Big Green - A story from the future

IBM recently hosted Innovation Jam, a 72-hour web-based multilogue aimed at generating ideas for innovations in government, finance, sustainability, etc. One of the ideas was for IBM to move into services and consulting around something dubbed Big Green Services (a play on their informal moniker, Big Blue).

A technique called scenario planning is a useful way to encapsulate the richness of an idea without fully describing it in detail. I like playing with scenarios and decided to take a shot at writing one that would provide a sort of future vision of what Big Green Services might look like. This can be useful as a way of then determining what things need to be happening now, if the future vision is going to be realized. So here's my story from the future:
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Big Green Services: A story from the future
By: Tom Short © 2006

In 2007 IBM signed partnership agreements with the five largest energy utilities in the US to develop, sell and deliver energy conservation solutions across six targeted industries, plus residential. With energy prices skyrocketing and consumers becoming increasingly agitated with the attendant rise in prices and little corresponding rise in wages, the Fed and most State governments lined up with the new partnership, so that by 2008 there were matching incentives across the board to support the integrated energy conservation solution offerings that IBM and its various utility partners had jointly developed.

Now, in 2012, the wisdom of these pacts is easy to understand: energy savings equivalent to 10 new nuclear units are directly attributable to the partnership. Significant reductions in consumption and deep-computing-based approaches to grid operations management have put off major investments in transmission grid expansion, resulting in further cost savings for rate payers.

The future looks even brighter, since the joint IBM-utility partnership joined forces with Europe, Japan and Russia in a concerted effort to solve economically feasible fusion leveraging IBM's considerable research capabilities. Proof of concept is expected by 2014, and if all goes well, a prototype 100 MW unit could be operating by 2016.

The combination of the utilities' experience with transmission and distribution operations, and familiarity with customer needs, combined with IBM's world-class service-based business model were what made it all possible.
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Originally posted on the IBM Global Innovation Jam Wiki
site, September, 2006.

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Interestingly enough, I just read a news feed this morning about a multi-nation consortium that has pulled together funding to push fusion research ahead. Will be interesting to see what their timing is. Here's the article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6165932.stm

Update: 12/07/2006: http://www.poweronline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid=b133d3d5-8219-4a1c-8be2-a8bf2408f126