Kunle Kalejaye September 2016, Sweetcrude, Lagos – Shell through its #makethefuture campaign is highlighting the need for greater collaboration to create more and cleaner energy by bringing to life innovations from six smart energy start-ups.
Spurred by increasing demand for energy, which now contributes to climate change, Shell said, “We need more and cleaner energy.”
“That is why we launched our #makethefuture campaign, our call for collaboration to create smart solution that will generate more and cleaner energy across the world.
“The enormity of this problem, coupled with the scale of our worldwide ambition in terms of our desire to progress faster and further, requires the involvement of many in order to find solutions. Shell recognises that the only way forwards require collaboration,” Shell media team informed energy correspondents in Lagos.
They added that working together will transform lives and bring more and cleaner energy to communities everywhere.
“For #makethefuture, we collaborate with inventors, local communities, engage citizens and global celebrities to transform lives by putting bright energy ideas in action. Not talking about it but doing it – on the ground day by day, creating a new reality. Each of us has a role to play – as inventors, funders, volunteers, donators or vocal supporters,” they said.
This year’s #makethefuture campaign event took place on 27 and 28 September, 2016 in Rio, Brazil, which featured six international artists, including Nigeria’s Yemi Alade.
In a telephone conference call with energy correspondents at the Shell office in Lagos, Yemi Alade said energy was important to every Nigerian and also for her music production which she uses to touch peoples lives.
“As a musician I am also an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs need energy to stay in business. For my fans and everybody, we need light because without power, entrepreneuers can’t survive. So the#makethefuture project is the way to go,” she said.
Shell media explained that Yemi Alade was selected because of her social media followership and with the#makethefuture she will be able to reach her fans that fall in the same demography and age group.
Through its LiveWire programme, Shell said they are turning gravity into light, coffee into energy, cooking oil into fuel, footsteps and roof into power sources and roadside turbulence into electricity.
“Communities in Brazil, Kenya, China, the USA and UK will experience first hand the benefits of these new sources of energy. And we will all see how a different future is possible, a future that is in our hands to create”.