Oxyegn N. 22 - Efficiency increases growth

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EFFICIENCY increases growth × 162

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editorial board Enrico Alleva (president) Giulio Ballio Roberto Cingolani Paolo Andrea Colombo Fulvio Conti Derrick De Kerckhove Niles Eldredge Paola Girdinio Helga Nowotny Telmo Pievani Francesco Profumo Carlo Rizzuto Robert Stavins Umberto Veronesi editor in chief Gianluca Comin editorial director Vittorio Bo publishing coordination Pino Buongiorno Luca Di Nardo Paolo Iammatteo Stefano Milano Dina Zanieri managing editor Cecilia Toso editing Cristina Gallotti editorial team Simone Arcagni Renato Bruni Davide Coero Borga Michele Fossi Roberto Rizzo Luca Salvioli Seltz Donato Speroni Gianluigi Torchiani Alessandra Viola Maria Chiara Voci Lorenzo Voss

translations Laura Culver Sara Prencipe Alessandra Recchiuti Joan Rundo art direction and layout undesign picture editor white exclusive Italian distribution Messaggerie Libri spa t 800 804 900

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SUMMARY

10 ˜ EDITORIAL

EFFICIENCY INCREASES GROWTH

NEW FOUNDATIONS FOR THE EU ENERGY POLICY

by Alejo Vidal-Quadras

12 ˜ SCENARIOS THE WORLD’S FUTURES: TODAY’S INDICATIONS FOR TOMORROW’S SOLUTIONS

by Virginie Raisson

We are and will be increasingly more numerous, long-lived, healthier, and will consume huge quantities of products in a planet with resources in progressive depletion. The only way to survive is to use what we have better and produce more with the same amount of resources.

Efficiency: a need which also becomes an opportunity for development that enters into all areas of our daily life – social, economic, political – and that can become the engine of global growth.

Starting with the concept of energy, everything has to be rethought and restructured. Oxygen recounts this paradigm shift of everyday life, in which new paths, professions, and industries have already come into being: an economy that invents solutions for a sustainable future in which efficiency creates more efficiency, a progressive and spontaneous growth. Just as in nature (and as described by the Fibonacci sequence on the cover) we can too.

More numerous, more affluent, more technological, and always on the go: that is how we will become in the very near future. But at what price? The depletion of resources, exploitation of the earth’s surface, and economic imbalances are not written in our destiny. There are many clues that anticipate the possible scenarios that lie ahead. There is a way to live on a planet that is changing and it’s called efficiency: a way forward to be pursued with new models of economy and mentality.

18 ˜ SCENARIOS A SPRINGBOARD FOR GROWTH

by Alessandro Farruggia Europe has decided to undertake an ambitious path to raise the targets of energetic saving: this is an important step for reducing dependence on imports and encouraging production in order to relaunch the economy. And studies already point out that the investments made in this area in recent years have been the most fruitful.

× The right move for the future ×

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22 ˜ OPINIONS LETTER ON ENERGY TO FUTURE PRESIDENTS

by Richard Muller Energy efficiency should be seen as a priority on the agendas of governments around the world, starting with the more developed countries.

But citizens often fail to recognize its benefits. What does this mean in practice? What are some of the fields in which it can be applied?

In a sort of open letter, energy efficiency is made clear and tangible to all those who may become presidents one day.

28 ˜ INTERVIEW WITH

AMYLKAR ACOSTA MEDINA

COLOMBIA: AN ILLUMINATED COUNTRY

by Carlos Fernando Gaitán How can a country go from having energy instability and a period of strict rationing to receiving international recognition for its efficient energy system? The Colombian Minister of Energy explains this to Oxygen, telling us step by step about the stages, strategies, and organs that have made this success possible, thus becoming a model that other countries in South America could adopt.

44 ˜ CONTEXTS THE WORLD’S MOST ECOLOGICAL VILLAGES

by Tonia Mastrobuoni The third government headed by Merkel will have to deal with the delicate matter of incentives. Aid that over the years has allowed the creation of green models such as the Bavarian village of Wildpoldsried, a real driving force for the production of clean energy and tourism, and an example of sustainability and green building.

49 ˜ FOCUS

32 ˜ DATA VISUALIZATION

A TECHNOLOGICAL SUCCESS

by Lorenzo Voss

TOWARDS 2030

50 ˜ INTERVIEW WITH

34 ˜ ENEL FOUNDATION SPECIAL DOING MORE WITH LESS

by Alessandra Viola Energy efficiency is an area in which many are converging and one that has great growth potential in Italy.

The report by the Polytechnic University of Milan in collaboration with the Enel Foundation, a fundamental document for understanding why efficiency is synonymous with economic recovery reveals the impact on the national production system of this billion euro business.

38 ˜ ENEL FOUNDATION SPECIAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY IS...

40 ˜ INTERVIEW WITH

ROBERT BEAUREGARD

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE? A SLOW CITY

by Maria Chiara Voci Reflecting on city planning, today, means not being able to think of them except as in a sustainable way.

City and nature are not to be considered as two separate worlds, and for this reason, we have to start fighting the uncontrolled growth of cities and changing our way of living in the urban space.

JANE HENLEY

HOME GREEN HOME: GREEN BUILDING AS AN ANSWER TO THE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

by Michele Fossi Green building is one of the most powerful weapons in our possession to combat climate change, but also to give an answer to unemployment, the high cost of housing, public health, and even school dropouts, through high and low tech solutions. The CEO of the World Green Building Council (WGBC), the leading global association for the promotion of eco-architecture present in 80 countries, tells us how.

54 ˜ FUTURE TECH HOME AUTOMATION 3.0: DIALOGUE BETWEEN OBJECTS AND USERS

by Simone Arcagni

56 ˜ IN-DEPTH EFFICIENCY STORIES

by Gianluigi Torchiani

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62 ˜ IN-DEPTH

80 ˜ IN-DEPTH

PRECIOUS WORDS

by Andrea De Benedetti

EFFICIENCY SCHOOL

by Roberto Rizzo

Applying the concept of efficiency to a language can lead to various misunderstandings; in fact, there is the risk of confusing efficiency with simplicity, or forgetting that language is merely a tool for communication and therefore, it is efficient to the extent that those who use it do so in an efficient manner. From the era of classical Latin to the era of Twitter, here is a reflection on what we ask of language today.

It is often our children who teach us that it is our small daily habits that make a difference. This is because many schools are organizing initiatives to remind students that re-use, saving, recycling, and the diversity of use are just some of the practices that can make our existence on the planet more efficient. Youngsters learn about efficiency and sustainability at school, and then tell us about them.

68 ˜ FOCUS BRINGING ORDER TO CREATIVE CHAOS

by Riccardo Duranti

84 ˜ IN-DEPTH THE BALANCE OF CHANGE

by Donato Speroni

70 ˜ CONTEXTS

86 ˜ INTERVIEW WITH

ALL FOR ONE: THE STRENGTH OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

by Luca De Biase

NEW NATIONAL STRATEGIES

by Barbara Corrao

Widespread, coordinated, and active: this is the collective intelligence emerging from people and machines, which has been made even more present and powerful by the Internet. But can collective thought be oriented in order to be more effective and efficient than that of the individual? This is a reflection on the appropriateness of addressing global issues with a global mind.

Energy efficiency as a motor of development and employment, and as an essential factor to contain electricity bill costs and reduce CO2 emissions. This is the challenge on which businesses and families in Italy are focusing the spotlight in 2014. Oxygen has talked with the Director of the Ministry of Economic Development.

76 ˜ CONTEXTS

90 ˜ CONTEXTS

TRADING THE OLD ECONOMY FOR A NEW ONE

by Lauren Anderson

REVOLUTION AT HOME

by Gianfilippo Mancini

Sharing means, objects, knowledge, time, and experience: this is collaborative consumption, an idea of a human economy that relies on the support of technology to reach its protagonists. It is the return of practices such as trading, bartering, and sharing that are taking on new life through new ways, becoming a useful, profitable, and practical, social opportunity.

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SARA ROMANO

Today the free market of energy is facing new challenges and opportunities, with more informed clients, differentiated products, and a greater need for efficiency, sustainability, and safety. Enel’s goal is to transform the services offered by assisting clients at all stages required in order to make homes, offices, and buildings sustainable with regard to energy, which is the path to a breakthrough in efficiency.

94 ˜ CONTEXTS

112 ˜ SCENARIOS

MANY LINKS IN THE SMART GRIDS

by Livio Gallo

BIG DATA: THE REVOLUTION OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE

by Mario Rasetti

Enel is a leader in the development and implementation of smart grid technologies, with more than 34 million smart meters installed, added to an international experience of creation in the development of Smart City projects. And there are many projects throughout Italy that promote energy efficiency.

98 ˜ DATA VISUALIZATION

Energy efficiency is a concrete concept animating debate among scientists. Because those who are involved in physics every day are facing huge changes, such as the contemporary information revolution, which is creating more data than can ever be imagined. This data has to be managed in an efficient way: this is a new challenge for physics and energy.

SMART METER: TECHNOLOGY CONSOLIDATES

116 ˜ SCENARIOS

100 ˜ IN-DEPTH

THE MARVELOUS INEFFICIENCY OF HOMO SAPIENS

by Ian Tattersall

START-UP, SMART LAB

by Caris Vanghetti The challenge for the optimum utilization of energy can be conducted through various areas, from public lighting to data transmission, from the management of charging devices to the mapping of household consumption. This is the ambition of the Enel Lab program.

If we are convinced that evolution is synonymous with an improvement in striving for perfection, we will have to think again. Because Nature follows different rules, its own, in which surviving matters more than being perfect and in which the inefficiency of a species, such as ours, can produce brilliant and imaginative minds. In other words, effective.

104 ˜ PASSEPARTOUT

120 ˜ INTERVIEW WITH

DOES RICHER MEAN MORE EFFICIENT?

106 ˜ IN-DEPTH FUTURE THINGS

by Stefano Milano

108 ˜ INTERVIEW WITH

VITTORIO CHIESA

FROM FORDISM TO CROWDSOURCING: NEW SYSTEMS FOR PRODUCTION

by Luca Salvioli The advent of digital technologies has led to many innovations in industrial processes. The goal of this research also lies in the sharing of information between producers, retailers, and consumers. Among the different aspects that are involved, there is energy efficiency, which is no longer a utopia because the technologies are ready.

ALAIN BERTHOZ

WHEN IT IS NOT JUST THE BRAIN THAT DECIDES

by Pierangelo Garzia Is there such a thing as a purely rational decision? Are we able to decide in the most efficient way? The fact that science has said ‘no’ might seem counter-intuitive, but scientists know that human beings are conditioned in their decisionmaking processes by their past experience, age, gender, and by what they may believe they want but actually do not.

124 ˜ OXYGEN VS CO2 OPTIMIZATION THAT COMES FROM PLANTS

by Renato Bruni

126 ˜ SCIENCE AT THE TOYSTORE MAKE. PLAY. REMAKE

by Davide Coero Borga

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We keep on believing in all those people who fight to make their Country a better place, in their daily battles, great and small.

Battles we can win, by fighting them

TOGETHER Investing in research, financing startups, supporting the arts and social causes: That’s the way we fight.

Alongside the millions of individuals who, every day, turn into millions of warriors.

WHATEVER YOUR BATTLE, YOU HAVE ALL THE ENERGY TO WIN. INCLUDING OURS.

Together with

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CONTRIBUTORS

Contributors to this number 18 04

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01˜ Amylkar

02˜ Lauren

03˜ Robert

04˜ Alain

05˜ Barbara

Acosta Medina

Anderson

Beauregard

Berthoz

Corrao

An economist and politician, he has been the Minister of Mines and Energy since 2013. He has held various positions, political roles such as President of the Congress of the Republic, and leadership roles within Ecopetrol.

Chief Knowledge Officer of Collaborative Lab, she is a consultant and strategic analyst of the market and the construction of a global movement of collaborative consumption, one of the “ten ideas that will change the world,” according to Time.

He is Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia, and studies the urbanization of the United States and the decline of industrial cities after the Second World War. The author of numerous publications, he is also a professor at the University of Helsinki.

Member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, he is Professor of physiology of perception and action at the Collège de France, and since 1989, he has directed the laboratory.

He is author of numerous articles and books, his boo as La simplexité.

She is a journalist who contributes to the newspaper il Messaggero, writing about economics and energetic matters.

With Corrado Calabrò, she wrote The Italian network. TV and the new communication scenarios.

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06˜ Andrea

07˜ Luca

08˜ Riccardo

09˜ Alessandro

De Benedetti

De Biase

Duranti

Farruggia

A journalist, linguist and translator, he writes for GQ, Manifesto, and Guerin Sportivo. He is the author of Practice is worth more. Small immoral grammar of the Italian language, and also published a report on the Lisbon-Kiev Corridor 5.

A graduate in Economics and Social Sciences, he writes on innovation for Sole 24 Ore and Nova24, and teaches journalism and new media. Co-founder of ItaliaStartup, he is a member of the unit for the President of the Council on the Digital Agenda.

Recipient of the National Award for translation, he has translated the complete works of Raymond Carver and other important authors.

A professor of English literature and translation, he has written numerous books of poetry.

A journalist who writes on foreign environment, economy, and politics, he was among the winners of the ENEA’s Energy Environment Award. Since 1992, he has been following international summits on the environment.

10˜ Carlos Fernando

11˜ Livio

12˜ Jane

13˜ Gianfilippo

Gaitán

Gallo

Henley

Mancini

A Colombian journalist who writes on economy for El Tiempo, Dinero, and Portafolio, for which he runs their business blog. A member of the Association of Economic Journalists, in 2006 he received the ANIF’s National Prize for economic journalism.

Managing Director of the Infrastructures and Networks Division of Enel since 2005, from 2010 to 2013, he was President and founder of the EDSO Association for Smart Grids and previously served as Sales Manager of Enel’s clients.

Managing Director of the WGBC, she is working to ensure that the 90 national committees on sustainable architecture work together to promote this practice. Active as a speaker, she participates in several meetings on sustainability.

Managing Director of the Generation, Energy Management, and Market Division of Enel, he is responsible for managing and developing the retail market for electricity and gas in Italy.

14˜ Tonia

15˜ Richard

16˜ Virginie

17˜ Mario

Mastrobuoni

Muller

Raisson

Rasetti

The correspondent in Berlin for La Stampa, she has worked for the German radio station WDR, for Reuters, TMNews, and Il Riformista. She is the author of the book Wasted Youth. Why it is so hard to grow up in Italy.

A university professor and consultant to the Department of Defense of the U.S. Government, his lessons “Physics for Future Presidents” have received numerous awards and have been collected in the book Physics for Future Presidents.

Director of the Laboratory of geopolitics and forecasting studies of Lépac (www.lepac.org), she is responsible for analyses and negotiations for public international bodies. The author of several articles, she recently published 2033, Atlas des Futurs du Monde.

Professor of theoretical physics at the Polytechnic University of Turin, where he founded and directed the doctoral school, he is chairman of the ISI Foundation. Also a European Commission Counsellor, he has won the Majorana award and the Volta medal.

18˜ Sara

19˜ Ian

20˜ Caris

21˜ Alejo

Romano

Tattersall

Vanghetti

Vidal-Quadras

The head of the Directorate General for Nuclear Energy, renewable energy, and energy efficiency of Mise, she was a researcher and has held various roles in the energy sector at the Ministry of Economic Development.

Curator of the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he is a leading authority in the field of human fossil documentation. He has published several books.

An economic journalist, he was in charge of energy and finance for Finance & Markets and collaborated with Panorama and L’Espresso. More recently he has been responsible for the communication of the parliamentary groups of the 5 Star Movement.

Vice-President of the European Parliament, he is a member of the Committee on Industry, Research, and Energy, and of the Delegation for relations with Iraq. He is professor of Physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

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EDITORIAL

NEW FOUNDATIONS FOR THE EU ENERGY POLICY

by Alejo Vidal-Quadras Vice-President of the European Parliament

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s stated in the Strategy for Competitive, Sustainable and Secure Energy for 2020, energy is the life blood of our society. The well-being of people, industry and economy depends on safe, secure, sustainable, and affordable energy. Therefore, formulating the right energy policy is an essential task for the EU, which has identified three central goals: security of supply, competitiveness, and sustainability.

To achieve these objectives, energy efficiency plays a vital role. In brief, energy efficiency means doing more with less through a better use of energy resources. This strategy has obvious benefits. Firstly, energy efficiency helps to guarantee security of energy supply, by reducing energy imports, which in the EU represent as much as 50% of its current consumption, a figure that could reach 70% by 2030. Secondly, efficient energy means less CO2 and fewer harmful emissions, a reduced impact on eco-systems, and a better

quality of life for people. Last but not least, energy efficiency measures cut costs, thus enhancing the competitiveness of European industry, and reducing household expenditure and therefore the rate of fuel poverty. At the same time, it paves the way for new jobs and businesses such as in building renovation and refurbishment, compensating for the reduction of activity in the construction sector, which has been badly hit by the economic crisis. According to the European Commission’s data, it is estimated that up to 2 million jobs can be created or retained because of energy efficiency endeavors. Furthermore, the technological advances that European energy enterprises could achieve in this field would give them an advantage over our competitors abroad.

These positive features have become even more valuable in the current energy scenario, which is characterized by the EU’s high level of external dependency, the increase

in the energy demand worldwide, the pessimistic prediction about the medium-term longevity of oil and gas, and the threat presented by climate change.

Therefore, it is easy to understand why improving energy efficiency is one of the main axes of a sound EU energy policy and has found broad support in the European Parliament. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, we need to start considering it as one more type of fuel, alongside oil, gas, coal, or renewable energy, even though you cannot see or transport it as you can these other energy commodities.

If we focus on EU action in the field of energy efficiency, the first measures were adopted in the 1970s, when the first oil crisis gave rise to an energy policy intended to increase the low level of energy self-supply.

Since then, we have taken important steps forward and approved several Directives and Regulations in order to promote energy efficiency. This is not the place for a thorough examination of all the measures approved by the EU, but it is worth underlining that the last decade has been crucial in putting energy efficiency among the main priorities of European energy policy.

Hence, since 2000, we have regulated fields such as the energy performance of buildings, energy end-use efficiency, and energy services, eco-design of energy-using products, labelling of energy-related products, and cogeneration.

Furthermore, the Lisbon Treaty has provided the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU with an article which expressly recognises the promotion of energy efficiency and energy saving as a goal of the Union’s energy policy, and the European Council has established a specific, albeit non-binding, target for 2020: to reach a 20% improvement in energy efficiency. This target is measured by aiming to save 20% of the EU’s energy consumption compared to projections for 2020.

However, the EU is not on track to fully achieve these energy savings by 2020.

The most recent steps taken in this regard were the 2011 Energy Efficiency Plan and the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive. The latter repeals or amends several previous directives and aims to constitute a comprehensive piece of legislation covering all enduse sectors except transport.

In addition to legislation, financial support to encourage the application of energy efficiency measures is available through various EU programs and instruments such as the European Energy Efficiency Fund, launched in 2011 with a global volume of 265 million euros, the Intelligent Energy-Europe Program II, which focuses on removal of nontechnological barriers to energy efficiency and renewable energy market uptake, and the ELENA Facility, created to provide technical assistance grants to local and regional authorities for the development and launch of sustainable energy investments across their territories.

At this moment, the European institutions involved in the legislative process are discussing the framework for our energy and climate policy for 2030. The debate focuses on the question of which targets the EU wants to establish. In the current framework, apart from the energy efficiency target already mentioned, two other targets, which unlike the energy efficiency one are binding, were approved for 2020: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and to increase the share of renewable energy in the total mix to 20%.

For the new framework, the most controversial issue is the number of targets and whether or not they are binding. I hope we can learn from experience and not repeat the mistakes of the past. In my opinion, it would be advisable to establish an energy efficiency target which could be defined in terms of energy consumption divided by the GDP and not purely as energy savings. This way, economic growth would be taken into account. The reason is that this target should not lead to an absolute cap on energy consumption but stimulate competitiveness and sustainable growth.

In other words, we need to reduce the growth rate of internal energy consumption through a rational and economically sound usage which does not jeopardize social and economic growth.

It is true that we are going through a period of economic crisis where public and private investment is subject to great restrictions, but the benefits afforded by increasing energy efficiency justify a special effort in order to meet the target agreed upon for 2020 and establish a new and binding one for 2030.

Energy efficiency endeavors could create or preserve up to 2 million jobs. Furthermore, the technological advances that European energy enterprises could achieve in this field would give them an advantage over our competitors abroad

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SCENARIOS

THE WORLD’S FUTURES: TODAY’S INDICATIONS FOR TOMORROW’S SOLUTIONS

by Virginie Raisson Director of Lépac

More numerous, more affluent, more technological, and always on the go: that is how we will become in the very near future. But at what price?

The depletion of resources, exploitation of the earth’s surface, and economic imbalances are not written in our destiny. There are many clues that anticipate the possible scenarios that lie ahead. There is a way to live on a planet that is changing and it’s called efficiency: a way forward to be pursued with new models of economy and mentality.

When considering the future, the only thing we can be sure of is that it will be born from the present. Therefore, one should begin by examining today’s trends, not so much to outline how tomorrow will be, but how it could be.

First, we observe that life expectancy continues to grow: with the decline in infant and maternal mortality and the decrease in deaths related to infectious diseases, life expectancy in the last two decades has passed from an average of 65 to 70 years at a global scale. By 2050, the population of the rich countries might even manage to live for 120 years, thanks to advances in medicine.

We also note that in the over twenty past years, wars have continued to diminish. Instead of the twelve socalled major conflicts (those causing more than 1,000 deaths per year) that existed in 1991, today there are only seven. If this process is due to the fact that the cost of war has gradually increased as the economic interdependence has developed, it also relates to the increase in average purchasing power. Now acting 012

as a social contract in most emerging countries, promise of individual prosperity steers populations away from violence for both, the benefit of political stability and human rights.

For example, just think what the political regimes were in places like Latin America, the USSR, Yugoslavia, South Africa, and Cambodia in the Eighties and the Nineties!

Also, remember the poverty in which people had lived in China, India and Brazil until the Nineties.

