Summary
Structuring investment and policy intervention to develop sustainably is a difficult task. To inform that process we need appropriate knowledge-products that can scale, evolve and be absorbed. When developing knowledge products we often do so in disciplines. Decision makers and disciplines have different vocabularies, but we are writing a common history. We need aggregate information for global challenges, but no one size fits all. Our investments, policies and development are context specific. We also produce more intellectual garbage than ever before. But it cannot easily be mined, recycled or build upon. We may draw our challenges from tensions we see around us – and with humanities increasing demands those challenges multiply. But, our methods are not tailored to advance at an accelerating rate. This seminar reflects on the advances I have shepherded to improve methods, apply them, develop new data and create impact for sustainable socio-economic development. In order to inject learnings at that can scale and adapt, an ecosystem strategically seeded is introduced.
The work has had global impact. I report the shaping of investment trajectories of the World Bank; influencing sustainable development paradigms; informing European Policy; African outlooks and national decision making processes. This is undertaken with new open source methods that have developed into scalable, dynamic community projects. They have spurred other efforts. Novel insights unearthed with those tools have included step changes in policy design. An enabling environment with high-level engagement, analyst capacity building and structured management has allowed for an ecosystem to flourish well beyond its beginnings.
Bio
Mark Howells directs the division and holds the chair of Energy Systems Analysis (KTH-dESA) at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, and is an Honorary Affiliate Prof at the University of Technology in Sydney. His group leads the development of some of the world’s premier open source energy, resource and spacial electrification planning tools; he has published in Nature Journals; coordinates the European Commission’s think tank for Energy; is regularly used by the United Nations as a science-policy expert; and is a key contributor to UNDESA’s ‘Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development Policies’. His division contributes to efforts for NASA, IRENA, ABB the World Bank and others. Prior to joining KTH-dESA he has an award winning career with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Mark’s graduate and post-graduate studies were undertaken at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Within that time he was an international research affiliate at Stanford’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development and represented the World Energy Council’s student program.