By Nicholas Newman

 

It is clear many of the problems that the global energy industry faces today are a failure to provide effective and responsible energy leadership. Examples of energy leadership failure can be seen from the government reports on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident in Japan and Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Such incidents could have been either avoided or mitigated if the participating stakeholders had exercised responsible energy leadership. It is clear in both cases that the inherent decision-making culture was not encouraging participants to test and evaluate the suitability, sustainability and implications of their energy leadership decisions.

 

I propose together with my brother Prof Victor Newman at Greenwich University to hold a series of three-hour workshops where industry professionals, academics, regulators, decision and policymakers will come together to define “Energy Leadership” as a concept and practice for professional practitioners. It is proposed, these workshops will be held in Oxford at London's Energy Institute and at its Middle East branch in Dubai.
Prework will involve participants studying topical case studies such as BP's Deep-water horizon in the Gulf of Mexico and Tokyo Electric Power company’s nuclear plant at Fukushima Daiichi, and to gather their own examples to cite at the workshop in the opening contextual session.

Having defined Energy Leadership as a concept, these workshops will characterise the potential nature of energy leadership by crafting Energy Leadership principles using Victor Newman’s “Smart Failing”technique. To do this we will ask trial participants to attempt to describe how to ensure that Energy Leadership is absent in decision making, identifying the top 5 symptoms of failure and then crafting antidote principles and practices.
By the end of each seminar participants will have developed practical prototype tools to aid them in evaluating current decisions as to their compliance with responsible Energy Leadership.

The results of these seminars  will be published in Oxfordprospect magazine and it is proposed in the skills supplement of the Energy Institute’s Petroleum Review. In addition, it is proposed that these results will be turned into a series of energy leadership modules for executive education with CPD potential at a Masters level.