Gradually having created a middle class thanks to global economic growth, today these countries are reorganizing world welfare state, well-being, investments, and production. And although inequalities are actually increasing all over the world, there is an increasing number of people who consume more and more, take better care of themselves, move from place to place, or attend college more than ever before. The number of new graduates for instance, could go from 128 million in 2010 to 206 million in 2020, an increase of five times higher than the growth of the world’s popula-

REGIONAL BREAKDOWN OF HOW THE MIDDLE CLASS EVOLVED

China India Asia (other) M-E and North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa America (other) Brazil Mexico USA and Canada Russia Europe (other) UK, Spain, Italy, France and Germany Japan

The colored sections, corresponding to geographical areas, show the evolution of the middle class since 1970, with forecasts up to 2030. Data ©LEPAC

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BASE 100 IN 1980

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THE WORLD’S FUTURES: TODAY’S INDICATIONS FOR TOMORROW’S SOLUTIONS

EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION, GDP, AND CONSUMPTION

World population GDP worldwide Consumption worldwide

ATLAS OF THE WORLD’S FUTURES

Virginie Raisson is the author of the book “2033. Atlas des futurs du monde”, published in Italy by Slow Food Editors (2033.

Atlas of the world’s futures). Thanks to the studies of Lépac (www.lepac.org), the book describes the present with maps and charts of great clarity deciphering the futures in gestation and tells us how we might become their protagonists.

If cell phones are raising the local economy in Africa, especially by allowing safer transfers of money or improving agricultural activities, its lowcost accessibility demands to cut production costs, and consequently, to reduce the wages and social rights of the workers who assemble the devices in China or Vietnam Data ©LEPAC

tion, that might very likely change the geography of the world’s knowledge, talent, and discoveries. And not only that… Because at the same time, civil society, democracy, and women’s rights also progress via the Internet, mobile phones, and social networks. By giving a global echo to local challenges and inviting public opinion to participate in political decisions indeed, Twitter, Weibo or Facebook now facilitate exchanges and debates in places like China, Burma, and Iran.

In summary and as faced with this brief report, the future seems to be full of good omens… at least for Brazilians, Indonesians and Angolans who consider their “Glorious Thirty” still to come.

But at what price?, may ask the people of Harbin, a Chinese city suffocated by population growth.

For how long?, may also wonder the people of Kiribati archipelago, which is likely to disappear from the map because of rising oceans.

And how?, may finally answer young Europeans disillusioned by the crisis, unemployment, and the pessimistic media.

So are we witnessing the last breath of an industrial civilization that is being exhausted or is it a durable detente? And are the vagaries of the climate and the economy the premises of the impending apocalypse or the genesis of a new era?

Obviously, we have to wait for an answer, because the future has not been written yet. However, we can already put together the clues at our disposal and identify the choices for a desirable future that must be made right now.

To start with, the expansion of the middle class and its growth in large urban centers provide us with clues to the standardization of lifestyles and diets. But are we aware that by 2030 Asia’s share of middle-class consumption should increase by 570%, and that by that date it will represent 3,5 times that of Europe and North America combined? In addition, it is also estimated that accommodating one and a half billion more people twenty years from now would require the construction of at least 100,000 homes a day! Not to mention the 25% increase in the number of calories consumed between now and 2050 would require a doubling of agricultural production.

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More generally, based on demographic and economic projections worldwide, the generalization of the Western way of life raises the important question of the resources availability, distribution and optimal use. In other words, and in more general terms, politics, technology, or the decline in fertility will be useless if the whole humanity decides to align their habits and desires to those of the rich countries. Knowing that the need to preserve the way of life of future generations is the only valid argument for opposing the legitimate desire of emerging countries to achieve the comfort of our societies, Europeans will have to join forces for progress in following the dual path of efficiency and sobriety. Given the meager natural endowment of Europe in terms of mineral resources or fossil fuels indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the economic, social, and political cost of commitment to european solidarity will be significantly less than that which the impoverishment and frustration of the middle classes would expose Europe to in the coming decades. As for weak messages, xenophobia and populism are now increasing in most EU countries.

In turn, the global reorganization of production and consumption refers to our model of growth and competitiveness as well as to its energy and its environmental impacts.

For example, it is estimated that the total number of air passengers will double by 2030, so as the number of vehicles by 2035. Now, knowing that transport already makes up one-third of the global energy demand and about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, it immediately raises a motorization issue... And if exploiting shale gas deposits and new natural gas wells in the Arctic region will temporarily marginalize the problem of energy prices, it should hardly conceal the increasing cost of pollution and climate changes.

Furthermore, this cost may be so high that the economic growth could eventually and paradoxically produce scarcity, and make our economic model exert itself.

Yet, to the extent that it seems increasingly useless to try to restrict the mobility of people and restrict the free flow of commerce, supporters of growth are turning to technological 015

oxygen | 22 — 02.2014

progress, making an appeal for the energy savings that would result and that ability to boost development.

In fact, because they are mobile, globalized, and equipped with free broadband connections, technologies could reformulate all the possible futures, from the sphere of agro-forestry to that of health or privacy. Thanks to the Internet indeed, humanity is being invited to adopt new practices, create new economic models (P2P, C2C, etc.), reconfigure spaces, and change the distances; also to reorganize solidarity, trade, and health care systems. And while the northern hemisphere is producing new forms of collaboration, innovation and inventiveness are being stimulated in the southern hemisphere. Finally, new technologies carry the hope of cleaner, more equitable, supportive, sober, reasoned, and transparent development. However, looking closer, it appears that mobile technologies and their rapid spread are sending rather confused signals about the transformation of the world. For instance, as promising access to education for a huge number of people through e-learning or the MOOCs, they subject humanity to the almost complete monopoly by China, where 95% of the rare earth elements and minerals essential to new technologies are found. Similarly, although cell phones are raising the local economy in Africa, especially by allowing safer transfers of money or improving agricultural activities, its low-cost accessibility demands to cut production costs, and consequently, to reduce the wages and social rights of the workers who assemble the devices in China or Vietnam. Finally, if on the one hand mobile technologies permit avoiding a considerable amount of movement (and therefore time and energy) by delivering information in real time, on the other hand, the data centers where the information is stored already account for about

2% of the consumption of electricity worldwide, and 7% in the case of Europe. Today data centers are increasing by approximately 20% each year, and by 2020, these may emit even more CO2 than air traffic worldwide!

In other words, knowing that new technologies are going to rewrite our future, new constraints may appear with them, just like they appeared in the past with the steam engine, the reciprocating engine, and electricity. In short, new technologies will not shield humanity from the challenges related to the depletion of resources, nor supply the resilience that will be called for.

On the contrary: these should convince us to implement the necessary changes, without further delay.

The first change is both an economic and energy matter, and it should motivate us to change our financial logic and industrial growth in favor of the less predatory dynamics that are already proposed by the circular types of functional, collaborative, and socially and jointly responsible economic models in order to optimize the use of our resources. However, to be globally effective, the new forms of production and sharing would require a profound change in our fiscal policies in order to enhance the scarcity of resources, the stability of industrial goods, the quality of services offered, the ecological impact (climate, pollution, exhaustion), the value added to our welfare or the energy efficiency of the product. Until the time comes when the price of our cell phones or our burgers also includes that of the depletion of resources necessary for their production, it is unlikely that we will be able to go for an innovative model in which prosperity and well-being are not only related to the exploitation of resources and their consumption.

Opposing this almost utopian ambition is the reality of the democratic agenda that subjects the public interest (and the long-term policies

If cell phones or our burgers prices won’t include the depletion of resources necessary for their production, we can’t have an economy in which prosperity is not related to the exploitation of resources

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that they require) to the logic of elections, which, however, require that the elected candidate will produce results in a few years. But an election is not won in Europe or anywhere else by promising a carbon tax, the introduction of fishing quotas, the discontinuation of subsidies for cattle breeding, or raising the price of electricity. In Rome, Paris or Berlin, the chances of a candidacy are still measured according to promises of growth and progress that continue to conceal the limitedness of resources and the real stakes. Therefore, it will be necessary to adopt other forms of governance, most of which do not sacrifice the environment and resources on the altar of parliamentary democracy. Some may suggest that future generations should be granted some kind of political representation. Others suggest to extend the principles of precaution and liability to new areas, such as natural resources or water; or to adjust the level of decision to the extent of what is at stake, especially in large urban areas; to introduce mechanisms of the collective or collaborative management of common goods regardless of the State; to develop new forms of citizenship, and so on.

In short, the possibilities exist to adapt democracy to the reorganization of the population, economy, and natural resources in next decades. However, the achievement of these measures and solutions first requires a true change in mentality. As a first and essential step for a desirable future indeed, we need to overcome our fear of change so as not to yield to more stringent and more manifest interests, whether they be powerful lobbies… or our own habits!

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SCENARIOS

A SPRINGBOARD FOR GROWTH

by Alessandro Farruggia Journalist

Europe has decided to undertake an ambitious path to raise the targets of energetic saving: this is an important step for reducing dependence on imports and encouraging production in order to relaunch the economy. And studies already point out that the investments made in this area in recent years have been the most fruitful.

Rather than it being a constraint, there is now an opportunity. And to get out of a deep crisis like the one we are currently in, this opportunity cannot not be exploited.

Economic surveys show us that energy efficiency is one of the best solutions for relaunching a mature country, and they indicate that it might be a strategic driver of development, an engine of the GDP, the level of employment, and of the entire production chain.

Therefore, a green light has been given to the Confindustria’s Smart Energy Project, which through a realistic set of measures to be taken between 2014 and 2020 resulting in savings of 16.8 Mtoe of primary energy (thus less than the 20 foreseen by the National Energy Strategy), expects that, concerning costs on the public budget of €10,485 in 7 years (i.e. less than what is spent in a year for renewable electricity), there would be an economic impact of €42.2 billion with a total net benefit of over €31 billion.

This awareness is widespread. Energy efficiency makes sense not only environ-

Energy efficiency does not mean tightening our belts, but rather, using energy better: less to do more things

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Energy efficiency makes sense not only environmentally but also economically, and its impact goes beyond common perception mentally but also economically, and its impact goes beyond common perception.

Considering the investments made since 1973 in 11 major developed countries, the IEA estimates that in 2010, energy efficiency was the first source of energy, with a cumulative impact on the annual use of 63 exajoules compared to the 43 of oil and 22 of natural gas. So it pays off, and it will yield even more in the future.

The 2013 World Energy Outlook wrote “a renewed focus on energy efficiency is being asserted, which extends benefits far beyond improving competitiveness. In addition to lowering industrial costs, energy efficiency measures mitigate energy costs for property owners and reduce energy imports. The problem is that two-thirds of the potential for economic efficiency is likely to not be exploited unless some economic barriers are overcome, primarily the fossil fuel subsidies, which amount to 544 billion dollars a year.” A great deal of political will would help and Brussels – even at the risk of a split, seeing as London and Warsaw are against it – seems determined to raise the bar from the 20-20-20 targets of the EU climate and energy package of 2007 to the more ambitious 40-30-40, presented by the committee in late January, and which has been discussed and evaluated positively in the European Parliament. This is a bold step, seeing as only half of the expected 20% has been achieved so far: but instead of hiding behind the inability to do more, the Commission has chosen the path of ambition.

“It is essential for our competitiveness and the stability of the European regulatory framework to give a clear signal to our businesses,” emphasizes Anne Delvaux, member of the European Parliament representing the European People’s Party and speaker of the Environment Committee.

“A 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 30% in renewables, and 40% in energy efficiency would allow investors to have a medium-term vision, which is essential for any economic activity. The three mandatory targets are also essential for reducing our dependence on non-EU countries. The EU is the largest importer of fossil fuels in the world. Our resources are essentially re020

newable. To reduce our imports and the trade balance deficit of our energy, we can act in two ways: on the production of renewable energy and on reducing our consumption. That is why I hope that energy efficiency becomes the true cornerstone of our strategy. In addition, a recent communication by the European Commission has confirmed the great potential of these sectors in terms of creating jobs without the necessity of relocation. In a period of economic difficulty, this is an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss out on.”

Energy efficiency is also a powerful vector of innovation. Just look at the work carried out by Enel Lab which, as one of the finalists of the 2012 edition, demonstrated a project such as Calbatt, a technology that allows optimizing the charging cycle of batteries, created from a spin-off of the University of Calabria. Or Athonet, a technological solution that enables the creation of a network of traffic data for smart grids. Or even Smart-L, a system for the management of public lighting that improves energy efficiency and at the same time, controls the territory, because in addition to intelligent public lighting, it also allows for video surveillance and traffic monitoring. So energy efficiency does not mean tightening our belts, but rather, using energy better: less energy to do more things. According to the Polytechnic University of Milan, in Italy the potential savings range from 195 to 288 TWh, 95% in the residential construction, tertiary, and industrial sectors; but to achieve this, there needs to be a reduction in the gap between the strategy and its operational implementation.

Suffice it to recall that Law 10 of 1991 placed us at the forefront of regulations on energy saving in the building sector, but then up until 2005/2006 implementation decrees were lacking, and for a long time now, the norm has been an exercise in style without any real ability to produce effects. The potential therefore exists, and the industry sector is ready, but a political change of pace is needed in order to turn this dream into reality.

The IEA estimates that in 2010, energy efficiency was the first source of energy, with a cumulative impact on the annual use of 63 exajoules compared to the 43 of oil and 22 of natural gas

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OPINIONS

LETTER ON ENERGY TO FUTURE PRESIDENTS

by Richard Muller Professor of Physics at the University of Berkeley

Energy efficiency should be seen as a priority on the agendas of governments around the world, starting with the more developed countries. But citizens often fail to recognize its benefits. What does this mean in practice? What are some of the fields in which it can be applied? In a sort of open letter, energy efficiency is made clear and tangible to all those who may become presidents one day.

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The biggest item on the alternative-energy menu is not nuclear power, not solar, not natural gas, not coal or oil or synfuel or any other supply. It is something with much greater potential, cheaper than cheap, and it could be ready and in place in time for your reelection campaign. This magical energy source is not actually a new energy source at all; it is an increase in our energy productivity. That means accomplishing the same tasks we now do, but using less energy.

There is no more urgent energyrelated action for you to take when elected than to create and implement a sensible energy productivity policy. The most amazing aspect of your policy will be its cost: zero. Zilch. In fact, it should be profitable.

That’s what I meant by ‘cheaper than cheap.’

In 1979 President Jimmy Carter asked the public to turn down their thermostats and “put on a sweater.” Most people didn’t like it. Soon, as the oil supplies increased and the price crashed many people took off their sweaters and turned up the heat. Worse, they were left with a strong impression that energy conservation meant a change in lifestyle, to one that they considered less comfortable. That was a very unfortunate outcome, because increasing our energy productivity does not necessarily require any sacrifice at all. Many people (particularly in Berkeley) say that putting on a sweater is not a decrease in quality of life.

So let me make a stronger statement: properly implemented, an increase in energy productivity does not reduce even the perceived lifestyle of those who participate.

All this sounds incredible for several reasons. The first is the old dictum that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. How can there be an action with no downside? The second is that people aren’t stupid. If this is such a great idea, why isn’t it being done already? There are explanations for both of these, but they lie primarily in the realm of psychology – the result of poorly 024

explained and poorly implemented policies in the past.

It’s the very boring nature of this investment that may explain why people don’t take advantage of it. It turns out that ordinary boring but comfortable energy conservation yields a far better return on investment than virtually anything else, and it is essentially riskfree. The web page www.energy.gov/public-services/homes/ home-weatherization gives a formula for calculating the payback period – that is, the number of years it takes before the savings in energy pay for the cost of installing insulation.

Without going into the details, let me simply say that the formula takes into account plausible costs, plausible efficiencies, plausible everything, and shows in its example a payback period of 5.62 years. Surveys taken by public utilities have shown that many people think a period of 5.62 years is awful; it takes way too long to get your money back. It sounds like you’re making a loan (to your home) and receiving no interest. After 5.62 years, you’re just even. Terrible investment! They conclude they can’t afford to install insulation. But let’s look at the investment more carefully.

THERMAL-CAMERA Sensitive to infrared radiation, this camera detects the heat emitted from an object and converts it into an electronic signal which is then translated into a thermal image. Developed for military purposes, today it is used to assess energy efficiency in areas such as industry, construction, electronics and architecture.

LETTER ON ENERGY TO FUTURE PRESIDENTS |

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The interest rate on CSLs is 209% and if you add in the short lifetime of a tungsten filament bulb, the value of the CFL is substantially greater

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Why don’t more people do this?

Part of the reason is undoubtedly confusion. Instead of ‘payback period,’ which is a new concept for many people, and has the prejudice that any payback period greater than 3 years is a hardship on the consumer, we should refer to conservation measures in terms of the annual return on investment.

Replace incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). The effective interest rate is 209% and if you add in the short lifetime of a tungsten filament bulb, the value of the CFL is substantially greater.

Have you switched to CFLs? If not, why not? Is it that the savings are too small? The cost of operating an inefficient tungsten bulb is only a little more than 3¢ per day. With each CFL, you save less than $1 per month.

So who cares? People in the developing world care, maybe because they are more sensitive to the savings. In my travels in Morocco, Paraguay, Kenya, Costa Rica, and Rwanda, I was amazed to see how common CFLs were.

When $1 per month makes a difference, people notice.

For the home owner, 10 CFLs add up to $10 per month, $120 per year. For big companies that invest in millions of bulbs, the 209% return is spectacular.

When you are president, in addition to cajoling your public into making 209% safe, tax-free investments, and educating them about the payback formula, there are some other things you can do.

Cool roofs. The tiles are somewhere between orange and brown, similar to terra-cotta.

You might never guess that this roof reflects more than half of the sunlight – half of the incoming heat – that hits it.

That’s because more than half of sunlight is infrared heat radiation, invisible to the eye but not to your skin, and not to the roofs of houses. If you make the surface just right, you can reflect the heat without affecting the visible color.

Are you thinking of installing solar cells on your roof? If you use air-conditioning in your 026

home, you are likely to get a higher return on your investment if you put up a cool roof instead. You will reduce the heat absorbed on your roof by a factor of 2, and you can save considerable money on the energy you didn’t need for the air conditioner.

Improvements in automobile efficiency can also be a great investment. When I was young, typical auto mileage was 16 miles per gallon. Now the US average for autos is 30 miles per gallon. What’s the difference? At 10,000 miles per year, the difference in the amount of gas you’ll need is 292 gallons per year, and at $3.50 per gallon, that’s $1,020 per year. If you paid $10,000 extra for that efficiency, then your payback period would be 10 years, giving an effective interest rate of 100% ÷ 10 = 10% per year.

Refrigerators sound like a dull topic, but they give a wonderful example of energy efficiency leading to win-win solutions.

LETTER ON ENERGY TO FUTURE PRESIDENTS |

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In implementing energy policy it is important to identify the popular measures that really don’t accomplish any good

In 1974 the average refrigerator in the United States had a volume of 14 cubic feet; in 2012 the average is 23 cubic feet. Do these higher-capacity refrigerators use more energy? No! The newer refrigerators use 72% less energy. The new refrigerators have better insulation and use more efficient motors, reducing electricity waste.

In implementing energy policy, beware – some measures you can take sound good but, upon more careful consideration, don’t accomplish much.

Many expensive conservation schemes are pushed because they make people feel good.

It is important to identify the popular measures that really don’t accomplish any good.

Many people take it for granted that increased public transportation is the obvious solution to our over-reliance on autos. Buses carry more people per pound than does a car, so you might think they would get more miles per gallon per person.

And they would – if buses were always full. Public transportation can save enormous energy

when used in crowded urban environments, but ironically, it can waste energy when used in suburbs and countryside. A detailed study of bus transportation in suburbs around the country done by the Institute of Transportation Studies at Berkeley found that the average break-even point is determined by population density. If there are more than 15 households per acre, then public transportation works. If the population density is lower, then using buses increases energy use.

This means that if you live in a suburb with quarter-acre or even one-tenth-acre lots, your community will not save energy by establishing bus routes.

There are often hidden subtleties and unintended consequences. Recognize that people who are misinformed about its virtues are likely to be upset when they find out that they’ve been misled.

Extract from Energy for Future Presidents

by Richard Muller.

Published by arrangement with Brockman Inc.

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INTERVIEW

COLOMBIA: AN ILLUMINATED COUNTRY interview with Amylkar Acosta Medina Minister of Mines and Energy of Colombia

by Carlos Fernando Gaitรกn Journalist

How can a country go from having energy instability and a period of strict rationing to receiving international recognition for its efficient energy system? The Colombian Minister of Energy explains this to Oxygen, telling us step by step about the stages, strategies, and organs that have made this success possible, thus becoming a model that other countries in South America could adopt.

In a just few years, Colombia has gone from having blackouts to an efficient management of its energy, and the Minister of Mines and Energy explains how, in the midst of strict rationing rules, the country gave birth to a new model of power generation that is now recognized worldwide for its importance. “We did not achieve this goal overnight. First Colombia had to go through the bitter experience of power rationing which lasted for 14 months, in 1992 and 1993.”

This period of blackouts, known as ‘el apagón’, was when the government gave birth to a new model of energy generation, which today enables the country to rank fourth in the world for sustainability and fifth for efficiency, according to the classification of the World Energy Congress which brings together 180 countries from around the world. It recognizes the Colombian Minister of Mines and Energy, Amylkar Acosta as one of the most competent people in the sector, and who, as a member of Congress, was part of the committee that drafted the new lines of energy policy in this South American country. “This international recognition primarily

has to do with the proportion of the renewable energy mix that derives from water, which represents more than 74% of the country’s generation capacity.” The Minister explained that the blackout taught some lessons that were incorporated into Law 143 of 1994, in which the future of the sector took shape and the new rules of the game were established.

“One of the most important matters was to give greater participation to private investors. In Latin America, the sector vacillated between regulation and deregulation. The region has had a long history of state investment: this was interrupted when a middle ground was enforced through this law. We shared the premise that ‘there must be more market possible and as much state as necessary’. More colloquially, not too much to burn the saint, enough to light him up”, Acosta noted.

And that model has paid off. The starting point was the fact that the state should intervene only to ensure that the market functioned properly. And this policy has remained unchanged since then. Very clear legislation and the creation of a regulatory body were 029

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added: the Commission for Energy and Gas Regulation (CREG), supplemented by experts for fixed periods, and even through it depends on the Ministry, it has sufficient autonomy to establish the rules of the game.

“Being able to rely on clear and stable rules has significantly contributed to making the Colombian electricity sector one of the most attractive for private investment. This means that the rates really do meet the technical criteria and are not a political decision.” According to Acosta, another factor that has contributed greatly to the efficiency is that, with the signals that the CREG has given to the market, Colombia has gone from having a generation portfolio that was too dependent on water generation to having increased its component of thermal generation, thus gaining in reliability and stability.

Acosta pointed out that one of the reasons for rationing was having underestimated the cost of water. It had started with the thought that fuel from water energy would not be expensive, its being simply water, and instead the consumption of thermal plants had a higher cost for their input.

