lunedì 18 marzo 2019

Fridays for Future

La grande iniziativa dello scorso 15 marzo, lanciata dalla sedicenne Greta Thumberg ha avuto un successo straordinario e ha creato un vastissimo eco e sensibilizzazione. Circa un milione e cinquecentomila persone, largamente giovani e giovanissimi, in circa 1700 città in 150 paesi nel mondo hanno preso parte all’iniziativa.

La visibilità data all’evento dai media di tutto il mondo e sopratutto dal web, hanno raggiunto certamente centinaia di milioni di persone…. I giovani chiedono giustamente agli adulti ed ai più’ anziani o vecchi di intervenire e di farlo subito per salvare l’umanità dalla peggiore catastrofe della sua storia.

Ed abbiamo solo pochi anni di tempo per dimezzare le emissioni... altrimenti si arriva al punto di non ritorno all’inizio degli anni 30 se la temperatura del pianeta supera di oltre
1.5 gradi centigradi i livelli preindustriali.

Il tempo e’ molto stretto, ma possiamo farcela se individui, imprese e istituzioni agiscono immediatamentesostenuti da una evoluzione molto favorevole e rapida della tecnologia.
I negazionismi snobbano il problema e comunque dicono che non ci sono le risorse
che vanno allocate ad altre priorità come lo sviluppo economico e la riduzione delle disuguaglianze. Questo problema di scelte é assurdo perché é vero il contrario: l’impegno ecologico fa risparmiare i cittadini, fa aumentare i profitti delle imprese, fa crescere le economie dei paesi impegnati risparmiando enormemente nei costi della salute e dei disastri ambientali, e riduce le diseguaglianze. 

Nella mia passata esperienza di manager di una grande multinazionale ho praticato questi principii realizzando forti risparmi e quindi profitti ed aumentando il senso di appartenenza di tutte le colleghe ed i colleghi. I nostri motti erano : “Ecology is free” e “Green is Black in the bottom line.”

Il movimento Fridays for Future ha anche fatto crescere la sensibilità ambientale di molti
politici. Già prima alcuni leaders politici avevano posto l’attenzione sul problema del Global Warming ed avevano incluso lo stesso nelle loro priorità politiche e sociali: basta citare per tutti il nostro Presidente della Repubblica Sergio Mattarella ed il Presidente Francese Emanuel Macron.
Ed il numero di politici e leaders industriali impegnati nella lotta al Global Warming sta crescendo rapidamente...

Forza giovani, continuate a scuotere le coscienze e a stimolare le azioni degli adulti...e sopratutto date voi per primi l’esempio con comportamenti virtuosi.

martedì 12 marzo 2019

5 Megatrends that will change for the better the life of humanity

I believe that (barring some major tragedy like a nuclear war caused by some crazy dictator— event that I consider highly unlikely) humanity, in the next several decades progressively, will improve its quality of life, thanks to 5 Megatrends that are partially in existence since several years and are accelerating.
By the end of this century all human beings will have the conditions and the opportunity to enjoy a much better quality of life on our Planet. (By the way, my generation is too old to see much of the progresses, my children’s generation will see quite a lot, and their children’s generation will see the full changes.)

The 5 MEGATRENDS are the following:

