale that is required, they will need to operate in fundamentally new ways –what we’ve described as the ‘Government-as-Unsual’ agenda in our Phoenix Manifesto.

Volans will explore such challenges and related solutions at a series of major conferences through 2009, where the lessons learned at the Skoll World Forum will be applied –and we commit to post further updates as the program moves forward.