For this reason, the thermal power plants were discarded when the time came to define a strategy to expand. “We were then able to introduce a new variable in the model, in addition to the criterion of minimum cost, and taking even the slightest risk into consideration. That was why the ‘reliability fee’ came

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into being, which has made the execution of the largest projects that the electrical system of Colombia can count on possible. In a sense, it is a surcharge that is added onto the end users’ rates.”

For the Minister, it is a kind of insurance or shoring to ensure the reliability and stability of the sector. “I have made comparisons with other countries where there is no such fee for reliability, but where there have been not one but many blackouts in recent years. Whereas in Colombia, there have been no more blackouts. And the explanation is that we have this protective shield,” Acosta says. And although the fact that all these measures have allowed the country to get to the point where it is in the field of energy efficiency, industrialists have complained about the price of energy in Colombia. That is why our ministry has commissioned a study that sets out a series of recommendations to reduce the cost of generation, which should have consequences on the utility bills for both factories and private homes.

For this reason, from now on we will be working more on the efficiency of trade and transmission variables, taking advantage of the fact that the five-year period of the revision of the current model is almost over, and try to reduce the rates. And this is compounded by other decisions of the CREG, such as the change in methodology for the procurement of natural gas that until 2013, allowed it to negotiate for 80% of the gas that Colombia will consume

COLOMBIA: AN ILLUMINATED COUNTRY |

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this year at a price of 30% less. And since gas is the fuel of thermal power stations, it is expected that this reduction will have an impact on the end users.

Another measure by which the government will seek to achieve greater efficiency has to do with the application of a rate differential which consists of establishing a lower rate for consumption during off-peak hours.

More recently, through the Program of rational and efficient use of energy (Pruore) and the strategy of limited emissions of carbon, energy efficiency measures have been established that can help to effectively organize and manage transport systems for both passengers and freight.

The first and the second program will both seek not only to reduce power consumption and energy costs, but also to reduce congestion caused by vehicles, noise and air pollution, the risk of accidents, and to minimize the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, which will ensure sustainable economic growth.

In the transport sector, the estimated potential for energy efficiency is obtained with the models of ground (78%) and air (9.5%) transportation. In the case of use of fuel, there is an estimated 21% theoretical potential, mainly due to the replacement of fossil fuels (diesel and gasoline). In this sense, Minister Acosta ensures us that energy efficient transport offers enormous potential to reduce the demand for oil, as well as for energy in general. He also maintains that the use of advanced technologies and alternative fuels (among other things, electric and hybrid vehicles), the change in transportation systems (integrated mass transit), proper maintenance of vehicles, good management practices, and renewing the vehicle fleet are some of the recommendations that will help improve the sustainability of urban transport as part of a strategy of sustainable mobility.

Similarly, good habits of energy consumption, the use of efficient appliances, and the replacement of incandescent bulbs with those that reduce fuel consumption and, consequently, utility bills, are being promoted in Colombia.

“All these measures and actions that the government has undertaken and which also include the creation of a National Agency for Energy Efficiency, have received international acclaim. It has all been made possible thanks to the alliance between the public and private sectors through which the country has managed to improve its competitiveness and its energy infrastructures.”

One of the most important matters was to give greater participation to private investors.

We shared the premise that “there must be more market possible and as much state as necessary”

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– 80%

– 40%

GOAL FOR 2050 The reduction in emissions by the EU countries, as compared to 1990

GOAL FOR 2030 The reduction in emissions by the EU countries, as compared to 1990

+ 27% RENEWABLE ENERGY The share of renewable energy should increase by 27% concerning the EU’s energy consumption by 2030

Cm

COLUMN

| DATA VISUALIZATION

TOWARDS 2030 – 43%

edited by Oxygen On January 22, 2014, the European Commission publicly announced the objectives for 2030 in the field of climate and energy. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the use of renewable energy will be the key to the agenda of all the EU countries. And improved energy efficiency will help to achieve these ambitious new targets, because, as it emerged during their formalization, no transition to a competitive, safe, and sustainable energy system will be possible without efficiency.

– 30% OUTSIDE THE EU ETS The reduction compared to 2005 in emissions to which the sectors not covered by the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) should try to meet by 2030

INSIDE THE EU ETS The sectors included in the European system of emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) must be reduced by 43% compared to the emissions in 2005

SPECIAL

DOING MORE WITH LESS

Possible solutions from research by the Enel Foundation and the Polytechnic University of Milan

by Alessandra Viola Journalist

Energy efficiency is an area in which many are converging and one that has great growth potential in Italy. The report by the Polytechnic University of Milan in collaboration with the Enel Foundation, a fundamental document for understanding why efficiency is synonymous with economic recovery reveals the impact on the national production system of this billion euro business.

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2% OF THE GDP the impact energy efficiency in Italy can have on the national economy by 2020

Is it possible to reconcile energy security, access to energy at competitive prices, and environmental sustainability? Already dubbed the ‘energy trilemma’, this is the challenge that the future holds. But as complicated as the problem may seem (and actually is), the solution for resolving everything is incredibly simple: to focus on just one area, that of energy efficiency. Enel is convinced of this, and has decided to invest its own resources and research in this area, but not without having carefully done the math. Overall, the business is worth about €500 billion between now and 2020, and among other things, as the analysts have been saying for some time, it could also lead us out of the crisis by supporting our economic recovery. But do not be confused: we are not talking about saving energy, and thereby a contraction in energy use (such as heating the house less in order to pay a lower heating bill), but rather about making homes, transport, and industries more efficient, with the aim of consuming less while doing the same things as before, so there is no need to scale down our goals. The data contained in the report State and prospects of

energy efficiency in Italy, compiled by the Polytechnic University of Milan in collaboration with the Enel Foundation and presented at the conference “Energy efficiency for new growth. The challenges for accessible, safe, and sustainable energy” is clear: the recovery really could go this route, not only in economic terms, but also with regard to new jobs and supporting the Italian supply chain.

The biggest savings would come from the housing sector, which alone is worth 95% of the possible Italian growth in energy efficiency from now until 2020: in total, it comes to a figure between 195 and 288 TWh (depending on whether it refers to a scenario of moderate or optimal growth).

According to the study, the application of tools and systems for energy efficiency could generate an impact on the national economy equal to 2% of its GDP and a saving of between 50 and 72 million tons of CO2 between now and 2020. Added to this would be an increase in employment of up to 2% against a reduction of between 12 and 18% of the total energy consumption: numbers that in times of crisis make your head spin. “Energy is the major

We are not talking about saving energy, but rather about making homes, transport, and industries more efficient, with the aim of consuming less while doing the same things as before, without the need to scale down our goals

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enabling factor of a production system and of the country’s welfare,” says Fulvio Conti, CEO and General Manager of Enel. “Decreasing the cost of energy and making it level with that of other countries can be the basis, a kind of platform for development. Today 85% of our energy is imported from various countries and in various forms, and this weighs on the national economy. On the other hand, the incentives for renewables have been managed poorly and absurd things have happened in the past: for example, using money from the energy account, Italians did not support its renewable energy made in Italy, but bought solar panels from China and Germany, and accordingly the utilities, such as Enel, which had focused on the production, had to install their panels in Africa because the market was already saturated.

However, Italy is more efficient than other countries for various reasons, the first of which is that, because energy costs us more, we have always tried to save it. In addition, we have power generation plants that are among the most efficient and advanced in existence, with state of the art distribution networks.

We are also the only country in the world in which each user is equipped with their own digital meter. Nevertheless, there are areas where we still have a long way to go: the next steps should involve a deregulation that streamlines the sector, the elimination of the progressive nature of the electricity bill – based on assumptions that have become out of date –, stability, and the creation of a national chain of energy efficiency. “This latter point is not a trivial one. According to the Polytechnic’s study, if the energy efficiency supply chain were completely Italian, the incidence of annual turnover on the GDP would be between 2 and 4%, with an increase of up to 460,000 annual labor units. In this scenario though, the difficulty of access to incentives (such as tax deductibility), the lack of effectiveness in the addressing of the incentives, the complexity, and at times, the inadequacy of the laws governing the sector act as barriers. Barriers that should be removed quickly, to kick off a series of interventions especially aimed at making our homes and means of transportation more energy efficient.

“Until twenty years ago, the industrial sector was the largest consumer of energy, but today the transport and housing sectors are at the top,” Jorge Vasconcelos, President of Newes recalls. “It is true that in the coming years, the use of oil in Europe will decrease, but the use of 036

The European Union program calls for lowering its energy demand by 20% by 2020. Ultimately, starting from 2010 until 2035, there will be an average annual reduction in energy intensity of 1.8%

460,000 A YEAR the number of jobs that energy efficiency can generate in Italy

DOING MORE WITH LESS |

methane will increase: so we should convert to electric mobility and upgrade our housing sector, or we will never achieve the goals that we have set for ourselves.

Besides, the overall inefficiency in the world is 50%, which means that for every unit of energy, there is another one that is not used and is lost.” In Europe, we rank just a little better (at 40%), but this is still a huge waste, in view of energy generation that is still expensive and polluting. This is why all the great powers have already started to move. “China will reduce its energy intensity by 16% by 2016, Japan will lower its fuel consumption by 10% by 2030, and the United States is already adopting new standards to optimize and reduce the use of fuel,” states Paolo Andrea Colombo, President of Enel, “while for its part, the European Union program calls for lowering its energy demand by 20% by 2020. Ultimately, starting from 2010 until 2035, there will be an average annual reduction in energy intensity of 1.8%. Therefore, we are facing an important period full of opportunities, the benefits of which, however, we will be able to reap only in part unless Italy adopts the necessary tools. We will need new products and services that introduce a reduction in consumption through their control. With this in mind, it will also be essential to remove legal and bureaucratic barriers that impede the adoption of good practices: this is a key point, because in the field of energy efficiency, Italy has accumulated more knowledge and skills than any other country, a heritage that could be one of the levers to pull to get us out of the crisis and ensure sustainable growth, and one that cannot and should not be blocked.”

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SCENARIOS The Polytechnic University of Milan has published a report which , with reference to the energy efficiency relapse, proposes two types of development scenarios: one is optimal and the other is moderate.

Their manifestation is linked to the implementation of changes in legislation, technology, and the environment, and define different ranges of growth.

FROM 50 TO 72 MILLION TONS amount less of CO2 emissions between now and 2020

12-18% OF ENERGY reduction of consumption that can be achieved by 2020

There are areas where we still have a long way to go: the next steps should involve a deregulation that streamlines the sector, the elimination of the progressive nature of the electricity bill, stability, and the creation of a national chain of energy efficiency 037

SPECIAL

ENERGY EFFICIENCY IS...

Technologies and global benefits infographic by Undesign Invest, save, redistribute, optimize: efficiency is not deprivation: instead, it is the different management of resources and thus, the creation of new opportunities for the growth of national economies.

This can be done through new technologies. But which ones? Where should they be applied? Construction and industry are the sectors that could bring about the majority of the energy savings (as much as 95% in Italy by 2020), as well as the transport sector. A structured system that will have very important repercussions not only in terms of cost savings and fewer emissions, but above all, it will be source of new investments, new industries, and new jobs. “Status and prospects of energy efficiency in Italy�, a report by the Polytechnic University of Milan and the Enel Foundation, has predictions that include the most optimistic scenarios and other more moderate ones, and which together provide a framework and a range of extremely significant data.

OPAQUE SURFACES TWh: from 39.6 to 63.4 CO2: from 7.92 to 12.68 Mt Work unit: ~ 651,500

PHOTOVOLTAIC - PV TWh: from 11.3 to 17 CO2: from 4.86 to 7.31 Mt Work unit: ~ 161,000

CONDENSING BOILERS TWh: from 22.1 to 34.7 CO2: from 4.42 to 6.94 Mt Work unit: ~ 115,000

ELECTRIC CAR 3 or 4 times more efficient than heat engines from 1 to 2 million in Italy by 2020 HEAT PUMPS TWh: from 33.3 to 53.3 CO2: from 6.66 to 10.66 Mt Work unit: ~ 428,000

COGENERATION TWh: from 5.6 to 7.5 CO2: from 2.41 to 3.23 Mt Work unit: ~ 5,800

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TWh the terawatt is a multiple of the kilowatt-hour. It is used to indicate energy consumption and production at national and global levels. For example, the electricity consumption in Italy in 2012 was approximately 325 TWh. The amount of savings per year is shown in the graph.

CO2 Mt CO2 emissions are calculated here in millions of tons. In Italy in 2013 the CO2 emitted was approximately 435 Mt. The range of savings per year is shown in the graph.

WORK UNIT The conventional unit of measurement that converts hours worked by full-time employees. It indicates the number of workers that each sector requires, both those who are new and those already employed.

The growth shown in the graph is what is expected by 2020.

Environmental/economic consequences in Italy by 2020 from 288.41 to 194.96 TWh per year from 71.65 to 49.52 million tons of CO2 from euro 511.75 to 352.02 billion in business by 2020 from 2,474,102 to 3,726,637 work unit by 2020 EFFICIENT LIGHTING TWh: from 14.2 to 17 CO2: from 6.11 to 7.31 Mt Work unit: ~ 13,925 BIOMASS HEATERS TWh: from 32.2 to 38.6 CO2: from 6.44 to 7.72 Mt Work unit: ~ 190,500

INDUCTION COOKERS TWh: from 0.75 to 1 CO2: from 0.32 to 0.43 Mt Work unit: ~ 51,036

Sources State and prospects of energy efficiency in Italy.

1/2013 Report, Polytechnic University of Milan and ENEL.

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INTERVIEW

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE? A SLOW CITY Interview with Robert Beauregard Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School

by Maria Chiara Voci Journalist

Reflecting on city planning, today, means not being able to think of them except as in a sustainable way. City and nature are not to be considered as two separate worlds, and for this reason, we have to start fighting the uncontrolled growth of cities and changing our way of living in the urban space.

The concept of urban sustainability is often based on the idea that technology can and should be used to protect nature. This is because we start from the incorrect assumption that the city and nature are separate worlds

“The concept of urban sustainability is often based on the idea that technology can and should be used to protect nature. This is because we start from the incorrect assumption that the city and nature are separate worlds. That is not so. Just as technology and nature are not disjointed: that would be like dividing the water in a cistern from the distribution system of the aqueduct. To develop truly sustainable growth, we need to start thinking about the world as a compound hybrid between humans, nature, and technology.”

Robert Beauregard, Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School, and Director of the Urban Planning program, is the author of numerous works, including The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities and When America Became suburban.

He recently participated in an international colloquium on the future of the Earth in Milan, the first of the Laboratories promoted by the Feltrinelli Foundation and by Expo 2015 in light of the imminent universal exposition.

The concept on which his thinking is based is simple yet revolutionary: the advance of technology alone is not enough to en-

sure the balance of the city of the future. We need to slow down the indiscriminate use of the territory if we want to preserve it.

Because technological progress, which often comes to the rescue and helps in solving problems, “can also hurt nature”.

Professor Beauregard, environmental sustainability is now the target that many administrations are aiming for. Is the manner of conceiving the structuring of the territory really changing?

I was never convinced by the concept of a ‘sustainable city’. It has always seemed like more of a slogan than a concrete project.

Many local governments, while continuing in their development plans, have taken steps that are just façades, perhaps trying to place more attention on the care and conservation of land or use of energy. In my opinion, this kind of attitude smacks of arrogance. It is wrong to believe that human beings can control nature through technology. And even more wrong is the belief that they can do it in such a way as to allow urban areas to continue to expand and grow indefinitely and in any situation.

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We should start thinking in slow terms, according to a logic of life capable of countering the phenomenon of uncontrolled growth, the scaling up

What are the parameters on which to base an evaluation of whether or not a city is really sustainable?

To understand just how a sustainable city is, it is necessary to measure its ecological footprint.

Urban areas are now held together thanks to the fundamental contribution of resources that are subtracted from territories that are much larger than the urban sprawl itself and located far beyond and outside the relevant geographic boundary. This is the yardstick by which to assess its sustainability, and above all, this is a serious problem that needs to be examined and addressed.

In your books, you warn us about the suburbanization of the urban fabric. What phenomenon are you referring to?

One concern to be taken into account is the one relating to the physical form and structure of cities. It is always necessary to carefully evaluate that the various functions – schools, homes, or nightclubs – are geographically juxtaposed within the territory. At the

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end of World War II, in the United States, suburbanization, understood as decentralization and deconcentration of cities, prompted large companies to give rise to large complexes outside the already built-up areas. This was a choice that reflected, and also to a certain extent, the position with which the United States had emerged from the Second World War, and which has characterized the urban areas of the U.S., making them exceptional compared to any other European metropolis. However, the sprawling of the suburbs has created many problems. As the neo-urbanism school of thought has demonstrated, large distances and low population density end up causing serious ecological problems.

Has the same tendency also taken hold in Europe?

Yes, Europe too has witnessed the phenomenon of suburbanization. However, because of the history that lies behind the European territory, the phenomenon has been less marked and the role of the original urban center has never been put into question.

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE? A SLOW CITY |

SUSTAINABILITY IN SEATTLE The Bullitt Center has helped Seattle to earn an efficiency record: in fact, in one year the building used 20% of the energy normally required for similar structures, achieving all the goals of the Living Building Challenge, the international certification program for sustainability.

What do you think would be a proper reversal of this trend?

We should also start thinking in slow terms, according to a logic of life capable of countering the phenomenon of uncontrolled growth, the scaling up. Changing the way we live and consume in the city can bring about many consequences and also have a significant effect on the re-balancing of the climate and natural phenomena that, with increasing frequency, have also demonstrated the vulnerability of the cities in Europe.

Do you think that the concept of ‘slow’ development can also be applied to areas that have already built massive infrastructures?

Without a doubt. Even in already built up cities, much more can be done to reduce the wastage of water and energy, reduce pollution, develop alternative sources, and leave room for nature. Sustainability is not a challenge that affects only new settlements: on the contrary, the real issue at stake is that of being able to keep the great cities that exist alive through greater awareness and responsibility for the environment in which we live.

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Could you give us some concrete examples of cities that have headed and still are heading in the right direction?

In the United States, one city government that has pushed the accelerator the most by implementing policies and programs for sustainability is undoubtedly New York City. But then there are also other examples. Such as Seattle.

What advice would you give to those who have to administer a large city on how to improve the lives of the people living there?

Environmental sustainability is just one factor that characterizes and contributes to the quality of life of the inhabitants of a city. However, I think it is important to keep in mind that the world’s cities are also characterized by other serious problems such as income inequality, poverty, unemployment, the lack of housing, and intolerance. These are situations in which a solution cannot be found only in the aspect of sustainability. This is why we need to broaden our focus.

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CONTEXTS

THE WORLD’S MOST ECOLOGICAL VILLAGES

by Tonia Mastrobuoni Journalist

In 2014, the German government will charge the Germans on their utility bills for 24 billion euros in aid for renewables.

But it also has the ambition of reaching the proportion of 80% clean energy by 2050

The third government headed by Merkel will have to deal with the delicate matter of incentives. Aid that over the years has allowed the creation of green models such as the Bavarian village of Wildpoldsried, a real driving force for the production of clean energy and tourism, and an example of sustainability and green building.

They were the pioneers of ‘Energiewende’, the energy revolution that will be one of the main challenges for Merkel’s third term in government. But now the 2,500 inhabitants of a German village, which is so far ahead with regard to clean energy and green building that in just a few years it has become “the most eco-friendly village in the world”, are terrified by the plans of the new Energy Minister, Sigmar Gabriel.

The miracle of Wildpoldsried, a village nestled in the beautiful Allgäu region of Bavaria which already produces 500% of its electricity needs and expects to secure its total energy solely from renewable sources by 2020, is likely to be extinguished. Ango Zengerle, the Mayor and one of the main authors of the Wild044

poldsried revolution, is explicit: “What the government has in mind is, quite simply, the end of the energy turnaround.”

After the accident in Fukushima, Germany decided to phase-out nuclear power, but it must find a way to replace the proportion of energy obtained from the atom. This task is not simple, especially for such a strongly environmentalist country as the one led by Angela Merkel.

The turnaround is already exorbitant today: in 2014, there will be charges on the Germans’ utility bills for 24 billion euros of aid for renewable energies. But Germany also has the ambition of reaching the proportion of 80% clean energy by 2050. The government says it wants to steadily increase the current ‘green’ share in the coming years, but also that the incentives will have to be cut and wind power concentrated only in very windy areas. It has also been under pressure from the European Commission, according to which the generous incentives to the German Green industry look a bit too much like state aid. Therefore, neither the Greens nor Zengerle believe that Gabriel can – or wants to – square the circle: “His energy plan is being carried out under the pressures of the industry giants: in the end, coal will win,” the mayor of Wildpoldsried concedes.

About fifteen years ago, encour-

This is a revolution that has filled the town coffers, but which has also led to earnings for individuals or companies

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DENA The German Energy Agency (Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH – dena) is a center of expertise in energy efficiency, renewable energies, and intelligent energy systems, whose projects of an international scope concern the production of energy with the least possible environmental impact.

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About fifteen years ago, the inhabitants of this Bavarian village began putting solar panels on their roofs, using more wood in construction and building passive houses, and saving on energy consumption

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aged by generous contributions from the government as well as the ambitious federal promise to satisfy an important part of growing energy needs through renewable non-polluting sources, the inhabitants of this Bavarian village began putting solar panels on their roofs, using more wood in construction and building passive houses, and finally, saving on energy consumption. And thanks to a serendipitous convergence with the objectives of such a visionary mayor as Zengerle, favoring the construction of photovoltaic, hydroelectric, wind and biomass systems, the village generously sells its electricity to outside markets. The mayor states, “it is not my revolution, it has been enacted by my fellow citizens who have taken the initiative”, but it is clear that his contribution has been essential. Today Wildpoldsried also benefits from a kind of ‘Bilbao effect’: tourism has increased, because many people come to see the bio-village in Bavaria just as they would go to see the Guggenheim Museum in that Basque city.

This is a revolution that has filled the town coffers, but which has also led to earnings for the indi048

viduals or companies that have installed solar panels or biomass plants on their land and sell the energy produced in excess. “Here in Germany, the secret is that if you want to build a solar panel, you enter into a contract with the electric company, and it lasts for decades. On the other hand, in Italy, the relationship is with the state, and with each change of government – as has actually happened – the rules change.

I know of companies in your country that have gone bankrupt because the governments have changed the cards on the table,” says Zengerle.

In 2010, Wildpoldsried set itself the goal of continuing to maintain the production of energy surplus to requirements and to reduce CO2 emissions dramatically by 2020, and among other things, it has launched a plan for green building that reimburses 15 euros per square meter built with the principles of passive housing. For example, the municipal buildings are fully heated by energy from biomass. But many people are now anxiously looking to Berlin. And they fear that their dream may already be over.