1. A decline in the world total fertility rate
2. An acceleration in productivity thanks to Artificial Intelligence and Ultra-Wide Band technologies.
3. The fast replacement of fossil fuels in favor of renewable sources of energy.
4. The rapid growth of the zero emission vehicles (mostly electric) and Self-Driving Vehicles (SDV), for the mobility of people and goods
5. The new Humanoid Robots to complement or replace humans in several tasks. 
1. Total Fertility Rate (the number of children generated by each women in her fertility age) 
- The world total fertility rate (TFR) has declined rapidly in the last several decades: it was 4.98 in 1960 and world population was 3 billion people; today the TFR Is 2.44 and the world population is 7.6 billion people. 
- There are some projections for the future. My believe is that the decline will be faster than most estimates. 
- I believe that the world TFR will reach the replacement level of 2 by 2050 with a world population of 9.5 billion. The population will continue to grow very slowly and will peak at 10 billion by 2070 than will start to decline and by 2100 will be back to the present level of ~ 7.5 billion. 
- The decline will continue in the next century until the world population reaches ~ 5.0 billion people to stabilise at this level, with appropriate policies of family planning.  
- The largest part of the population growth from now to 2070 will occur in Africa.  
2. The acceleration of productivity increase. 
- According to a study from McKinsey, the acceleration in the productivity increase, due to the new technologies, will eliminate by 2030 some 800 million jobs globally (mostly in developed countries) with only some 70 million jobs created by the new demands in society. 
- This would create huge problems of unemployment in developed countries, aggravated by the immigration from the poorest countries. 
- The only way to solve this problem should be (and I believe it will be) a progressive and continued reduction in the yearly working hours - in the next 2 decades this decline will occur mostly in the developed countries and then will progressively extend to all others.
3. The fast replacement of fossil fuels.
- The most important Renewable Energy (RE) sources include Hydro, Wind, Solar (thermal, thermal dynamic, photovoltaic, biomass). 
- The total installed capacity of RE in the world at the end of 2017 was 1236 GW, up more than 2.5 times from the 437 GW of 2010.
- With the rapid decline in the cost of renewables and the cost of storage, I believe that by 2030 the total installed capacity of RE will reach 10 TW. 
- The present installed capacity of RE is more than adeguate to provide the energy needs of 360 M people. (1 TOE - ton of oil equivalent - is equivalent to 5347 KWh, and the average energy consumption in the world is 2 TOE per person. Therefore, 2 M TOE =~ 10 TWh can largely supply the energy needs of 1 M People. The present installed capacity of RE is greater than 1.2 TW which generates in a year - assuming an average of 3000 hours a year in the mix of RE - ~ 3600 TWh, therefore largely sufficient to satisfy all the energy needs of 360 M people). 
- If, as I believe, the installed RE capacity in 2030 will reach 10 TW (i.e. ~ 8.5 times the present capacity) it will be adequate to serve the energy needs of ~ 3 B people.
- By 2040 all the world energy needs will be supplied by RE (there will not be in the world any more use of carbon or oil. Some gas consumption will remain, but the CO2 emissions will be compensated by tree plantations and carbon sequestration). 
4. The rapid growth of zero emission and SDV (self. 
- Today zero-emission vehicles are still a niche market, while the SDV are still in experimental phase. Today there are only about 5M e-vehicles in the world.  But the shipments are growing rapidly and will accelerate with technological improvements. 
- There are 3 major factors that are limiting the spread of zero-emission vehicles:
1.    The cost of the cars because of the low volumes and the cost of batteries. However the costs of both cars and batteries are declining rapidly thanks to the increase in the volume of shipments, and all automakers are making huge investments to increase the production capacity.
2.    The autonomy of the battery. Today the autonomy is of only about 200 Km. However, new drastic developments in the technology of batteries will bring the autonomy to about 500 Km by 2025 and to 800 Km by 2030. 
3.    The time of recharging and the network of recharging points.
- This issue is being addressed and a vast network of recharging points are being built around the world. There will be slow recharging points where recharging will take a few hours in the residential home garage, points of fast recharging of 15 to 20 minutes in areas such as supermarket and company carparks, and very fast recharging points of less than 5 minutes in major roads and highways. 
- The progressive improvement of those 3 limiting factors will accelerate the adoption of zero- emission vehicles (that I believe will be mostly electric but also hydrogen powered cars can be part of the mix).
- By 2030, I believe that more than 50% of all vehicles shipped will be zero-emission and by 2040 all new vehicles shipped will be zero emission. 
- The SDV will start volume shipments in the second half of next decade, initially as means to assist the driver that will still be in the car, and later totally SDV. 
- By the year 2030 all zero-emission vehicles will also be SDV.
5. The new humanoid robots. 
- It is expected that the first humanoid robots will be on the market by 2025 and will be very expensive. For example a domestic humanoid robot will be programmed for tasks like cleaning the house, cooking, gardening...
- The first robots will appear in developed countries were there is generally a population decline and therefore more need - and many rich people can afford them.
- Robots will grow in number and in capability and will look more humanoid.
- By 2040 there will be millions of robots in homes, farms and agriculture and in manufacturing sites.
- They will relieve humans of the most repetitive and heavy tasks, leaving humans more free time and creative duties.