THE WORLD’S MOST ECOLOGICAL VILLAGES |

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Siemens - Strategic Partner of Enel for the Smart Grid Technology at Expo Milano 2015

FOCUS

A TECHNOLOGICAL SUCCESS

by Lorenzo Voss Journalist “However the experience of Wildpoldsried may turn out, it has already been a success, in any case: it has enabled us to glimpse the society of the future.”

These are the words of Dr. Michael Metzger, one of the Siemens managers of the IRENE project, an initiative coordinated by the German technology giant and the energy group of the Allgäu region, AÜW, for the development of the smart grid in Wildpoldsried. Since 2012, the year the initiative was launched, this small town in the Allgäu region has become a model: through photovoltaic, biomass, and wind power, its inhabitants are already producing three times the energy they consume. “But multiplying the points of renewable energy production is not enough,” Metzger declares. “The real on-going challenge is to be able to intelligently manage a myriad of micro-flows of clean current, by definition irregular and capricious just as the weather conditions of a mountain village can be.” In fact, for a long time the inhabitants of Wildpoldsried have been experiencing an unusual problem in their community, one that others would call a luxury: the production of renewable energy here is so excessive, that not infrequently, the power grid is subject to fluctuations of up to 8 megawatts within half an hour, which is unthinkable elsewhere. “In order to study a solution to the problem, AÜW has installed 200 smart meters that are able to react to meteorological input communicated in real time to a power station, such as the force of the wind and the movement of the clouds, from which the researchers obtain 3 gigabytes of valuable data every day. “Thanks to them, Siemens has developed TRAFO, an automatic voltage compensation system designed for an electrical network where the input of renewable energy is the norm and not the exception. “These

control mechanisms are widely used in high-voltage electricity networks,” Metzger explains. “However, for networks such as the one in Wildpoldsried, where there is an abundance of low-voltage sources, TRAFO is something completely new and revolutionary.” The brain of Wildpoldsried’s intelligent network is a software, also developed by Siemens: “We have named it SOEASY, and it is the flagship of the entire project,” he explains. “SOEASY is able to coordinate the production and consumption of energy in real-time. For example, if there is an excess of solar energy production on a particularly bright day, SOEASY is able to direct its flow to the batteries of electric cars parked in the town, which, in case of need, will return the power to the grid, for example, at night when there is no sun.” At the heart of the IRENE project is its vast application: the scalability of the project. “All the tools that we produce – from the meters to the interfaces for solar panels – have also been designed to function as components of an infinitely greater network of the future, and to make space for new technologies, new software, and new ideas in general. The intelligence of this network lies in the fact that it is ready to absorb innovation, without becoming obsolete in a short time.” Even though the public funding by the German government may be cut, and the IRENE project could suffer a setback, the inhabitants of Wildpoldsried have already stated that they do not want to stop their cooperation with Siemens and AÜW. “Ideas on how to move the project forward in the coming years are certainly not lacking,” concludes Metzger.

“For example, we are thinking about producing methane from CO2 and water thanks to wind energy.”

Hats off!.

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In

INTERVIEW

HOME GREEN HOME

Green building as an answer to the economic and environmental crisis Interview with Jane Henley

CEO of the World Green Building Council

by Michele Fossi Journalist illustrations by Seltz

Green building is one of the most powerful weapons in our possession to combat climate change, but also to give an answer to unemployment, the high cost of housing, public health, and even school dropouts, through high and low tech solutions. The CEO of the World Green Building Council (WGBC), the leading global association for the promotion of eco-architecture present in 80 countries, tells us how.

What does green building mean today?

The definition of green building has changed over the years. Initially, this expression referred to buildings with a low consumption of energy and resources. Over the years, it has become increasingly clear that green buildings allow for much more than just energy efficiency and that their beneficial effects are felt not only on the environment but also on society.

In what way? In addition to saving energy, what are the other reasons why a city administration should decide to invest in green buildings?

A well-designed, sustainable building can reduce energy costs by as much as one-third less than conventional buildings. But there is much more: their largescale diffusion would give governing leaders the key to providing simultaneous answers to many of the most pressing needs of contemporary society, such as the fight against unemployment and the protection of public health, while revealing a way to combine two concepts previously considered antithetical in our continually expanding cities: economic growth and an improved quality of life.

Can you cite an example?

In Cato Manor Green Street in Durban, South Africa, an interesting program of upgrading the energy efficiency of housing for the poor has been carried out. The purpose of the project, coordinated by the local division of the WGBC and funded mainly by the British High Commission, was to demonstrate the

multiplicity of objectives – socio-economic, environmental, and the impact on public health – that can be achieved with simple architectural adjustments made to housing for the poor. We have seen that such relatively cheap and low tech modifications – such as solar thermal power, better insulation of roofs and ceilings, and the distribution of clean stoves and indoor lighting systems with a low environmental impact – produce more overall benefits for society at a lower cost than financing brand new sources of clean energy. In particular, this pilot project has shown that it is possible to improve the quality of life of the poorest people without increasing greenhouse gas emissions, but on the contrary, actually lowering them.

The Green Street project in Cato Manor in Durban shown that it is possible to improve the quality of life of the poorest people without increasing greenhouse gas emissions, but on the contrary, actually lowering them

Contrary to what is commonly believed, it is not necessary to make use of expensive and sophisticated technologies and materials to design a green building. What would happen if energy redevelopment projects such as the one on Cato Manor Street were extended to a larger number of poor households?

The WGBC has estimated that if these low-tech modifications were extended to all poor households in South Africa – around three million – the lower

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consumption of energy and water that would ensue would allow for a savings of 200 million Euros, most of which would automatically go into the pockets of those who need it most, namely the inhabitants of those homes. As if that were not enough, 36.5 million days of work would be created, and millions of tons of CO2 would not be produced.

These figures speak for themselves: sustainable architecture reconciles development and care for the environment, and as such, should appear at the top of political agendas around the world.

Who are your favorite green architects?

I really love the work of Malaysian Ken Yeang, the pioneer of vertical green urbanism. For example, one of his most famous buildings is the Solaris skyscraper in Singapore, known for its “linear park”: a strip of vegetation one and a half miles in length that wraps itself like a snake around the entire height of the building, with obvious benefits in terms of clean air and biodiversity. Another lovely project of Yeang’s is the Spire Edge Tower, currently under construction in Haryana, India. Once again, the walls of the building are covered by vegetation; to complete the picture, there are a series of ramps, which are also made strictly of greenery, and a series of roof gardens on the top floors. However, it would be simplistic to consider the vegetation on Yeang’s buildings as a cosmetic or ornamental device: his buildings are designed from the outset to be real ‘eco-systems’ in balance with the surrounding environment. This can be seen from the care with which the plant species for his buildings are selected – rigorously local and designed to achieve specific goals in terms of protecting biodiversity.

The large-scale diffusion of green buildings would give governing leaders the key to providing simultaneous answers to many of the most pressing needs of contemporary society, such as the fight against unemployment and the protection of public health

Let’s narrow the field to a category of buildings that are especially strategic for shaping a better future: schools.

There has been a lot of talk about green schools. What exactly does that mean?

A green school is a school building that is cleverly designed to not dissipate energy, water, and other resources; consequently, one with very low operating 052

costs. But most importantly, a green school aims to provide a more healthy and pleasant learning environment than an ordinary school, and to provide students with all the tools necessary for developing a strong environmental awareness.

Can green schools truly improve the students’ academic performance?

Today we know that the quality of the school environment – the availability of natural light, clean air, and low environmental contamination from smog and other harmful chemicals – can increase the students’ academic performance by more than 25%. We believe that investing in the architectural quality of school buildings is just as important as investing in the quality of teaching and the quality of resources. The Global Coalition for Green Schools is an international platform that aims to coordinate the spread of such school buildings throughout the world, providing local communities with the know-how and resources to transform their schools.

Can green schools inspire children to become better world citizens?

Certainly. For example, the Singapore division of the WGBC has launched the brilliant Project Green Insights: energy meters were installed in schools, thanks to which children were able to see the impact of their activities and then voluntarily behave more responsibly. Thanks to the extraordinary success of this pilot project, the Singapore government has decided to allocate more funds for the development of sustainable architecture, and in particular, green schools for the entire country. Another example comes from the Uaso Nyiro Primary School in Laikipia, Kenya, a school located in a poor region where 25% of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. Thanks to a clever system of rainwater collection and purification, this school building is able to supply the community with 350,000 liters of drinking water a year. Once again, there is nothing sci-fi behind this fine result: the authors of the project, the designers of the architectural firm PITCHAfrica, built it in accordance with traditional building techniques and – it is important to emphasize this – for the same cost as building a conventional school.

Since the school opened, school attendance has increased from 70 to 90%, and the incidence of diseases linked to poor water quality in its vicinity has fallen to almost zero. Many children no lon-

HOME GREEN HOME |

ger have to abandon their education in order to fetch water, something which is the order of the day in much of subSaharan Africa. Such is the power of an intelligently designed building to be in balance with the ecosystem.

What is expected of the field of sustainable architecture in the near future?

I firmly believe that the increasingly pressing urgency to ‘do more with less’ will inevitably give new lifeblood to the further development and spread of sustainable architecture. I am thinking especially of countries in the developing world, where, on balance, it will be increasingly evident to city governments that the additional costs they may incur for the construction phase of green buildings are more than outweighed by the immense long-term benefits – which are not only economic ones, as we have seen. Green architecture has the potential to lift millions of people out of poverty, create jobs, and make urban spaces more livable and healthy. One of the main objectives of the WGBC is to ensure that countries in the developing world learn from the mistakes made by industrialized countries, and adopt from the outset suitable architectural models to meet the challenges of the 21st century – in other words, integrated, healthy, and efficient models that are able to make intelligent use of our increasingly limited resources.

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We believe that investing in the architectural quality of school buildings is just as important as investing in the quality of teaching and the quality of resources

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FUTURE TECH

Home automation 3.0: dialogue between objects and users

by Simone Arcagni Journalist

Whenever technologies of the future are mentioned, expensive systems designed to meet the needs of the elite come to mind. On the other hand, what if it were actually a technological evolution that could take everyone’s needs into consideration and encourage their development to head in this direction, where smart becomes synonymous with efficiency?

Smart is another word for intelligent, but also for clever, and effective... smart is the watchword of the 2.0 technology: thus the smartphone, then the smart grid, and even smart cities.

Smart means a kind of technology that somehow communicates with us, that replaces us, and that works at a distance. Smart has to do with sensors, wi-fi, and microchips: it is a system of the computerization and connection of objects that is driving technology towards a 3.0 stage, the so-called Internet of things.

A universe of computerized and connected objects that interact with each other and with the users. According to futurists and visionaries, but whose feet are firmly in the present such as Parag Khanna or Ray Kurzweil, this is a further step towards the integration of human intelligence and artificial intelligence, which will reach so-called singularity, the moment when ma-

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chines surpass humans in intelligence. For the time being, it is striking to observe the processes by which spaces and technologies are increasingly in dialogue with humans, in an increasingly complex and effective manner.

And automation is precisely one of these areas; at present, it is the most cutting-edge frontier of Information Technology, heading in the direction of the Internet of things: houses equipped with sensors and connection systems enabling the remote management of the home. This regards remote control of lights and heating, but it is also a way to set up the home environment to manage energy resources, to control household appliances, and various control functions, as well as further ensure more refined and effective security systems. It is currently a prerogative of technology for consumption by those with ample economic possibilities, but the ongoing de-

Social home automation Ă— This is the branch which develops home automation systems or electrical systems that enable automatic devices specialized in meeting the needs of people with disabilities or who are not self-sufficient.

velopments are not limited only to luxury homes. One example is Living for All Kitchen, a project of industrial research and experimental development financed by the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and promoted by a group of regional companies and research centers led by Snaidero Rino Spa. According to the purposes of the project, the intention is to try and integrate new automation technologies in the kitchen area to make it more livable, especially for the elderly or persons with a mild cognitive impairment. Therefore, a smart kitchen is a kitchen that can help make it more livable even for the ‘weak’, as in the case of Domotica Sociale (http://www. domoticasociale.it/it/home/), which has taken the direction of using technology to find solutions for people who are not self-sufficient and/or with disabilities, with a single interface to control energy consumption, lighting, and safety from domestic accidents. The project is also connected with an external operating center for remote access to various utilities, for health care, and for socialization. It is also impossible to speak of the Internet of things without mentioning Arduino, as there is an Arduhome project involving the use of the Arduino platform to receive commands from an interface created on the Internet, and therefore to activate the actuators, or give readings of sensors.

Fully in line with the practices of the digital culture, there are even those who try using crowd-funding in order to fulfil their project of home automation, as in the case of Almaware in Bergamo, (Indiegogo AlmaDom.us) which has just launched a small computer, which, thanks to the modern technology also used in cell phones, can be installed in place of normal light switches the device can be operated directly by the integrated touch screen, a smartphone or a tablet, or even directly with the voice, through the voice control system. In short, home automation can be transformed from expensive technological gadgets into efficient systems that concern all of us.

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IN-DEPTH

EFFICIENCY STORIES

by Gianluigi Torchiani Journalist illustrations by UNDESIGN

To look beyond your own company, and your own sector, gives rise to unexpected collaborations, and the optimization of goods and services at our disposal. Strategic solutions and innovations that lead to efficiency: an economic advantage for businesses and users.

Dainese-Nasa

Technologies in the space race Outer space has always fascinated and intrigued mankind – but it would be quite impossible to undertake any kind of exploration without the necessary safeguards.

Therefore the spacesuit was designed, to ensure the survival of astronauts in such an extremely hostile environment as outer space, and which for all intents and purposes, is actually a miniature spaceship.

This result comes at a price, represented by a series of compromises on the ergonomics of the suit, the very stiff structure of which, in some cases, has caused injury to the astronaut’s body. To address this problem, Dainese, a renowned Italian company, that produces aerodynamic sport clothings, has teamed up with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technol056

ogy to make operations and training safer.

In this regard, the project involves the construction of special protection that the astronaut wears inside the spacesuit integrated into the long-underwear currently used, to control body temperature. The project, which has already been selected

by NASA, also includes a detailed study of the pressures exerted by the spacesuit on the astronaut’s body during operations.

This is why a special suit equipped with a series of sensors that indicate the areas and extent of the phenomena that might cause damage from impact or abrasion has been made. This will make it possible to scientifically analyze the harmful effects, from which to gather basic information in order to redesign space equipment.

Smartglasses Interactivity for sight

Yoox

Luxury shopping is digital Italy is not generally at the forefront with regard to the Internet and e-commerce, but in such a ‘historic’ industry as fashion, it can lay claim to an online powerhouse, i.e. Yoox, a group founded in 2000 that has quickly become the Internet partner of the leading brands of fashion and design, so that today it can boast of techno-logistics centers and offices in Europe, the USA, Japan, China, and Hong Kong, with widespread distribution (more than 100 countries served worldwide). The strength of Yoox is its selection of products, ranging from a broad assortment of hard-to-find clothing accessories made by the most important designers in the world, not to mention proposals for eco-friendly fashion, rare vintage garments, original books, and a large collection of works of art. Alongside its general portal, over time Yoox has launched other initiatives: thecorner.com is the group’s luxury online boutique, characterized by an eclectic and selected assortment of the most prestigious brands for men and women by avant-garde designers from all over the world, found at their mini-stores, whilst Shoescribe. com, launched in 2012, is the online destination completely devoted to women’s shoes and their world. In addition to portals, another cornerstone of the strategy of the group since 2006 has been the design and implementation of a number of Internet flagship stores of the big names in fashion. To date, the websites operated

by Yoox include the likes of Diesel, Valentino, Armani, Missoni, Roberto Cavalli, etc.

These were the real hi-tech novelty of 2013 and should finally enter the market in 2014: we are talking about SmartGlasses, the augmented reality glasses that allow you to interact with a simple movement of your pupils, just like a real mini PC at eye level. In addition to being a great deal for the producers (Google Glass will soon be joined by the SmartGlasses of Microsoft, Samsung and Apple), according to a recent Gartner research report, SmartGlasses are destined to have a major beneficial effect on the world economy, because they are able to improve the efficiency of workers in vertical markets, from manufacturing to services, and from retail to healthcare. The greatest impact is expected with regard to heavy industry – particularly oil and gas – because the glasses with augmented reality will help in the education and training of workers to deal with equipment and improve production. There will be a medium impact on industries such as the retail sector and healthcare, where the benefits will depend mainly on the information via visual search.

The introduction of Smartglasses will have minor, though not negligible, consequences on the insurance and banking sectors.

Whereas professionals who need the latest information in real time, in areas such as finance and the media, will be able to benefit greatly from the use of SmartGlasses. They will make an impact on the military world (where they will reduce ‘friendly fire’ deaths), in support of the disabled, and in craftsmanship, and they will have a role in the smart cities.

The ‘smart glasses’ are therefore intended to increase the productivity and efficiency of work, so much so that Gartner estimates that in 2017, they will save one billion dollars in the services sector alone.

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Roadsharing Online hitchhiking

Until a decade ago, you could still come across people standing at the roadside, holding a sign and with their thumb stuck out: this was hitchhiking, immortalized in many books and popular films. The popularity of this alternative mode of transportation has gradually diminished, also because of the increased diffusion of car ownership.

However, the benefits of hitchhiking remain unchanged: how many people are there who, for reasons of work, study, or otherwise, are constantly moving alone in their car, often more than once a week, and spending a fortune on fuel?

Sharing a stretch of road with other people on the other hand, allows lowering costs, reducing pollution, and, why not, making new friends and acquaintances.

But in the Internet era, the old way of hitchhiking has undergone a mutation of a social mode, so much so that many road-sharing websites have been created with the aim of bringing together the

supply and demand of ‘rides’. In practice, these services work like this: whoever is offering a ride registers their data on one of these portals, then they enter their place of departure and arrival, as well as dates and times. In turn, those seeking a ride indicate their desired route and book their seat in the shared car, all strictly online.

Unlike traditional hitchhiking, where nothing was owed to the owner of the vehicle, here the occasional traveling companions share fuel costs. Services for feedback and comments then help the users of road-sharing websites to understand whether or not they are dealing with trustworthy people.

Docebo

Italian e-learning In a world that is evolving every day, it is increasingly important to invest in the training of workers in order not to be overtaken by competition. One mode that is increasingly expanding, because it overcomes the historical problem of physical attendance, is elearning, which allows you to manage the processes of education at a distance by transmitting courses through an online LMS platform, thus optimizing time and costs as compared to traditional lectures. An Italian company on the market since 2005 that is very active in e-learning 058

is DoceboLMS, whose main products (Docebo SaaS and Docebo Premium) are designed for the educational needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations, as well as for online universities, public administrations, and non-profit organizations. In 2011, DoceboLMS had a turnover of $1.5 million, increased by 33% in 2012. Today it is present in 49 countries worldwide, with 12,000 organizations that have activated the platform, delivering about 1,500,000 hours of courses serving approximately 300,000 customers.

The company has recently launched its new DoceboLMS Cloud e-learning platform ‘As a Service’: to be activated online without any technical expertise necessary, it allows small and large organizations to deliver training in an intuitive, flexible, and immediate manner.

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Smart grid

Computer science weds energy The future of energy lies in the smart grid: this term refers to an electricity network that can intelligently integrate the actions of all connected users (consumers and producers, ‘prosumers’) in order to distribute energy in a way that is efficient, sustainable, cost-effective, and safe. Thus the classic view of the electricity grid, which called for a few large power generation plants to ensure the needs of millions of end users, will be superseded. The smart grid revolution, which is still in the making, has been imposed by the success of renewable energy, whose model is based on hundreds of thousands of plants scattered throughout the country. That is why, on the level of control, the electric grid of the future will inevitably look like an ‘Internet of Energy’, in which each micro-generation system is able to communicate and receive data, using the interconnection capacity to guide and quantify energy flows according to the times and places of greater or lesser consumption. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is therefore at the heart of the operation of smart grids, because it ensures communication between the utilities and end users, as well as the technologies, computing platforms, and the algorithms of distributed control needed to maximize the efficiency of all the systems involved.

In addition, ICT can provide new services based on energy: smart metering, prepaid solutions for energy management, household portals for consumption and generation, automatic systems for acquisition, storage, and sale of electricity, and systems for balancing the supply and demand of energy.

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Red Bull Media House Multimedia energy

All of us know something of Red Bull, the famous energy drink that appeals mostly to young people. Sports fans will have heard this name countless times in recent years, thanks to the team of the same name which has won the last four F1 world championships, thanks to the German driver Sebastian Vettel. Less known to the public is that since 2007, the company has launched a real multi-platform media company, renamed Red Bull Media House, that offers a wide range of multimedia products with high (premium) quality and content through different media channels such as television, mobile, digital, audio, and print.

The focus is on sports, but also on music, culture, and lifestyles. In fact, since its market entry in 1987, Red Bull has built up an extensive collection of content through videos and photographs, often providing high-quality stories for their media partners. The launching of Media House formalized this activity, which since has greatly expanded, so that today the group can rely on a global network of correspondents in over 160 countries. Red Bull Media House also includes two specialized units: Servus Media and Terra Mater Factual Studios. With a television station and a published magazine, Servus is available in German-speaking regions and focuses on topics such as tradition, the love of life, and authenticity, whereas Terra Mater Factual Studios produces feature films and premium TV documentaries of genres such as nature, science, and history.

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Cloud computing Savings in the clouds A really magic word that characterizes information technology these days is that of cloud computing: in a nutshell, unlike traditional software that must be installed on a local PC, in a ‘cloud’, applications work through the Internet. The reason for the success of this formula is primarily economic: especially for small businesses, it can be difficult to maintain completely up-to-date computer equipment. In fact, the active user generally pays for the cloud computing applications on a monthly basis, therefore there is no need to sustain costs upfront for the purchase

of hardware and software, which are then often used only partially. Not to mention that since that company data is stored in large data centers, there is no risk of the loss or theft of a laptop that might threaten corporate security. Moreover, in times of mobility, a cloud ensures that users can access most applications through their smartphone or tablet. The downside is that a cloud is closely linked to the availability of the Internet, i.e. without any connection, the programs do not work or work poorly when the connection is very slow or not reliable, as unfortunately happens in many areas of Italy, especially the more rural areas. What definitely is in no shortage are offers: the giant telecommunications companies are all now offering cloud-based solutions.

Microsoft-Nokia

Together in a smartphone At the beginning of the last decade, everyone who was asked what the two leading companies of IT and telephony were would give the same answer: Microsoft, then the absolute king of operating systems, and Nokia, the undisputed master of the nascent mobile phone. Today in 2014, things are no longer that way: Apple has stolen shares of the computer science and business market from Microsoft, while Google now seems to be clearly winning the game of Internet services. After years of hegemony, Nokia itself has now long been superseded by the advance of iPhones and Android smartphones. After a courtship lasting two years, last September the two troubled companies merged, trying to combine their respective strengths and overcome their weaknesses: in fact, Microsoft purchased Nokia mobile phones and the Lumia brand for 5.44

billion euro. The software giant also took over the license for Nokia patents and the use of the Finnish company’s map services. The advantages of this multi-billion-euro operation have been explained by various analysts: Microsoft thus obtains an important place in a sector now so very crucial for digital society, that of mobile phones, as shown in the cases of the success of iPhone and Android. On the other hand, the spread of Nokia smartphones could be helped by the strength of Microsoft’s commercial network and the Windows mobile operating system.

Will that be enough for it to get back to being number one? Posterity will be the judge.

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PRECIOUS WORDS

by Andrea De Benedetti Writer and linguist photographic project by White

Applying the concept of efficiency to a language can lead to various misunderstandings; in fact, there is the risk of confusing efficiency with simplicity, or forgetting that language is merely a tool for communication and therefore, it is efficient to the extent that those who use it do so in an efficient manner. From the era of classical Latin to the era of Twitter, here is a reflection on what we ask of language today.

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Carl Gustav Jung said that dreams have the bizarre virtue of making us speak a more efficient language than the one we use in real life, a language that can briefly illuminate our subconscious and restore that sense that almost always eludes us when our eyes are open and our brain is awake. Accustomed as he was to torrential and challenging sessions of psychoanalysis with patients, by the expression ‘efficient language’, Jung was certainly not referring to the telegraphic and oversimplified code that we contemporaries have in mind and tend to identify hastily with the Twitter-style, but to a language capable of adhering perfectly to our thought and to projecting it in the most accurate and transparent way possible onto the screen of our consciousness. In this sense, albeit starting from a perspective that is far removed from linguistics, the eminent Swiss psychiatrist and anthropologist had perfectly intuited the heart of the matter, by subordinating the concept of ‘efficiency’ to that of ‘meaning’ and identifying the essential clarity of poetic language as the most complete form of this virtue.

Our main concern seems to be to save ourselves and others the fatigue of explaining and understanding things, because explaining and understanding things is time consuming, and what we ask of time today is instant gratification What Jung meant to say (or perhaps not say, but which follows on as an inevitable corollary) is that a language without sense – understood as ‘meaning’ but also as ‘direction’ – will never be efficient, just as a high-tech car can never be efficient in a world devoid of roads on which to drive it. This is just to immediately clear the field of a possible misunderstanding, which 064

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would be to confuse efficiency with simplicity. A mathematical formula, with its admirable synthesis, is certainly efficient but it may be anything but simple. On the contrary, a comment consisting of 140 characters on Twitter has to be simple, but if no one understands it or feels the need to ‘retweet’ it, this means that the language used was not that efficient or that the message – the ‘sense’ – was not of any interest. The other mistake to avoid is that of paying attention to the tools – the language, in this case – rather than to the end purposes. So, what should the aim of efficient language be? To save time? To save space? To save energy? To save money? To say what?

To achieve what? An old joke comes to mind about the Genoese widower calling the newspaper to publish a brief obituary of his wife (“Vincenzina died”) and when he finds out that the rate remains unchanged up to five words, he requests adding to it: “Selling 2 nd-hand Panda”. Well, the impression you get when the communications and marketing gurus launch their crusades for an ‘efficient’ language and cite English as a supreme example in this respect is that they haven’t got the faintest idea of how a language works and that deep down, they too want to sell a 2 nd-hand Panda. Languages , in and of themselves, are all efficient to the extent that they meet the communication needs of the societies and historical eras that produced them. If by ‘efficient’ we mean ‘synthetic’, we should deduce that classical Latin, with its system of declensions and cases that made prepositions and articles partly or entirely superfluous, was more efficient than the vernacular, which needed a lot more words to express the same concept. Not to speak of English, which with its phrasal verbs and periphrastic verb forms (‘I had been loving’ = four words; ‘amaveram’ = one word) can be considered one of the most verbose languages in the world.

But if classical Latin ended up succumbing to the vernacular (by the way, if the past participle of succumbing existed, we would have saved two words in this sentence) and the sovereignty of Italian is giving way to English in an increasingly broader range of lexi065

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cal areas, it means that linguistic evolution does not go in the direction of greater efficiency or, more likely, that the correlation between efficiency and brevity is rather weak. But the biggest mistake is considering conciseness and efficiency as attributes that are intrinsic to a language rather than as a performative virtue of speakers and writers. For some years, the first network of the Spanish public TV has been broadcasting a talk show entitled 59 segundos, in which the guests – mostly politicians and journalists – have 59 seconds to make their speech, after which the microphones in front of them are turned off and disappear sliding down into the table. The experiment is certainly interesting and has the undoubted merit of forcing gab masters to get straight to the point, but also the defect of liquidating any possibility of deepening any subject right from the start. Something similar happens in the literary reality show Masterpiece (in this case, the format is Italian) where competitors have 59 seconds of time to summarize their novel to the guest author as they rise in the elevator to the top of the Mole Antonelliana in Turin. In both cases, the protagonists are called on to exhibit all the qualities of brevity and incisiveness of which they are capable, which does not necessarily make them good politicians or good writers, but which, in the civilization of molecular communication, of emotional reality of the narrative, of persuasive marketing, and of increasingly low thresholds of attention, are considered winning weapons. Ours is not only the era of texting, chats, and Twitter, but also that of the guerrilla-politics fought by firing off slogans, of shorter and shorter e-mails because noone ever reads more than five lines, of time that is ‘short’, ‘hung-up’ or in any case, ‘to be respected’, of newspaper directors who advise collaborators to write pieces for the on-line editions that are no longer than 3,000 characters of modular language made up of prefabricated elements like those of modular kitchens (bad tile, confidence booster, bench test, tip of the iceberg, 066

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and other such oversimplifications), of book titles and back covers that ‘create’ bestsellers almost more than the contents, with the quick quip and quotation of a ‘profound’ author (obviously second-hand) as the most practiced and consumed textual forms. In general, an era in which our main concern seems to be to save ourselves and others from the fatigue of explaining and understanding things, because explaining and understanding things is time consuming, and what we ask of time today is not perspective or even stratification, but instant gratification.

And it is peculiar that on the social networks this fulfillment may take shape as syrupy self-satisfaction, a comment posted by inertia, or the solitary triumph of the ego that are the absolute negation of efficiency as well as a good use of time. In his latest book Anche meno (Even less), Stefano Bartezzaghi wrote that today “Baroque is the dominant style in the endless gallery in which the exhibition of language is renewed every day, the Louvre of chatting.”

Preach efficiency and practice futility: this slogan is today’s communication in a nutshell.

It may not be much, but it is certainly the most efficient way to say it.

The mistake to avoid is that of paying attention to the tools rather than to the end purpose. What should the aim of an efficient language be? To save time?

To save space? To save energy? To save money? To say what?

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BRINGING ORDER TO CREATIVE CHAOS

by Riccardo Duranti Writer and translator

“Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on,” said Raymond Carver in “The craft of writing.” Famous for his advice on writing with honesty and without any gimmicks, Carver rigorously applied himself to the chaos that creative inspiration can create, and then put it into order.

Ever since beginning his career as a writer, Raymond Carver had to deal with the massive entropy that could have squandered his talent, and his willful vocation as a storyteller. His very choice of the short story, the short essay, and poetry as means of expression is due to his need to reconcile the creative energy that was churning inside him with the complicated existential context that surrounded him and in turn exerted an overwhelming pressure on him: the ‘inexorable influence’ mentioned in his essay Fires. Circumstances soon forced him to merge the pressures that were crushing him by incorporating them into his writing material, thus achieving a portentous homeostatic balance between form and substance in his work. The only antidote to the hardship of life was to elevate it to the theme of his work, and investigate it down to its most hidden depths.

Carver discovered the paradox that in order to get out of chaos you have to get into it, come to terms with it, describe it, and channel it, imposing order on the story being shared. The efficiency of this solution is in front of everyone’s eyes, because the young writer soon realized that the operation would be more successful if the necessary rigor and precision were ap-

plied, without spouting off or vagueness: “The short story writer’s task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power.

He’ll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things – like no one else sees them.

And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.”

Carver founded his own unique style on this basis. Stories hatched in one or two frenzied sessions, at the kitchen table or in the car, during short breaks from family commitments and work, and then countless drafts and revisions: always making new changes, regrets, and cuts so as to research the most effective and ‘streamlined’ way to convey the emotions of his characters to the readers.

His was an established and conscious style, made even clearer by his reaction to the cuts made by his editor Gordon Lish

to his second book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. At first glance, these interventions seem to push the efficiency of the Carver style to the extreme.

Upon closer examination, and in the light of the edition of Beginners, the original version of these stories, you will discover that in fact they appear dictated by the application of Lish’s minimalist agenda that undermined precisely the substance, unbalancing the equation with the attempt to ‘cleanse’ it of any human feeling, seen as a harmful program of alienation which Lish aspired to (and which he pursued in his own unbearable writing). The fact that some of Lish’s interventions are so skillful and introduce obvious improvements as to let his undeniable ability to maximize the efficiency of Carver-like writing transpire make one all the angrier in the face of other clumsier and more arbitrary amputations of the emotional fabric of the characters and situations, that can be checked by anyone who takes the trouble to compare the two versions of the stories. Fortunately, Carver was able later to restore his stories and offer them to his readers, although his untimely death prevented him from fully developing his quest for maximum efficiency in writing.

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ALL FOR ONE: THE STRENGTH OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

by Luca De Biase Journalist and co-founder of ItaliaStartup photographic project by White

Widespread, coordinated, and active: this is the collective intelligence emerging from people and machines, which has been made even more present and powerful by the Internet. But can collective thought be oriented in order to be more effective and efficient than that of the individual? This is a reflection on the appropriateness of addressing global issues with a global mind.

Pierre Lévy publishes a collection of articles that interest him with Scoop.it. His reports end up on Twitter, his followers see them, and if they want, they can share them with their own readers. Just as this article is being written, Lévy is indicating the piece by Frédéric Filloux entitled Surviving 2014, which explains how the publishing industry will meet with more difficulties this year and will have to continue on the path of efficiency in order to survive. Reading articles of this kind, some or many editorial operators find inspiration, feedback, encouragement, or an intellectual challenge; then they are confronted with reality, offering their points of view, and making decisions. On the whole, a somewhat coordinated behavior emerges, even where there is no real hierarchical center ordering everyone to what they have to do. The continuous meeting of individual brains 070

generates a kind of collective thinking.

This is just one of the moments of an intense cerebral, cultural, and vital function carried out by the intelligence of human beings. And Pierre Lévy is the philosopher who introduced the concept of collective intelligence into the public debate on the interpretation of digital media with his visionary book in 1994: L’intelligence collective: Pour une anthropologie du cyberspace.

Lévy says: “It is intelligence that is universally distributed, constantly enhanced, and coordinated in real time, which can result in the effective mobilization of skills.” Henry Jenkins, the great media scholar, took up the idea when, twelve years later, he saw the possible correspondence with the world of knowledge emerging from the so-called Internet 2.0. And Thomas Malone, the founder of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT, says that the scale of collective intelligence

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made possible by the Internet exceeds any doubt about the relevance of this dimension of thought and raises a decisive question: “How can people and computers be connected so that – collectively – they can act more intelligently than any person, group, or computer has ever managed to do previously?” In fact, as Steve Jobs had imagined ever since 1980, computers and Smartphones have seemingly become some sort of prostheses of the brain that increase its efficiency in terms of storage, processing, and connection. However, the effectiveness remains debatable, a subject Lévy has spoken about. And with the explosion of possible collaborations between individuals connected with each other and with servers on the Internet at every moment of the day, the collective dimension of intelligence is challenging researchers to broaden their investigation.

The metaphors abound: some are newborn, such as the ‘global brain’, others are traditional, such as the ‘soul of the world’.

But the basic question is even more compelling: if the collective thinking emerging from the togetherness of people and machines is a dimension of intelligence, can it be designed so as to improve the efficiency of human choices more than hierarchies or individual actions can, and can it in turn be made more effective?

Actually, the question cited above, which is too important to be answered in a short article, serves mainly to indicate the direction taken by research. There is a great amount of literature on the forms of the co-ordination of individuals through collective structures in the context of some specializations such as scientific research, the law, or finance. But the frontier of research on collective intelligence seems to be where it investigates the forms, the design, and the structures of the means through which people think together in relation to the results of their collaboration.

Of course, reading the news, both offline and online, on the dynamics of the herd that lead to the most absurd violence, doubt is raised about the term ‘intelligence’ for some ‘collective’ phenomena. It is pointless to make a list here, seeing as the crime reports and political news are full of shameful provocations. Moreover, there is no denying that some achievements of ‘collective intelligence’ on the Internet are extraordinarily constructive: in this regard, the case of Wikipedia is the most cited and, while retaining a critical approach, its importance can hardly be underestimated. In the end, in most cases the question is ambiguous. For example, international finance is a case of collective intelligence in which a vast number of individual choices is supported by 072

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International finance is a case of collective intelligence in which a vast number of individual choices produces global consequences that can be interpreted as extremely positive or profoundly negative 073

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sophisticated digital tools, which together generate the emergence of an apparently coordinated coordination, producing global consequences that can be interpreted as extremely positive or profoundly negative, depending on the circumstances. The real estate market itself, viewed by Matt Ridley, author of Rational Optimist, as an enabling platform for the division of labor and thus for progress and prosperity, in full harmony with the tradition of Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith, is in turn considered a problem when it becomes a mechanism for the commodification of everything, as noted by the philosopher Michael Sandel.

And in any case, it does not seem to be the right platform to foster more respectful behavior of common assets and to safeguard the environmental balance. Some of the biggest problems facing humanity, such as efficiency in exploiting the planet’s limited resources or the increased gap between the rich and the poor on the planet, or equitable access to knowledge by all, do not seem to be resolvable only on the basis of specialized logic such as that of finance or the market or, in other respects, the law and governmental policies. The challenge is precisely to see if humans equipped with tools to improve the quality of their ability to ‘think together’ can address these problems more efficiently and effectively.

The attempt to break the deadlock that scholars are conducting concerning collective intelligence does not in fact stem from the point of view of the individual specialized platforms but from the consequences of the design of the platforms in general. In fact, the pervasiveness of the Internet logic proves to be an interdisciplinary subject that enriches the architecture of the relationship between humans and the environment in every type of activity. Robert Kraut, who studies the interaction between humans and machines at Carnegie Mellon, is trying to find the relationship between the design form of the platforms and the behavior of the communities that use them. He notes that many preconditions of a community that thinks well together are similar, both online and offline: design, recruitment, socialization, commitment, sharing, regulation of behavior, and the coordination of work. He adds that, if anything, with regard to the Internet, it should be taken into account that large communities can be brought together more easily, but also to know that anonymity, weak ties, the fast turnover of participants, and the lack of formal institutional contexts make the construction of groups of people who ‘think together’ more difficult but potentially more efficient. However, there is no doubt that the 074

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quality of collective intelligence emerging from the different platforms can vary, depending on their design: this is clearly shown by the huge difference in the behavior of emerging platforms that have been designed as differently as Facebook or Wikipedia. Just look at the differences in the signals that generate feedback by individuals every minute on the two platforms: the ‘like’ on Facebook, so immediate and personal, is compared with the more subtle system of ‘edit’ and the collective corrections on Wikipedia, under two conditions of identity that are almost opposites, such as that of the ‘tribe’ of Facebook friends as opposed to the cultural project of the new encyclopaedism of Wikipedia.

However, the difference between offline and online is diminishing, as shown by scholars of the so-called ‘feedback loop’, one of the most important mechanisms for platform design. A well-studied example is that of road signs which, by intercepting the speed of cars with radar, warn drivers who are exceeding the limits: they do not add any information that motorists do not already know, but they somehow socialize the information on the drivers’ speed and provide feedback that is extremely effective in inducing them to act according to the behavior expected of them. In a famous experiment in Garden Grove, California, the installation of speed detectors helped bring about a 14% reduction in the average speed of cars near schools. In general, motorists reduce their speed by 10% when driving on the stretches of road where these devices have been installed. The feedback loop works offline and online. In addition, the architecture of the environment and that of the Internet are merging. With the spread of all kinds of sensors in the eco-system, with their connection to computer centers and easy interaction with individuals, the relationship between people and the environment is enriched with new opportunities for coordination. Thus, collective intelligence tends to be carried out more and more precisely in everyday life. And the design of the platforms that facilitate and influence interactions among people has become an integral part of every project of efficiency and an intelligent rapport with the environment. We are at the dawning of a new awareness. Somewhat similar to what happened concerning environmental awareness, societies are likely to develop a sensitivity for the ecology of the media: paying attention to the dimension of collective intelligence has an effect on attitudes towards the environment and society. Moreover, a planet inhabited by nine billion people cannot afford anything less.

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TRADING THE OLD ECONOMY FOR A NEW ONE

by Lauren Anderson Chief Knowledge Officer of Collaborative Lab photographic project by White

Sharing means, objects, knowledge, time, and experience: this is collaborative consumption, an idea of a human economy that relies on the support of technology to reach its protagonists. It is the return of practices such as trading, bartering, and sharing that are taking on new life through new ways, becoming a useful, profitable, and practical, social opportunity.

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We live in a smart age – one where devices can track and measure our every move, monitor their own energy efficiency, order food from an empty fridge, and keep us connected 24/7. But despite the accessibility of data telling us how much and when we use certain things, our lives are still less than efficient. That is without even making any mention of the countless things in our possession that have no built-in intelligence at all – from the tools in our shed to the clothes on our back – that lie idle for a large percentage of their lives, or are disposed of well before they are worn out. So how can we harness the powerful technologies at our fingertips to ramp up the effectiveness of our lifestyles, while also helping us to make more economical or environmentally friendly choices, and perhaps even a few new friends along the way?

One potential solution lies in a growing socio-economic movement that is sweeping the world, which helps us to define not just what, but how, we consume. We call this shift collaborative consumption, defined in my colleague Rachel Botsman’s book, What’s Mine Is Yours, as the reinvention of old market behaviors – such as bartering, swapping, exchanging, renting, or sharing – through new social, mobile and location-based technologies, which enable us to trade with each other on a scale and in ways that were never possible before. While humans have been informally trading with each other for thousands of years, the act has taken on a new technological meaning since the early days of eBay and Freecycle, as we learned to trust each other in online transactions. Fast-forward to the Facebook age and there are thousands of new startups being launched around the world for helping us to borrow, trade, pass on, or rent anything and everything, and bringing a new kind of efficiency to our lives. But what does this look like on a day-to-day basis?

From efficient cars to efficient car ownership Cars have always been a part of modern society, with the purchase of a car considered to be a rite of passage for many young adults. Yet despite the fact that it costs more than €5,000 per year to own and maintain, the average car sits idle up to 23 hours per day in a parking space, a driveway, or even on the street – not a very efficient use of one of our most expensive possessions! This doesn’t even take into account the fact that our roads are congested, our air is polluted, and our lifestyles are un077

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healthy. Car-sharing services such as Zipcar and Initiativa Car Sharing (ICS), Italy’s national car-sharing system, aim to address these challenges by providing a shared fleet of vehicles parked around city areas, which members of these services can book by the hour and return it when they are done.

It is estimated that for every car-sharing vehicle on the road, between 10-15 privately owned vehicles are taken off the road. Even more interesting though is that car-sharing members actually drive less, given that they think twice about whether they need to use the car before booking one. All this leads to fewer cars on the road, healthier drivers, and more importantly, cars that are being used to their maximum capacity by being shared.

Making wardrobe go further While getting access to a car rather than owning one outright maximizes the use of that shared vehicle, it is not the only way to increase the efficiency of our every day lives. There are plenty of other places where we are also not making the most of the assets we have, such as our wardrobes. It is often said that the average woman wears 20% of her clothes around 80% of the time, meaning a large proportion of her wardrobe lays unworn or unwanted. Yet at the same time, the demand to keep up with fashion means that things like accessories and handbags fall out of favour quickly, and dresses for special functions often only get worn 2-3 times before they are old news.

In the world of collaborative consumption, there are a number of efficiency solutions for the wardrobe that can help out the whole family. One example that is sweeping the world is the popularity of clothing swap events, encouraging people to clean out their closets of slightly-worn but no-longer-loved items, offering them up to swap in exchange for something else they might like. This way, the lifecycle of perfectly good clothing is being extended, while wardrobes are getting an exciting injection of (almost) new life, which can feel as good as getting a bargain at a sale. For accessories with a limited life, or special one-off event outfits, a number of rental platforms such as Rent The Runway and Bag Borrow or Steal are enabling women to rent coveted items and designer labels for a short period of time, before they trade them in for something else, helping them keep their fashion budgets under control.

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At the other end of the clothing spectrum, kids simply outgrow their clothing, often faster than the clothes wear out. To cope with this, and to help out parents struggling to keep up, redistribution services enabling the upcycling of kids’ clothes are becoming increasingly popular. From thredUP, which offers an online consignment store for children’s goods, to the UK’s Bertie & Bean, where parents enter into a peerto-peer exchange for a bag of children’s clothing of a particular size and gender, the options for how to extend the lifecycle of slightly-worn kids’ garments are rapidly increasing around the world.

How efficient is your spare time, space, or skills?

Beyond just maximizing the utility of the physical stuff in our lives, collaborative consumption companies are also tapping into the idling capacity of our less tangible goods. From Skilio, which enable people with special skills to run live webcast lessons to students from all around the world; from the global peerto-peer accommodation marketplace Airbnb that makes your spare space available for rent to Sooqini or Taskrabbit, which help people outsource odd jobs to an errand-running task-force; these platforms are helping to make our own lives more efficient, as well as leveraging the spare time and abilities of many others.

In difficult economic times, these services are also providing an important lifeline to people who have found themselves out of a job, or with less weekly income than needed. Giving them the ability to make the most of the assets they already have, services like Airbnb, Skilio and Taskrabbit are also forging stronger community connections by bringing people together over a shared interest or experience – something on which it is hard to put a monetary value.

While humans have been informally trading with each other for thousands of years, the act has taken on a new technological meaning since the early days of eBay and Freecycle

An efficient future is a shared one Whether redistributing unwanted items to a better home, sharing access to expensive or infrequently used goods to maximise their usefulness, or tapping into under-utilized skills or space and making them available for the benefit of others, collaborative consumption is emerging in all aspects of our lives and gradually ramping up the efficiency of our possessions and assets. We can see examples of what possibilities are taking off all around the world, but we believe there is even greater opportunity up ahead. So what are you willing to share?

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IN-DEPTH

EFFICIENCY SCHOOL

by Roberto Rizzo Science journalist and essayist

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It is often our children who teach us that it is our small daily habits that make a difference. This is because many schools are organizing initiatives to remind students that re-use, saving, recycling, and the diversity of use are just some of the practices that can make our existence on the planet more efficient. Youngsters learn about efficiency and sustainability at school, and then tell us about them.

We know how many difficulties teachers, students, and school leaders have to face in their daily activities; nevertheless, there are many initiatives that are being promoted in Italian schools that are actively engaging children in measures to protect the environment. Here below are some that are particularly significant and emblematic in different environmental sectors.

EFFICIENCY Measuring the school’s energy consumption, analyzing the data to see where wastage lies, and implementing energy efficiency measures. These are the objectives of Applus-énergie (www.applusenergie.org), a system for monitoring electricity consumption in real time, funded through a European cross border contract that has involved the regions of Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont, and RhôneAlpes in France. The project, which also involves the Polytechnic University of Turin, the University of Annecy (France), Bosch Energy and Building Solutions, and the Turin SME Proxima-centaurs, has been operational since last August at the Technical Institute of Verrès (Aosta), and has already helped

to highlight some anomalies. Here is just one example: in the computer labs, consumption is high even at night and when the school is closed because the computers are often left on or in standby mode, so the students developed an automatic, electronic computerized shutdown system of the computers.

Another fact is that the building consumes regardless of the presence of students: consumption on Sundays is much greater than you might expect, about half compared to the other days. All the students have been involved according to different levels and some classes have participated more directly by suggesting proposed changes, ensuring that the system works out correctly, and introducing changes and improvements.

MOBILITY According to data compiled by Legambiente, 86% of Italian families live less than a quarter of an hour’s walk from their children’s nursery, elementary, and secondary schools. But this does not mean that their trips back and forth to school have no impact on the traffic and air quality.

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journey from home to school by car. Legambiente, Euromobility, FIAB, and the #salvaiciclisti (save the cyclist) movement have decided to promote the ‘Class Mobility’ campaign, aimed at turning some students into mobility managers and instilling children with a new culture of ways to get around in urban areas. The project has involved eight secondary schools in various Italian cities chosen to represent all types of routes in different geographical areas of the country. The home-school routines of a total of 5,516 students were analyzed: the average time to get from home to school was found to be 25 minutes. Students in Rome are by far the fastest, (11 minutes, thanks to the choice of the school district), while the trip in Turin takes longer (33 minutes). Students analyzed the data collected to design the safest and most sustainable routes to and from school, and which therefore would include public transport, walking, and cycling routes integrated with sustainable vehicles, and the activation of car pooling or bike sharing services.

WASTE Several thousand students participate in Legambiente’s ‘Clean Up the World’ campaign every year: in 2013, there were 300,000 students equipped with gloves and rakes who took to the streets and squares to clean up the towns where they live and study. For many schools, ‘Clean up the World’ has been a starting point for the promotion of activities and initiatives on waste throughout the school year. One example is the Monteggia Middle School in Laveno (Varese), whose students first of all drafted documents on the waste products they had found during the initiative by Legambiente. Then they designed and built ‘customized’ baskets for the collection of waste for each class, with the appropriate signs/reminders to avoid any errors of memory and, in collaboration with the staff of the school, organized the weighing of the waste products and graphed the results. Materials were recycled for re-use: for example, waste paper was used for the nativity scene and Christmas decorations, while old medicine boxes became a model of the city, and toys, models, and musical instruments were made during the workshops of creative re-use organized by the school. Each class appointed guardians of the lights and guardians of the wastebasket (rotating two students per week) to monitor and encourage correct actions by their peers. The school has also been participating in the Green Schools project of Agenda 21 Lakes for three years.

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86% of Italian families live less than a quarter of an hour’s walk from their children’s nursery, elementary, and secondary schools.

But this does not mean that their trips have no impact on the traffic

EFFICIENCY SCHOOL |

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SUSTAINABILITY AND CULTURE After more than forty years since its closure, the Museum of Natural Sciences of the Galilei-Cote Institute in Lecce was reopened to the public last December, thanks to the efforts of 22 second-year high school students from the ‘B’ class.

The museum, which houses a rich collection of minerals, flora, and fauna found in Salento and rare examples from every continent, was created over a century ago by the scientist from Salento, Cosimo De Giorgi (1842-1922), who was a schoolteacher. The students of 2B decided to organize visits with an eye on energy saving, as the visits take place with the lights off and only with candles and small flashlights for lighting: this allows you to focus on the smallest details of the pieces of the collection. The specialization of the Institute is economics, and the financial plan chosen by the students is interesting: half of the proceeds will be used to repay the exhibition costs and the other half to advertise the visits. The re-opening of the museum is part of a larger project by the class on energy efficiency and the use of renewable sources.

In the coming months, the students plan on creating an exhibition/workshop on clean sources, and in February 2013, they took part in the national energy saving ‘M’illumino di meno’ (I enlighten myself less) campaign, carrying a large banner with ‘Lecce’ written on it alongside thousands of others bearing torches in Piazza Sant’Oronzo in the heart of that city in the region of Puglia.

PLAYENERGY Since 2003, Enel’s free recreational-educational project PlayEnergy has been spreading a culture of responsible energy in the schools of many countries around the world. A comprehensive framework with the aim of encouraging students to become responsible consumers is made through studying the aspects related to the consumption, distribution, transmission, and production of electrical energy. Teachers can request a free kit with instructional materials for structured lessons on energy. In addition, the multilingual site playenergy.enel.com gives access to all the contents of the course, the games, and interactive experiments.

At the end of the course, which also includes activities in direct contact with the world of Enel, students will participate in an international competition by proposing original applications and efficient use of electricity in daily life. There is a list of regional and national winners of the last edition in 2013 on the website playenergy.enel.com.

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IN-DEPTH

THE BALANCE OF CHANGE

by Donato Speroni Economics journalist and writer

The constant mutations that our era is subjected to, in which no system is durable, make it difficult to find the balance of greater efficiency, especially in the field of economy. What is best for everyone?

Technological progress? The fact that there are positive spaces opening up in a country does not always mean that there is an opportunity for everyone, because equilibrium does not follow universal rules.

It is unlikely that anyone in Bhutan has ever heard of Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist and sociologist who lived from 1843 until 1923. Yet the procedure used to evaluate the impact of its new public projects was inspired

by Pareto’s principle of efficiency. Developed by the Centre for Bhutan Studies, which also established the indices of happiness that have made this small Himalayan country famous, the system works like this: for every new initiative (a bill, a public work, or other), a group of experts must determine whether there will be a positive or negative impact on all aspects considered important to the quality of life, from health to economy, and from the environment to popular culture. If progress in one of these fields is achieved at the expense of some other aspect of wellbeing, the project should be shelved. When it comes to efficiency in the world, it is useful to start with Pareto. ‘Pareto optimality’, i.e. the balance of greater efficiency, is achieved when any change would be detrimental to some other significant aspect of the system under examination. But what is ‘optimality’ in a changing global system? In reality, the performance criteria can be very different depending on the context in which one is operating; it is unlikely that everyone can be satisfied. It is especially in the economic field that the concept of efficiency becomes more nuanced and opens up a Pandora’s box of disagreement. In a socio-economic system, it is necessary to take at least three factors into account: competitiveness, because you have to produce at the lowest price; sustainability, so that what we produce today does not harm the future of the country; equity,

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Technological innovation strives to continually seek a more advanced balance, sometimes to the benefit of all, and at times to the detriment of others

because inequalities beyond a certain limit create socially unsustainable situations. All research on the ‘measure of progress beyond the GDP’ tends to combine these three aspects. Applied to today’s world, Pareto’s efficiency principle would mean that new technologies should be applied only if they do not create further inequalities or harm the environment. For example, technology that reduces the use of labor is efficient when the jobs that have been destroyed are substituted by other jobs: it is much less so, or not at all, when the unemployed then end up on the margins of society. On the other hand, actions tending to make work for everyone by exacerbating the costs of production clash with the principle of competitiveness.

Finding the ‘Pareto optimality’ between the different requirements is becoming increasingly difficult, because the world does not stand still: technological innovation strives to continually seek a more advanced balance, sometimes to the benefit of all (for example, as with the spread of mobile phones even to remote villages in Africa), and at times to the detriment of others, such as in the case of those villages where large, industrialized

crops put local agricultural production out of business, forcing the entire population to emigrate. Efficiency in the application of technology is therefore a fundamental and unresolved political problem. Raymond Kurzweil, the world-renowned futurist who founded the Singularity University in California to study the combined effect of new technologies on the future of humanity, is among the supporters of innovation to the bitter end, and he is even ready to become a cyborg in order to make his body more efficient and prolong his life. Students are encouraged to focus on projects that have a positive impact for at least one billion people.

The tendency to think big has led Kurzweil, now sixty-five, to accept the position as head of research at Google, in the belief that only huge companies with huge resources can manage change efficiently. But beware: Kurzweil also warns us that “meanwhile, the open-source nature of these technologies is creating a race between presenting nearly unlimited freedom to untold numbers of people, or being shut down by industries and elites who stand much to gain from a growing technological divide.”

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INTERVIEW

NEW NATIONAL STRATEGIES interview with Sara Romano

Director General of the Ministry of Economic Development for the electricity market, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and nuclear power

by Barbara Corrao Journalist photographic project by White through Bing Maps

Energy efficiency as a motor of development and employment, and as an essential factor to contain electricity bill costs and reduce CO2 emissions. This is the challenge on which businesses and families in Italy are focusing the spotlight in 2014. Oxygen has talked with the Director of the Ministry of Economic Development.

“Much has been done to support competitiveness, reduce our dependence on foreign countries, and reduce pollution. Much more can be done in important sectors such as construction, industry and transport.” The speaker is Sara Romano, Director of the Ministry of Economic Development for the electricity market, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and nuclear power, who in this interview for Oxygen makes an assessment of what has already been done and the steps still to be taken to best support the drive coming from the market. Not to mention electric mobility, in view of the new European objectives for 2030: “The promotion of sustainable mobility and the diffusion of electric vehicles with a low emission level will certainly be an important tool in urban areas,” she declares.

Let’s start with energy efficiency: will 2014 be the year of the breakthrough, thanks to the extension of the incentives decided by the law of stability?

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put it in the top position of the objectives to be pursued. The 2014 Financial Stability Act has enhanced tax deductions for energy efficiency measures in buildings, successfully integrating this tool with the thermal account (which covers interventions and individuals who are denied access to deductions) and the white certificates mechanism, aimed at larger-sized projects. Accompanying the incentives is another equally effective tool of the regulation establishing the minimum energy performance requirements of systems and products, as defined at the national and European level, for construction and for commercial products. In the course of 2014, we will implement the 27/2012 European Directive on energy efficiency. We hope to outline a thorough and detailed strategy, with the goal of making the energy efficiency measures fundable not only thanks to incentives, but also to the ability to assess the expected results, favoring the growth in size and operation of companies that create energy efficiency.

How much do you estimate that the package of tax deductions of 65% this year and 50% in 2015 will cost, and what returns are expected in terms of economic growth, employment, and the reduction of CO2 emissions?

Concerning the whole package of tax deductions, in 2012 there were over 570,000 applications, about 265,000 of which related to the renovation of buildings. In 2012, the investments triggered by deductions were estimated to be â‚Ź14 billion, of which approximately â‚Ź3 billion were due to the upgrading of energy efficiency, with energy savings estimated at over 1.2 billion kWh: in terms of expenditure, that means little more than 150 million per year for ten years was spent on investments in efficiency, obviously to be combined with the shares of deductible interventions made in previous years. This level of investment corresponds to more than 300,000 employees, including approximately 70,000 attributable to the energy upgrading. These numbers are important, considering that in the same year, the traditional building sector lost about 200,000 employees.

In the course of 2014, we will outline a thorough and detailed strategy, with the goal of making the energy efficiency measures fundable not only thanks to incentives, but also to the ability to assess the expected results

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Italy has a strong tradition in the industrial sector, as well as in the areas of lighting, electric motors, and home automation technologies for smart grids

However, in 2012 investments in energy upgrading fell by 10% compared to 2011. We think that increasing the deduction to 65% can turn the tide, and the first data on the number of interventions has confirmed this direction.

Italy has a strong and qualified industrial presence, including with leadership positions, in the field of energy efficiency. Can efficiency therefore act as a driving force for domestic recovery and a growth in exports?

Italy has a strong tradition in the industrial sector, as well as in the areas of lighting, electric motors, and home automation technologies for smart grids. The still untapped potential for high savings could provide companies with significant opportunities, with benefits for the economy and for consumers. The technologies for energy efficiency are constantly changing, so it is necessary to support product innovation in order to compete on the international market.

With the ‘Destination Italy’ law-decree, we have strengthened the available tools, introducing a tax credit for companies investing in research and development, up to a maximum of €600 million for the 2014-2016 period. Tax credit is recognized, up to a maximum annual amount of €2.5 million per beneficiary, to all businesses with an annual turnover of less than €500 million.

The competitiveness of our businesses also depends on the price of energy. Can energy ef088

ficiency be the first resource to be activated to reduce our utility bill costs?

The high price of energy is an obstacle for the economy of Italy and Europe in comparison with the United States. The price of gas in Italy is now tending to be aligned with the European price, but for businesses, it is at least four times higher than in the U.S. Italian companies pay an average of 30% more for electricity than other companies in Europe, and this disadvantage grows considerably in comparison with U.S. businesses. Reducing this competitive disadvantage is essential and that is why in recent rulings the Government introduced a number of measures that act on expensive energy for families and especially, for the production system. Energy efficiency can undoubtedly make an important contribution, because it contains the energy consumption per unit of product, and thereby reduces the incidence of the cost of energy on production costs.

The Regulatory Authority for Energy has announced a change in charges that will make the use of heat pumps more convenient. This is a first step towards a reform bill but there are still other bottlenecks. Could it be that energy efficiency might just be the push for action on the matter? What are the possible steps to be taken?

The structure of charges is still a matter that is entrusted to the Authority for Energy. Of course, behavior and patterns of domestic consumption have changed, so I consider that reflecting on the current structure would be appropriate, bearing in mind the consumers’ interests. The Government has also promoted a revision of the two-tier rate system introduced with the ‘Destination Italy’ decree, made necessary by the changes in the daily profiles of energy prices, due to the large penetration of PV. From efficiency to electric mobility. Initiatives in this direction are multiplying, in Italy as well.

Could this also become a driving force for development and reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least in the cities?

There is a strong drive towards electric mobility and so-called alternative fuels, from natural gas to LPG. Reflection should be given to what is the most appropriate approach for each country, but it seems clear that the process of decarbonization undertaken at the European level will lead to a substantial increase in the degree of electrification of consumption, which will almost double by 2050, reaching at least 38%, particularly in the thermal and transport sectors. With regard to this, the promotion of sustainable mobility in urban areas and the spread of electric vehicles with low emission levels will certainly be an instrument of relevant intervention in urban areas. In 2013, the Commission presented a proposal for a directive for the development of the infrastructures necessary for the deployment of alternative fuels (including electricity for electric cars), a proposal that is undergoing the usual evaluation by the Commission itself, Parliament, and the Council of Ministers.

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REVOLUTION AT HOME

by Gianfilippo Mancini Managing Director of Generation, Energy Management and Market Italy Division, Enel

Today the free market of energy is facing new challenges and opportunities, with more informed clients, differentiated products, and a greater need for efficiency, sustainability, and safety. Enel’s goal is to transform the services offered by assisting clients at all stages required in order to make homes, offices, and buildings sustainable with regard to energy, which is the path to a breakthrough in efficiency.

There are few countries in Europe that can boast of an electricity market as liberalized as the Italian one. At the end of 2013, more than a quarter of Italian households and nearly half of the companies in Italy switched to the free market (in fact, virtually all companies, if we do not take into consideration the small or freelance VAT users). This is mainly due to Enel, who was the first to believe in this change, and which has proven itself to be the best company in terms of the number of customers acquired and the quality of service offered. On this basis, Enel is now starting another revolution, one that will be able to meet new customer requirements and transform the energy market in Italy.

With the decline in consumption and the decrease in production volumes, more and more companies are coming onto the market to sell electricity and gas, with the idea of recovering at least a portion of the margins lost. But selling to the end customer is not a job for everyone, especially when it comes to families and small businesses: we need efficient processes, an excellent sales service, advanced IT systems, and above all, people who are strongly oriented toward innovation and cus-

tomer needs. These are precisely the ingredients that explain the success of Enel Energia, and we need to look at these same factors to understand the increasing difficulties of many of the operators on the retail market.

Also, customers are no longer what they used to be; before, customers were simply considered users of a service, unaware and practically all alike; today, on the other hand, we are confronted with informed and dynamic actors who able to take the new opportunities made possible by the free market and the development of technologies. Therefore, the products offered have also evolved: initially people focused only on the price of energy, then other opportunities for savings began to come into being (my Enel, insurance, etc.). Enel is now ready to implement a new revolution that will transform it from being a commodity provider to a full service provider, namely one that provides our customers with ‘keys in hand’ solutions, that will lead to a more responsible and efficient use of energy, in both economic and environmental terms.

Energy efficiency will be the engine of this revolution. Today, efficiency offers an extraordinary opportunity for devel091

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opment in our country, which until now has grown by increasingly resorting to the use of primary energy. It is clearly necessary to develop energy efficiency policies, at both the European Community and national levels, that can improve both the economy and environmental sustainability, as well as the safety of the energy that we use. And this objective can really be achieved today, thanks to new technologies: digital measurement and control of consumption, micro-generation, and devices with a more efficient use of energy. In addition, most of these devices involve shifting consumption from the primary energy (such as gas or oil), to electricity, which will emerge more and more as the most efficient, cleanest, and safest energy carrier of all those available to us.

For example, just think of the potential of today’s heat pumps, induction cookers, or electric cars.

This is a trend that is unstoppable, and which is a winning opportunity for all actors involved: for the customers, who save and increase their comfort and quality of life, for the country in terms of its GDP and employment, and for Enel itself.

It is precisely in times of crisis that the big companies can play a vital role in reviving the economy of a country: for example, by launching initiatives to fight against wastage. Enel’s technical and operational capabilities and profound knowledge of its customers’ needs have made it a world leader in energy efficiency, and a choice partner for clients in pursuit of efficient and reliable solutions.

The goal Enel has set for itself is to also promote the growth of the culture of energy efficiency and the search for the best new technological solutions.

Enel Energia is moving concretely in this direction, and in fact, it has recently started a new business model – under the new brand Enel Green Solution – that aims to provide a package of services and products in which all-round quality is a distinctive feature. Therefore it aims to be a single point of contact for the customers, assisting them in all phases of the process: from choosing the product that best suits their needs to the authorization procedures, from access to incentives to maintenance

Often the main obstacle for energy efficiency to take hold is related to the lack of awareness of the opportunities for savings and the difficulty in finding reliable partners who are able to provide the customer with the final implementation of interventions without any unwanted surprises

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after installation. In the mass-market world, this new offer is already available in some pilot provinces, enabling our customers to make their homes more efficient with innovative solutions such as solar photovoltaic and solar thermal energy, heat pumps, condensing boilers, or heat pump water heaters.

Often the main obstacle for energy efficiency to take hold is related to the lack of awareness of the opportunities for savings and the difficulty in finding reliable partners who are able to provide the customer with the final implementation of the modifications without any unwanted surprises.

For this reason, we believe that Enel Green Solution will reduce the gap between the benefits that are potentially available and the actual increase in the energy efficiency of Italian homes and offices. Another major obstacle to its diffusion is the initial investment that may deter many customers: this is why Enel Energia has decided to offer an option for paying the bill of the cost of the interventions in installments, with favorable terms.

The Enel Green Solution offers are not limited to the world of the mass market, because it will also assist the companies that are its clients throughout all phases of the project, from the numerical analyses to the ‘scouting’ and installation of technologies, up to going through the process of locating capital and incentives. In order to do so, it will deploy its engineering structures, experience, and ability, which

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over the years have led to the industrial growth of Enel and of Italy, and which will lead to finding efficient solutions to revive the country’s industry.

This is a challenge of great scope, but we are confident of being victorious.

First of all, because we have the leverage of an outstanding heritage: the strength of the Enel brand, which is our credibility in the market. Secondly, because we can count on 30 million customers, and we have an impressive and extensive network of sales channels, integrated with ICT systems, and the processes of a highly-evolved customer service. But once again, and above all, because the focus on innovation and a passion for the quality of customer service are now in our DNA, and infuse all of our new initiatives.

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MANY LINKS IN THE SMART GRIDS

by Livio Gallo Managing Director of Infrastructures and Networks Italy Division, Enel

Enel is a leader in the development and implementation of smart grid technologies, with more than 32 million smart meters installed, added to an international experience of creation in the development of Smart City projects. And there are many projects throughout Italy that promote energy efficiency in the end-use of energy.

The quality of the provision of electricity is a basic requirement of any modern society.

Enel operates a complex electrical system, monitoring in real time the continuity of the service, and making continuous improvements to the network in order to offer its customers high quality standards. The classic view of the electricity grid is now obsolete: not only are there more lines, circuit breakers, and transformers, but also electronics, information technology, and communications. This means an electricity network that can intelligently integrate the actions of all its relative cli094

ents (consumers and producers, ‘prosumers’) to distribute energy efficiently and safely, and activate innovative services and measures for energy efficiency, along with advanced technologies for monitoring, control, and communication. The smart grid will actually help to ensure greater integration capacity of the production facilities from renewable sources, thus facilitating new value-added services for citizens, spreading charging infrastructures for electric mobility, significantly reducing their environmental impact, and increasing the reliability of the electricity networks.

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New services for citizens: from the Smart Meter to Active Demand Enel’s development of technology will allow us to have tools that can interact with both the power grid and the devices in our homes. The main tools made by Enel in this innovative sector are Enel Smart Info, a device that allows you to conveniently access the information recorded by the meter from your home and to optimize your electricity consumption, orienting towards more efficient and sustainable behavior; and Energy@home, a system which, thanks to a finer control on the use and efficiency of ‘smart’ appliances, allows you to adjust, optimize, and rationalize your household consumption.

Smart grids and electric mobility Enel Distribution is also at the forefront in the creation of a network of intelligent infrastructures for charging electric vehicles, with customizable stations for the mobility needs of customers to make this task easy, accessible, and safe. It will also enable typical smart grid services and features: for example, the accumulation of energy from renewable sources in the vehicle battery which reserves the ability to reintroduce it into the network for other consumption, due to the vehicle-to-grid feature.

Efficient lighting With the introduction of the smart grid, a city’s lighting can also be managed more effectively and efficiently by adjusting the brightness levels according to the actual volume of traffic and needs of the city councils and citizens. The Enel Group is using the latest technology to promote the development and dissemination of high-efficiency public lighting in the countries where it operates.

Smart grid, the enabling platform of Smart Cities of the Future The smart grid also provides the basic infrastructure of the so-called smart city: smart 096

cities with sustainable transport systems, efficient lighting, buildings equipped with sensors and devices aimed at rationalizing energy consumption and creating greater awareness by citizens. Smart cities combine environmental protection, energy efficiency, and economic sustainability in a single urban model, with the aim of improving the quality of life of the people who live there and creating new services for citizens and public administrations. The expertise and innovative technologies developed by the Enel Group have allowed us to put the smart city concept into practice in various parts of the world. In Italy, the first pilot cities that have been involved in the project are Genoa and Bari, where areas of action on smart grids were identified for the diffusion of electric mobility, efficient public lighting, and the active involvement of consumers by implementing the Active Demand functionality. These actions will contribute about

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The smart grid provides the basic infrastructure of the so-called smart city: with sustainable transport systems, efficient lighting, and buildings equipped with sensors and devices aimed at rationalizing energy consumption

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30% to the target that these two cities have set for themselves to reduce CO 2 emissions by 2020. Thanks to the RES-NOVAE project, Bari will implement a monitoring and urban control center that will collect information related to the energy flows, environmental parameters, and other information, in order to provide services to citizens and support public administrations in urban planning. Enel has also signed an agreement with other Italian cities and foundations (Bologna, Pisa, and the Torino Smart City Foundation), to provide support in the development of Smart City projects. The Enel Group also is developing innovative smart city projects in Spain (Malaga and Barcelona), Brazil (Buzios), and Chile (Santiago).

Support for investment in energy efficiency For years Enel Distribution, in accordance with the Bersani Decree of 1999, has been pursuing about half of the entire national goal of energy efficiency in the end-use of energy with the so-called incentive system of white certificates.

The scheme, the purpose of which is to promote and encourage actions to improve energy efficiency among end users, is now undergoing its third phase, following the publication of a Ministerial Decree confirming the objectives and incentive mechanism until at least 2016. As the main operator of this mechanism, Enel Distribution is playing an increasingly active role, offering support and advice for the certification of savings to companies and individuals who carry out energy efficiency projects, and promoting the dissemination of new interventions, particularly for major projects in the industrial, commercial, and agricultural sectors, thanks to the advance of the development of incentives in a single initial solution, to help what is still one of the biggest barriers to efficiency: the initial investment.

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| DATA VISUALIZATION

SMART METER: TECHNOLOGY CONSOLIDATES edited by Oxygen illustration by Michele De Lucchi It is smart, it lets you receive bills calibrated on real consumption, without estimates, and reduces the CO2 emissions generated by the readings at home: this is the smart meter, the electronic meter that Enel has installed in Italian homes. More than ten years since the start of the project, an overview on the state of the art technology that is the base for the smart grid.

LOW VOLTAGE CONNECTIONS

34.3 MILLION The electronic meters installed

by Enel in Italy at the end of 2013

374,000 Number of concentrators present in substations for data collection from connected meters The main elements of the remote management system are: ∙ the electronic meter ∙ the concentrator installed in the transformer substations for medium to low voltage for the collection of data recorded by the meters connected to it ∙ the central system for the remote management of the meters, the processing of billing information, administration, diagnostics and preservation of measurement data.

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AUTOMATIZED METER READER

30,000 TONS the amount of CO2 emissions avoided each year by reducing the movement of meter readers (estimate made in 2010)

55 MILLION readings of the load profile (samples every 15 minute) made in 2013 for companies with an output exceeding 55 kW

422 MILLION the total number of readings taken in 2013 at a monthly frequency (before the advent of the meter, in 2000, the readings were done annually)

COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS

9.1 MILLION remote management requests in a year from various sales companies

300,000 the number of meters planned that the remote manager can handle in a day

∙ 1.7 MILLION supplier switching ∙ 3.4 MILLION contract management ∙ 4 MILLION bad payers management management

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IN-DEPTH

START-UP SMART LAB

by Caris Vanghetti Journalist

The challenge for the optimum utilization of energy can be conducted through various areas, from public lighting to data transmission, from the management of charging devices to the mapping of household consumption. This is the ambition of the Enel Lab program: to lend a hand to those start-ups whose research may significantly change our relationship with energy.

Street lighting that increases in brightness when a car or a pedestrian pass by but becomes less intense when there is no one, allowing for a 49% energy savings.

The development of a smart grid that adapts to users’ needs, able to anticipate and resolve any problems.

These are some of the projects submitted in 2013 by the seven start-ups that have become part of the program of Enel Lab, the business laboratory created by Enel to celebrate its 50 years of activity. The selected projects will be assisted in the development and commercialization of their idea, able to rely not only on a financial contribution of up to 650,000 Euros, but also on the technical and professional know-how of the Enel Group. There are five Italian and two Spanish companies 100

benefitting from this initiative by taking advantage of the services provided by Enel’s business laboratory, ranging from engineering skills to technological skills, as well as legal assistance. Of these, six operate in the field of energy efficiency.

Smart-I in Rome, active in the field of Smart Grids, has developed Smart Eye, a system for proactive management of public lighting through the installation of optical sensors that allow changing the brightness according to needs. Not only do these sensors turn the light on or off, but they also allow adjusting the brightness according to the actual needs of traffic. Functionality for controlling the territory can be added to this through video surveillance. Regarding the market potential, as well as firms that deal with systems of urban lighting, Smart

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Eye addresses public administrations, seeing as 30% of the budget of Italian municipalities is used to cover the costs of street lighting. The project presented by Athonet in Trieste, which deals with digitization and communication systems, aims to create a network of traffic data dedicated to the smart grid using standard high speed LTE 4G transmission. This network enables the bi-directional sending of data for video surveillance and coverage of areas not served by traditional telecommunications operators. The system consists of mobile gateways positioned in the territory that serve as ‘bridges’ to convey data to a broadband landline via IP protocol. The system developed by Athonet is particularly suited to the management of electricity networks, which ensures more efficient communication between substations, and avoids the occurrence of short circuits. The project has already been tested during the reconstruction work after the earthquake in Emilia Romagna, demonstrating good potential for telecom operators and electricity distributors.

Located in Rende in the province of Cosenza in Calabria, CalBatt aims to optimize charging cycles and maximize battery life with its projects. The technology developed by this company is able to perform a dynamic analysis of the characteristics of all the devices in the charging chain: it takes into account their real interaction, from the chargers to the connections, up to the batteries. This allows pinpointing the most efficient charging method and meeting the needs of users in terms of the time, cost, and amount of charging required. CalBatt has developed two product lines: the first line consists of a range of meters of the efficiency of the charging system that are capable of providing accurate information on the variation of efficiency by varying the charging method; the second line includes automatic optimizers with the ability to interact directly with the charging systems and with the management systems of the batteries, by directly setting the parameters to maximize efficiency. The technology developed by CalBatt is aimed primarily at companies that deal with electrical energy storage systems and electric vehicle charging.

The Italian company Green Lab Engineering operates in the field of intelligent networks and its Distributed Energy Control System has developed a method that allows the proactive management of lowvoltage networks, increasing their reliability and efficiency. The project allows dynamically detecting the configuration of network operations and correcting the 102

power factor in a distributed way, right down to the individual buildings.

Another Italian company that operates in the field of smart grids is i-EM, which is developing a system that allows you to predict the amount of energy put into the grid from the wind and photovoltaic power plants.

With the ability to compare the satellite data with that of the plants and the weather forecast, this project allows learning about the production of the fields fueled by renewable sources up to 72 hours in advance and with updates every hour. It also allows constantly monitoring systems remotely so as to provide for immediate maintenance as soon as any problems come up.

The Spanish company Mirubee has developed a project that maps the consumption of the electricity used by each appliance (washing machine, lamps, etc.). The data thus detected is sent to a central system that manages the information and, by means of an Internet platform, allows monitoring and optimizing the management of consumption.

START-UP, SMART LAB |

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There are five Italian and two Spanish start-up companies, six of which operate in the field of energy efficiency, that can benefit from the services provided

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PASSEPARTOUT

DOES RICHER MEAN MORE EFFICIENT? infographic by Undesign It might seem that it is easier for the strong economies of the world to maintain a high level of energy efficiency. But is that really so?

To find out, Oxygen has compared the energy efficiency index of major world economies, created by the ACEEE (International Energy Ef-

ficiency Scorecard), with the data on their GDP per capita. And so the United States, the third highest per capita with regard to wealth, shows that it is not doing very well in terms of energy, whereas Italy, despite the economic problems, takes the third place on the podium of energy

efficiency. Industry, construction, transport, and national commitment (investments and strategies that each country has set itself) demonstrate a level of efficiency that is growing not only in step with the national wealth, but also with the desire and the need to change course.

× In the study by the ACEEE of the world’s major economies, the most efficient countries are all in Europe. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy rank the highest even though their GDP per capita may not be so high.

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GERMANY

National commitment: 1st Industry: 5th Construction: 4th Transport: 1st GDP per capita US$ 41,865.51

efficiency

UNITED KINGDOM National commitment: 2nd Industry: 1st Construction: 4th Transport: 1st GDP per capita US$ 39,160.57

efficiency gdp

gdp

2 104

1

ITALY

National commitment: 5th Industry: 2nd Construction: 7th Transport: 1st GDP per capita US$ 33,115.01

efficiency gdp

3

5

4

JAPAN

6

FRANCE

7

CHINA

AUSTRALIA

National commitment: 2nd Industry: 2nd Construction: 9th Transport: 8th GDP per capita US$ 46,706.72

National commitment: 6th Industry: 2nd Construction: 7th Transport: 8th GDP per capita US$ 41,223.30

National commitment: 10th Industry: 10th Construction: 1st Transport: 1st GDP per capita US$ 6,071.47

National commitment: 4th Industry: 7th Construction: 2nd Transport: 10th GDP per capita US$ 67,722.59

efficiency

efficiency

efficiency

efficiency

gdp

gdp

gdp

gdp

8

9

UNITED STATES

10

BRAZIL

11

CANADA

RUSSIA

National commitment: 9th Industry: 6th Construction: 4th Transport: 11th GDP per capita US$ 51,703.94

National commitment: 11th Industry: 9th Construction: 10th Transport: 5th GDP per capita US$ 11,358.53

National commitment: 8th Industry:10th Construction: 11th Transport:11th GDP per capita US$ 52,299.76

National commitment: 11th Industry: 10th Construction: 11th Transport: 5th GDP per capita US$ 14,302.09

efficiency

efficiency

efficiency

efficiency

gdp

gdp

gdp

gdp

Source: ACEEE, International Monetary Fund (2012)

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IN-DEPTH

Future things

by Stefano Milano Journalist

From the acquisition of Nest by Google to the new products presented at the CES in Las Vegas, everything seems to be telling us both what and how aspects of our lives will soon be revolutionized by technology.

And that efficiency is also created by the collaboration between these technologies and the Internet of Things, which is bringing the Internet into our daily actions.

When Google announced its acquisition of Nest for $3.2 billion a few weeks ago, the a reaction was one of surprise, concern, and enthusiasm which is not generally aroused by this type of financial transaction. Perhaps the reason was that no one really expected that a company that earns about $60 billion a year from online advertising might be interested in a start-up that produces thermostats and smoke detectors, and then, for such an amount. However, this operation is indicative. Nest was founded

by Tony Fadell, who was then joined by Matt Rogers, both of whom had been on the team that developed the Apple iPod. Their thermostat is therefore primarily an object of design applying the idea of the Apple’s ease of use for creating the intelligent management of the temperature of the house, thus rationalizing consumption, by autonomously regulating itself based on the user’s habits, recognizing if there is someone in the house, and so on. It is still difficult to understand those three billion dollars. Some ideas were seen at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which is held annually in Las Vegas in January, and

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is the biggest electronics show in the world where some of the products that have revolutionized our digital life have been launched over the years. But the real news this year was not about the curved TV screen with 4K definition (4 times better than the full HD), or tablets and smartphones. The protagonists were those industrial products from an era far earlier than that of the Internet and technology: cars, washing machines, refrigerators, glasses, and caps. Now the much celebrated Internet of things has arrived, an industry that according to McKinsey will have an economic impact of between 14 and 33 trillion a year by 2025. The CES has given us the chance to experience firsthand what our future will be like; and so we can expect cars with on-board operating systems (several manufacturers have signed a major deal with Google concerning this), apps, and ‘infotainment’ systems from music in streaming to online maps, up to assistance in driving. In the last year, there has been much talk of the car that drives itself: the time when a voice command can activate a car that will come to pick us up at our home is still a

CES Ă— The International Consumer Electronics Show is one of the most important fairs of consumer electronics. Organized by the Consumer Electronics Association, it is held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center and presents the world premiere of new consumer electronics products.

long way off, but thanks to sensors and laser technology, Audi can let the driver read a book while the car does everything to navigate in traffic situations by itself. The German manufacturer has said it is ready to enter the market within a couple of years: the problem is the regulations.

With regard to the household, the CES has presented everything under the sun in home automation. In particular, Samsung and LG offer integrated platforms to manage your entire house via smartphone, communicating with the refrigerator via chat. A few days ago, on the other hand, the Italian consortium HomeLab presented its Open Web Net, the first protocol that allows objects and appliances to dialog with each other. Lastly, there are the gadgets. The frontier is technology that you wear: glasses, bracelets, and watches with an online connection. Most of these objects are not really useful, at best, they are entertaining; what really is interesting is when the sensors are able to detect biometric data: such as the Instabeat caps and goggles worn while swimming that give us information on our heartrate. Or Google’s project of contact lenses: these will be able to detect the level of glucose in the body, with important applications for those suffering from diabetes. However, this scenario involves a number of risks: the first concerns Google: in fact, according to several analysts, behind the $3.2 billion for Nest lies its interest in acquiring new personal data. In perspective, the digitized house will say a lot about us, paving the way for new services and targeted advertising. Then there is the safety issue: will the operating systems in homes and cars be safe? At the end of December and the beginning of January, the security firm Proofpoint found the first global attack on the Internet of things: 750,000 infected emails attacked connected home routers, televisions, and mediacenters and at least one lastgeneration refrigerator. Technology is racing: the awareness of the governments, regulators, and citizens will have to keep up.

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At a time in history when Western companies are being forced to cut costs to save their budgets it is likely that efficiency becomes a defensive necessity

In

INTERVIEW

FROM FORDISM TO CROWD-SOURCING:

new systems for production Interview with Vittorio Chiesa

Director of Energy & Strategy Group, Milan Polytechnic University

by Luca Salvioli Journalist

The advent of digital technologies and innovations have led to many innovations in industrial processes. The goal of this research also lies in the sharing of information between producers, retailers, and consumers. Among the different aspects that are involved, there is energy efficiency, which is no longer a utopia because the technologies are ready and the benefits are consolidated.

The quest for efficiency in industrial processes is as old as Fordism, the organizational system implemented by Henry Ford in his factories, which according to the definition given by the Treccani encyclopedia, “aimed to increase production efficiency through a rigorous schedule of individual tasks and stages of production, widespread use of the assembly line, and a set of incentives for labor (higher wages, shorter working hours, etc.).”

This is a good definition of efficiency at its best. It means knowing how to separate the essential from the frills with an economic and productive advantage, but without affecting the volume or exploiting human

labor. It means investing, innovating, and having a vision of the future that can be translated into a competitive advantage.

At a time in history when Western companies are being forced to cut costs to save their budgets, even in the face of the declining demand and consequent cut in production, it is likely that efficiency becomes a defensive necessity.

Things have changed a lot since Henry Ford’s time, and the digital age has played a key role. One example comes from the United States. Walmart’s motto is “Save money, live better”. The largest chain of stores in the world has been forced to innovate on all fronts, especial109

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ly due to the advent of e-commerce led by the giant Amazon. “It is a case study of efficiency: Walmart invests more than its competitors in technology by cutting the costs by about 2-3%,� explains Vittorio Chiesa, the director of the Energy and Strategy Group of the Polytechnic University of Milan. For example, when a shelf is empty, or in any case, has reached a certain level, with RFID technology, the information goes directly to the supplier who can arrange for a new shipment that will be timely and in optimal volumes.

The challenge of e-commerce is the trickiest one. Ever since Amazon began selling products of all kinds, Walmart has quickly adopted a strategy made of acquisitions, research, and the analysis of big data. The first step was to create a laboratory in Silicon Valley called Walmart Labs, a source of ideas for not having to succumb to the new world but to find a new way of dealing with it. The result is a new search engine for the Internet portal, an analysis of big data that in particular has taken Facebook into consideration in order to anticipate the intentions of consumers and crowd-sourcing projects involving its users, and more.

Another example is that of Zara, which uses the information received from its outlet stores to inform its producers in real time. This way, the stores can meet the demand more quickly: more fashionable coats for the winter, more sweatshirts, or more boots arrive according to how popular they are with customers. Mass distribution is only one of the aspects: in general, efficiency is achieved when action is taken in the management of materials, including with a reduction of waste. Technology is often the answer: a certain strategy may

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be accomplished by a change in machinery and the reduction of inventory in storage.

Energy efficiency is an integral part of that.

“By definition, it is a matter of energy efficiency when you get the same performance with less consumption,” Chiesa explains.

The Energy Efficiency Report compiled annually by the Polytechnic University of Milan offers several indications of the potential and the state of the art of the technology and legislation in the adoption of solutions for energy saving in the public, residential, and industrial sectors. Dwelling on the last point, in the most recent edition, edited with the Enel Foundation, of the report published last December, it is clear that “the technologies are mature, we are not talking about a hypothetical future,” Chiesa states. “The benefits are significant and the investment will pay for itself with a reduced fuel consumption.

The point is, how long will it take for this investment to come back into the coffers of companies. In some cases, the needs are satisfied, and in others, they are not.

The pay-back time considered by industry today is about 1-2 years.”

Given this timing, the report highlights that the best technologies for achieving the goal of reducing fuel consumption with the same output, without the need for incentives, are primarily the energy management systems of the plants from a central point. It is a kind of extension of building automation. Then there are the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) groups, compressed air systems, and inverters. On the other hand, if we take a look at the technologies that reach the pay-back in a period of time useful to businesses, but thanks to incentives, the category would have to include co-generation, or that is, CHP – combined heat and power production, whereas

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electric motors need a longer time for a return on investments: between 2 and 4 years. The Polytechnic University has tried to estimate by how much the energy bill would be reduced if the technologies that we included in the first case were adopted.

In the automotive sector, the reduction would be 25%, 11% in the food sector, 18% for paper, and 10% in the automotive components sector. On the other hand, looking at the margins (average Ebida): a gain of 27% for paper, 19% for buildings, 17% for steel, and 14% for cement.

Businesses are gradually implementing these solutions, though with some hesitation, Chiesa states, “because in many cases, their introduction leads to an interruption of the process, and this is an eventuality that scares people. Priority is given to the kind of efficiency that clearly shows an immediate return.”

To foster a sort of silent industrial revolution – where what is meant by silent is the least imaginative attractiveness of efficiency with respect to future scenarios made up of technologies that are currently a priority for supporting research but not a real industrial option – public intervention in terms of incentives of various kinds is still crucial.

For several years now, the Confindustria has been insisting on the strategic value of the efficiency of our economy. According to recent estimates, if appropriately supported, the association of industrialists could generate half a point of the GDP per year. On the other hand, the Energy Efficiency Report of the Polytechnic University and Enel Foundation calculates that energy efficiency has a potential market of €7 billion, but is being held back by a system of rules that is sometimes confusing, and definitely unstable.

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SCENARIOS

Big Data: the revolution of science and knowledge

by Mario Rasetti Physicist and President of the ISI Foundation photographic project by White

Energy efficiency is a concrete concept animating debate among scientists. Because those who are involved in physics every day are facing huge changes, such as the contemporary information revolution, which is creating more data than can ever be imagined. This data has to be managed in an efficient way: this is a new challenge for physics and energy.

Efficiency and energy are concepts that have appertained to the field of science, especially physics, from the very beginning. The notion of energy has been one of the factors driving the development of the classical physics of Galileo, Newton, and Lagrange, as well as the relativistic physics of Einstein and the quantum physics of SchrĂśdinger and Heisenberg.

The concept of efficiency has been the cornerstone in the construction of the thermodynamics of Carnot and Boltzmann, and the statistical mechanics of Maxwell and Gibbs.

The heated political, technological, and scientific debate on energy and efficiency that has been going on for years touches upon one of the most delicate problems of contemporary industrial society: the necessity to combine the exponentially increasing energy needs with the increasing scarcity of the reserves and resources, and the need to ensure environmental sustainability. However, another aspect of the role that these two concepts have today has still not been taken into consideration, one which again involves physics in its most advanced aspects.

In contemporary science, there is the incon112

trovertible affirmation of ‘information’ that physical size characterizes all states of matter, equal to and alongside quantities such as mass or energy, of matter in all its forms, microscopic or macroscopic, inert or living.

In the latter case, the concept of information is fundamental: distinguishing between living and inert matter means understanding that a molecule can act as a message, which is the junction at which the matter differentiates into two paths that are very different, even within a single set of dynamical laws.

The answer to this troubling question lies in what is now a paradigm: complexity. The science of complex systems refers to the existence of a subtle yet profound awareness of an unexpected metric in the conceptual framework of the interpretive and predictive models of the phenomena we observe. In systems consisting of many mutually related parts, the laws that govern the dynamics of the parts may not be sufficient to describe the way in which the overall system evolves, because an overall collective behavior emerges that is not contained simply in that of the individual constituents, and indeed, does not exist in the absence of

Globalization means a society that is increasingly interconnected, where 94 billion e-mails and 20 billion text messages are exchanged every day, and 250 million photographs are posted on Facebook – truly an immense world of data

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their interactions. In addition, complex systems often have a characteristic that differentiates them from those to which reductionist science typically refers: their phenomenology does not result from repeatable experiments, but is represented by the ‘data’ of the observations that we have made about them.

Globalization, on the other hand, means a society that is increasingly interconnected, where 94 billion e-mails and 20 billion text messages are exchanged every day, and 250 million photographs are posted on Facebook – truly an immense world of data. This growing complexity of the techno-social fabric conceals not only unexpected opportunities, but also potential risks. Recent disasters, such as in the economy and finance, have shown that the most dangerous vulnerability is hidden in the interdependencies that connect across different systems.

Therefore, society requires a greater predictive ability, which would allow us to anticipate, assess, and correlate risks, and at the same time, to reach a deep understanding of the systemic complexity of that world where new technologies are being created.

This is the context in which the tsunami of data can be found: ‘Big Data’, which is the revolution that we have been dealing with since the end of the last century. Science and knowledge are no longer driven only by new discoveries or theories, but above all, by the unprecedented availability of data, much of which is yet to be explored. Data that is often the result of activities that are not planned and repeatable scientific experiments. Herein lurk the laws and regularity of behavior and, therefore, our ability to understand natural, social, technological, and economic systems.

Today we have a ‘catalog’ of five thousand billion of the billions of stellar objects, but also every two days, more socio-economic data is produced than in the entire previous history of humanity. And for years the amount of generated data has exceeded the capacity to store and preserve it.

Information technology is being asked to face the fifth revolution since it so powerfully entered into our lives, after that of mainframes, PCs, the Internet and the Internet 1.0, mobile phones, and the Internet 2.0, today is the era of Big Data. Science and technology are being asked to manipulate information in the measure of Exabytes (each one is an amount of information equal to about 4,000 times all the information in the Library of Congress in Washington!), because now every minute generates 1.7 million billion bytes of data, the equivalent of 360,000 DVDs, and nature provides it with a billion times as many.

All of this has to do with energy and efficiency, in forms, and in new and unexpected perspectives. A laptop or a personal computer operates on the scale of Gigabytes, and when we work, we feel that they become warm quickly; 114

The next frontier will be that of combining the technologies capable of creating ‘energyconscious’ nano-chips with the implementation of innovative energy conversion, inspired by biology and natural evolution

BIG DATA: THE REVOLUTION OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE |

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just think of the energy required to extract a computing power of an Exabyte, a billion times bigger!

Applications covered by the most advanced silicon technologies – made extraordinary by the aggressive scaling down of the new transistors, also testified to by the incredible reduction of their unit costs which fell from about $45 in the Fifties to one millionth of a euro cent these days, a performance never achieved by any modern technology – must also deal with a huge problem of energy and efficiency.

The next frontier will be that of combining the technologies capable of creating ‘energy-conscious’ nano-chips with the implementation of innovative energy conversion, inspired by biology and natural evolution. Devices capable of imitating, in the form of nanotechnology, the principles of energy conversion in nature, where living systems find their energy sources in the environment without violating the balance.

So we could think of new data centers with low consumption, for example. Already, data centers in the world today – the backbone of the Internet – use 1 to 2% of available electricity, and for the energy inefficiency of their infrastructures, they are responsible for approximately 0.5% of the total emissions of carbon.

What we need are ‘green’ data centers globally to safely manipulate the great wave of Big Data without any energy risks. The Internet has certainly reduced carbon emissions by replacing carbon-intensive physical mediums (books, CDs, newspapers and magazines, and more importantly, mail) by their digital equivalents; but to efficiently extract information from large data sets will have dramatic energy costs.

However, nature provides us with examples that the science of complexities, quantum physics, and nanotechnology are able to imitate. Many photosynthetic organisms have developed simple and efficient structures to ‘harvest the light’ of the sun and to use that energy to drive their metabolic reactions; for example, the photosynthetic units of bacteria: two protein complexes, one of which acting as an antenna, catches the light, collects energy, and transfers it to the other, a reaction center where the energy is converted into chemical energy.

Some bacteria (cyanobacterium sulphureum) that live in extreme conditions, in deep and dark water where they need to capture one photon at a time, are masters of light harvesting: in them, almost all the energy collected in the absorption of a photon is transferred to the reaction center without violating the second law of thermodynamics, but by exploiting the speed of the process to put into effect the most sophisticated mechanisms of quantum physics and obtain incredible efficiency.

By imitating them, our knowledge-based society can meet the challenge of energy and efficiency, but only if we can see and learn what nature teaches.

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SCENARIOS

THE MARVELOUS INEFFICIENCY OF HOMO SAPIENS

by Ian Tattersall Anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York photographic project by White

If we are convinced that evolution is synonymous with an improvement in striving for perfection, we will have to think again.

Because Nature follows different rules, its own, in which surviving matters more than being perfect and in which the inefficiency of a species, such as ours, can produce brilliant and imaginative minds. In other words, effective.

Life appeared on Earth about four billion years ago, only half a billion years after the formation of the planet itself. For a long time, the only living things were bacteria and archaeans: tiny, single-celled forms that lacked well-defined internal structures. Then, at some point over one and a half billion years ago – nobody is sure exactly when – eukaryotes appeared. These creatures were still microscopic and unicellular, but each of them carried its DNA in a membrane-bound nucleus, and contained various other differentiated organelles. Multicellular eukaryotes then showed up at about a billion years ago, opening the way to the differentiation of bodily tissues, and ultimately to creatures possessing complex organ systems. The first identifiable ‘brains’ were found in creatures that lived around half a billion years ago, and the earliest tiny ‘truly’ warm-blooded mammals appeared in the fossil record at about 200 million years ago. Primitive primates evolved by about 60 million years ago, and our own largebrained species Homo sapiens was a late arrival at only around 200 millennia ago, even as mammals that had evolved around them are as diverse as bats, whales, and moles.

This incredibly oversimplified account of the history of life on our planet makes it evident that evolution on Earth has proceeded from the simple to the complex – although it is actually remarkable to what extent simpler organisms have continued to flourish alongside more complex ones. And since from one perspective life is all about the transfer of energy, it is very tempting to conclude that much of the complexity added over evolutionary time must have been about the improvement of organismal efficiency – if not in the actual transfer of energy, which today still uses some very ancient mechanisms indeed – then at least in the ways in which the organisms concerned use and exploit their environments.

There is a grain of truth in this conclusion. For example, today’s mammalian predators are vastly more energy-efficient than their predecessors of 250 million years ago, at least when their more active lifestyles are factored in. But although it is tempting to think of evolution as a process of refinement and improvement that produces evermore efficient creatures, just as natural selection weeds out the least efficient and least effective individuals in every generation, this is actually a distorted perspective.

Why is this? Well, evolution is in fact a lot less tidy than the simple process of fine-tuning and constant improvement which most of us were taught about in school. Organisms do not live in constant environments to which their adaptations can be closely honed over vast periods of time. They live in fickle and constantlychanging circumstances in which it is actually wise not to become too closely attuned. For, in a changing world, whatever works today may 117

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be a huge handicap tomorrow. For example, an antelope that has a special preference for a particular kind of grass is hugely vulnerable to changes in the environmental abundance of that resource, and thus to extinction.

As a result, if a species is to avoid extinction it is often a much better strategy for it to hedge its evolutionary bets and stay generalized: it is well known that generalist species have much lower extinction rates than specialist ones do.

This tendency, among others, produces the historical pattern that we see widely in the fossil record of the history of life: most species show up fairly abruptly in that record, persist for varying periods of time, and then disappear as abruptly as they arrived. This comes about because natural selection, classically described as involving the greater reproductive success of the most economically effective individuals, is in fact at least as much an agent of keeping species as they are (by trimming off the extremes at both ends of the spectrum of variation) as it is of change. What is more, natural selection necessarily works on the entire organism rather than on its individual components (which is what we are consciously or otherwise thinking of when we talk, as we so often do, of the ‘evolution of the brain’, or the ‘evolution of the foot’). In fact, in evolutionary terms it is probably of little use to be the strongest or fastest member of your species if you also happen to be the dumbest, or have the poorest vision. One important

corollary of considerations like these is that, in evolution, it is not necessarily important to be the best. What is really imperative is being good enough to get by.

All this means that evolution is not – and cannot be – about efficiency per se. We have not been shaped by evolution in the same way that an engineer designs a bridge or a machine. An engineer wants to optimize his or her project for a particular task. But in nature there is no intentionality of this kind. There is nothing beyond response to the immediate and fluctuating circumstances.

This means that evolution may have extremely unpredictable results. These may sometimes be efficient, sometimes they may not be, and occasionally they may even be both. For example, an argument can be made that the way the human mind operates is supremely inefficient. Thus we now know that eyewitness testimony is supremely unreliable, and that we alter our memories by the mere act of consulting them. We are just plain bad at recalling things accurately, and computers are vastly better at storing and retrieving information than we are – not to mention at making complex quantitative calculations. So when looked at task-by-task, our brains are horribly inefficient devices. There can be no question that they are dreadfully inefficient, and they are certainly contraptions that no engineer would ever dream of designing – precisely because engineering is about optimization, whereas our minds are about something else entirely.

Evolution is not – and cannot be – about efficiency ‘per se’.

We have not been shaped by evolution in the same way that an engineer designs a bridge

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But while efficiency and effectiveness may sometimes be equivalent, they are clearly not the same thing in this particular case. For it is entirely probable that it is the sheer untidiness and inefficiency of our minds that makes them the wonderfully creative things they are.

If they had been optimized for any particular purpose, they would operate toward that single objective in each instance, rather than wandering laterally and making all of the new and creative associations that they do. In other words, it is precisely the inefficiency of our minds that

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make them the extraordinarily imaginative and sometimes inspired entities that they are.

None of this is to suggest that evolutionary processes may not sometimes, or even usually, result in new organisms that use the world around them more efficiently than their predecessors, or that participate in communities or ecological webs that have improved energy flows. But it is to suggest that evolution and efficiency are not necessarily synonymous.

And our innovative and unprecedented species has good reason to be grateful for that.

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INTERVIEW

WHEN IT IS NOT JUST THE BRAIN THAT DECIDES Interview with Alain Berthoz

Professor of Physiology of perception at the Collège de France

by Pierangelo Garzia Science journalist

Is there such a thing as a purely rational decision? Are we able to decide in the most efficient way possible?

The fact that science has said ‘no’ might seem counterintuitive, but scientists know that human beings are conditioned in their decision-making processes by their past experience, age, gender, and by what they may believe they want but actually do not. In short, the brain is not what many believe it to be: it holds surprises, and sometimes wrong decisions.

Decision making. At first glance, the topic appears to be the result of elaborate mental processes, of problems analyzed in depth, especially from the rational point of view. Let’s think about big decisions made in the business sector. Are we not facing that investment in the new line of production? Or something else on a political or social level. But it is also there in our everyday life, because we already have to decide whether to get up in the morning or go back to sleep again, whether to continue a loving relationship, or whether to trust the care of a specialist, or someone else, and how to educate our children. If we think about it, we are making all the time. So much so that, as research on the brain has shown, we are biologically ‘made’ for making decisions. Alain Berthoz, professor of physiology of perception and action at the Collège de 120

France in Paris and the director of the eponymous laboratory of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (Cnrs), is absolutely convinced of this. In his book dedicated to research in this field, The science of decision making (Codice Editions) he wrote: “decision is a fundamental property of the nervous system based on internal simulation mechanisms of the body and of the world which have become more complex in parallel with evolution.” We were born and we evolve to make decisions in relation to the world.

Berthoz has spent years studying decision-making processes, not only from the point of view of neuroscience, but also in relation to the humanities, and the social and economic sciences. We have asked him a few questions about how our brains come to make decisions and what the latest news is in this field of study.

Professor Berthoz, how do we decide? What are the mental processes through which we are able to make effective decisions?

The human mind decides through the combination, cooperation, and sometimes the competition between the rational and the emotional areas of the brain. For a long time, theories have been developed in the economic and industrial sectors through the study of neurological diseases, according to which the prevailing belief was that human beings only decide rationally. Conversely, it has been shown, in particular by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, that mankind decides not only rationally, but also with a very important contribution from the emotional brain. One of the main challenges of modern neuroscience, and the relationship with the humanities and social sciences, is to understand whether the

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of collective decision making, one aspect that has not yet been thoroughly studied. In a company, it is not only the leaders who make decisions: for example, if a firm creates a new product, in order to design it and make it happen, collective decisions need to be made. In a hospital, before performing any surgery, a meeting with all the staff is held, and accordingly in matters of the law, the punishment of any person is a collective decision, not only that of the judge. We have made much progress in the study of individual decisions, but there is still a vast field of study concerning collective decision making, which represents a new frontier for research in this sector.

emotional brain cooperates or competes with the rational brain. Over the last fifteen years, we have been witnessing a very important time for these studies, which has become the subject of research in various intersecting disciplines, particularly in the field of neuro-economics.

Ten years have passed since the publication of your book The science of decision making: what more has been discovered on this subject?

Since the publication of this book, there has been a tremendous development of research on decision making, both in neurobiology, namely on the fundamental mechanisms of a neuronal type of decision making, and in the social sectors, in particular with the appearance and the explosion of social neuroscience. As outlined in my book, decision making has been the subject of both theoretical research, through mathematical models, and experimental research, in the neurophysiology of animals, showing that not only the brain, but the neurons themselves continuously make decisions. Since the publication of my book, decision making has become the subject of a lot of research and debate, but the research is not simple, because precisely as I wrote, “decision making is a fundamental property of the nervous system.” In addition, we must consider the field 122

What areas of the brain are involved in the decision making process?

It involves the cognitive brain, meaning the centers of perception, therefore the parietal lobe, and the frontal and prefrontal cortex, in addition to the memory structures of the hippocampus. In turn, the brain of emotions involves a very important structure called the amygdala, which receives information from the outside world very fast and is essential for the attribution of values, as well as the orbitofrontal cortex, studied by the neuro-scientist Antonio Damasio, who wrote of it in his book Descartes’ Error. The orbitofrontal cortex is the interface between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, where decisions are made; the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex are structures that can modify the assessments made by the amygdala. The caricatural image of these structures is a great cognitive system that goes from the back to the front of the brain involving the prefrontal cortex, the limbic system with the amygdala, which assigns the values, and finally, the orbitofrontal cortex.

Between the two areas, dopamine – a neurotransmitter, and thus a part of the influence of the limbic system, the emotional brain – that intervenes on the cognitive system is implemented by a chemical mediator, and this is still a mystery.

Does the ability to make decisions change with our age and situations?

The question should be divided into two parts: the first concerns

WHEN IT IS NOT JUST THE BRAIN THAT DECIDES |

It has been that mankind decides not only rationally, but also with a very important contribution from the emotional brain

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the individual differences, namely gender and age. Decision making assumes that first of all the brain receives the information. We know that according to age, experience, and gender, we certainly do not relate to the outside world in same way at all. My latest book, entitled La Vicariance, that will be published in Italian by Codice Editions, deals with this topic: the considerable differences between individuals in the way they receive information from the world on the basis of gender, age, education, and culture. The second aspect, as I explained in my previous book, is that the brain is not satisfied with acquiring information to make decisions, but imposes its own rules of interpretation on the world: we take only the information in the world that interest us, and furthermore, we transform it a priori by involving our personal experience and memory. Linked to this source of variety is the fact that, in order to make a decision, we gather only certain information relating to our experience and above all, to our goal. And the brain is a machine that works for goals.

How do scientists decide? More specifically: do you believe that you are a person who makes good decisions?

No, of course not! Who would ever have the arrogance to claim they always make good decisions? The French cognitive neuroscientist Etienne Koechlin has proposed, and it is the latest progress in this area, a theory according to which there are three components in the decision-making process: motivation, taken into account by the medial structures of the brain, emotion, and cognition. In other words, I want an apple, I prefer bananas, but I decide on something else. Well, I find myself in the same situation: I make decisions on the basis of my memories, the needs of the moment, my motivation, and emotion, and in the end, I often feel more like a spectator of the decision made by my ‘double’. I wrote a few chapters on the double, in La SimplexitĂŠ and La Vicariance Vicariance; decisions are made by this double that we have in our brain: I often observe the decisions my double makes with wonder, and sometimes, even amazement.

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Cm

COLUMN

| OXYGEN VS CO2

Optimization that comes from plants

by Renato Bruni Professor of biology at the University of Parma

The lack of an apparatus for eliminating waste turned plants into the pioneers of recycling and re-use: in fact, plant waste is converted into substances that can improve the efficiency of photosynthesis and improve functions such as defense and communication. Many of the products that we use every day derive from this incessant recycling activity.

Reduce, re-use and recycle is the mantra of the hierarchy of waste, according to which sustainable efficiency must tend toward the absolute containment of final waste, recovering each resource for other purposes. Unfortunately, we human beings have only faced the problem recently, and until just a few decades ago, we were heedless of the impact of our activities and the re-use of our waste. This attitude partly stems from biology, which has endowed us with an excretory apparatus capable of continuously eliminating all forms of metabolic waste. Inspiration for our sustainable efficiency dilemma may come, on the other hand, from organisms such as plants, which are without any such apparatus and therefore obliged to find evolutionary responses to manage their accumulation of metabolic waste. For example, one of the greatest physiological differences among plants is their calcium oxalate, salt of an organic compound identical to that which forms kidney stones.

To make it harmless and dispose

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of it, plants compact it into crystals of varying size and shape, accumulated in specific cellular structures distributed throughout the leaves and stems. In some plants their presence is massive: for example, oxalates constitute about 70% of the dry weight of certain cacti. In addition to reducing the volume and presence of these crystals, evolution has taken steps to ensure their new functions: given that their presence is unavoidable, why not use them for useful purposes, and recycle their capacity, transforming them from dead weights and waste into a functional element?

Thus, in order to maximize their efficiency, they do not impede the normal physiology, but operate as anti-nutritional factors by reducing their palatability to herbivores, taking on forms so as to prevent them being chewed by insects and pests (sometimes causing fatal injuries to their mucous membranes), or become like small mirrors reflecting and better able to spread light in every direction throughout the chlorophyll tissue. In this way, thanks to the

Biomimetics Ă— Biomimetics is the transfer of the biological processes of the natural world to the artificial one. Mankind is inspired by nature and finds solutions to a wide variety of problems by imitating it.

re-use of a waste product, plants increase the efficiency of two functions such as photosynthesis and defense.

But the apex of the plant’s mantra of the 3Rs is achieved by the enormous variety of secondary metabolites that plants synthesize from the waste of their biochemical activities. In fact, not only do plants have to recycle waste molecules, but they must provide for certain other differences compared to animals, such as the fact that they cannot move, actively defend themselves, or signal their needs with sounds or gestures, and they cannot protect themselves from an excess of cold and heat. The solution that evolution has honed for them provides a stylish and versatile combination of recycling, reuse, and efficiency. This category includes compounds known to humans for various purposes, such as the polyphenols in tea and cocoa, flavonoids in oranges and onions, anthocyanins in wine and blueberries, carotenes in tomatoes and saffron. Produced by the need to recycle organic waste matter that cannot be excreted outside, these plant molecules have eventually become important parts of their communication (color, smell, taste), and defense (against plant and animal pests, against free radicals) systems, which are often essential for a competitive advantage or to adapt better to living conditions that would otherwise be difficult.

The efficiency of this system is not only due to its intrinsic effectiveness, but also to the ability to carry out several requirements simultaneously according to its needs: the anthocyanin in red grapes simultaneously indicates the ripeness of the fruit to the birds that must spread the seeds, contributes to its defense against mold and mildew, and protects its DNA from genetic mutations and its cell membranes from free radicals. It is thanks to the great difference between us and plants, together with the efficiency of their waste management system, that plants provide us with certain medications, many cosmetics, and pigments, as well as aromas and flavors.

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SCIENCE AT THE TOY STORE

Make. Play.

Remake

by Davide Coero Borga

Makedo is perhaps one of the simplest and most creative games there is: a set of clamps, hinges, and a safe-saw to give free rein to children’s imagination and let them tinker with large and small boxes in search of their most beloved constructions. Created by the designer Paul Justin to allow today’s children develop their creativity, which is often stifled by toys that are already ‘complete’, it is one of the new eco-friendly games that more and more children love to play with.

Did the dolls and puppets that we chose to be the protagonists of our adventures when we were little feel the excitement, the fear, and the happiness we heaped upon their foam and plastic souls? For example, can toys feel embarrassed?

These are philosophical questions. What is certain, is that in times like these, we happen to see embarrassing or absurd situations day in and day out. Perhaps the protagonist is a toy. The scenario: after long and painful meditation on what gift to bring to the birthday party of the children of friends, here comes the irreparable: once the present wrapped with ribbons and bows has been opened, the kid throws aside the contents and starts to play with the box.

If you had known that before, you would have invested in more cardboard.

Children know how to amaze us.

All of a sudden what we thought was a trifle may turn into a concentration of toymaker appeal.

What is going on? Is it a new trend? Are the simple, handmade (or at least, so they seem), poor, and faded toys of yesteryear coming back?

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From constructions made with wooden bricks to origami-like characters made of perfumed paper (really) – a new category of toys is becoming popular: eco chic, eco design. Good-bye to that awful plastic. And the real news is that this is a do-ityourself toy. It is called Makedo: small packages full of paper clips, hinges, bolts, and tools with which to create gargantuan games. Fiddling with packaging cartons and rummaging through the recycle bin is truly fun. A toy kit that allows children to make their own new toys by using old boxes, scraps of plastic, and piles of old newspapers ready to be thrown away. CO2 neutral. Toymaker efficiency.

The DIY toy, which was launched on the Australian market a few years ago, is carving out a significant slice of the market in America as well as in Europe. Educational toy centers and science museum shops have immediately cornered the market. This is a smart toy. Limited to providing children’s hands with clips and plastic connectors with which to put together constructions made of shoe boxes, yogurt containers, milk cartons, and many

other things. There is no longer any reason to fret if you forget to put out the recycling bin for the door-to-door collection! It could turn out to be a good thing for your child or their friends.

Paul Justin, the industrial designer who invented Makedo, got the idea when he had his third child. It was then that he realized that the toys that he had played with as a child had helped him to grow up with a creative brain.

But although the boxes of Lego triggered his first thoughts as a designer and manufacturer, it is true that he had had to settle for a miniature ‘construction site’ in the garage, without being able to fabricate more ‘ambitious’ objects and machines. It was starting from these limits that led him to become a toy designer. His kit for little builders is composed of three simple items: re-clips, lock-hinges, and a safe-saw with rounded teeth. This triptych of tools has proven to be incredibly versatile. A quick look at the images shared by users on the Internet shows how simple boxes and cutouts can be turned into cars, work devices, scary monsters, and colorful buildings, as well as complex and intricate mazes, geodesic domes, and even clothes to wear.

At a time when most of the toys seem colorful, shiny, and unbreakable, and require the user to read instruction manuals that are as long as a novel, Makedo presents itself as the anti-toy.

And surely there is something subversive in saying that all the stuff we called trash until just yesterday, may turn out to be the best of games today.

Those who have had a harder time understanding the hint are primarily the parents. “What we are trying to do,” says Paul Justin, “is help children develop creative thinking.” These words may sound jarring to those who have just found comfort in the warm glow of a tablet, their best babysitter. Letting children build something seriously, with their own hands, encourages their imagination and shows them that you can re-use something old to create a game that is always new.

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