Losing everything is the perfect opportunity | Arash Aazami | TEDxLancasterU

thank you so wonderful to be here if all the work in the world were voluntary work what would you do I've had to ask myself that question a number of times anyways let me start with this picture this picture here was taken by my mother in the early eighties in a country called New Year in West Africa and the boy in the middle is me because that's where I grew up and I'm sitting next to my brother and our neighbor and as you can see we're watching TV now watching TV in the air is a big thing because in our town there were two TVs right now in New Year 90% of all the people have no access to electricity so you could say that we were blessed now I took that blessing of electricity very very seriously because after a number of years were returned to the Netherlands and I enrolled in conservatory to study electric guitar here's the proof and then a few years went ahead passed by and I founded this little consulting business and life was going well and I became father of two amazing little boys and a little while later things went south what happened was I lost my work I lost my relationship I lost my money lost my house lost a whole number of things time for a big reset and I was sitting in this tiny little room wondering about what to do next and at that moment I realized that I had a lot of power because I lost everything so I could win anything and what I decided to do there was use this word a lot I would get all these job opportunities for instance and I'd say no to them why because I decided that I would do work that I deemed useful in some sense so I turned down all these work opportunities where I would do work just for the sake of earning money now we're going to fast-forward a little bit and I stole a little logo here in it a number of years later and this is a little while ago I was looking at my life and I was the owner of an energy company and I was doing all these media things and I was meeting with Greenpeace CEOs and TV appearances and growing a beard in the mean time and winning prizes at MIT and what happened there was really interesting because I wanted to know how did I get here going from music to this whole situation well let's rewind a little bit again in 2006 I apparently had said no enough times to say yes to the right opportunity and the right opportunity being answering the question would you lead an energy company what yes so that's what I started to do it was an energy company in very very bad shape sales were bad people were not motivated and they needed a change so they asked somebody who had some experiences with crisis to do something about it and I was a complete newcomer to the business I didn't know anything about energy itself I knew something about people though so I would ask all these people around me were these energy professionals questions such as what is energy now the answers I got to these questions to this one started sounded Li a bit like this some other people would answer me I would get answers like these I was in Barcelona they gave me this answer apparently something really really interesting was going on here we had lost connection to the product we were selling I went on and asked about sustainability and I found this one particular example of a school in Japan where they wanted to do something about their sustainability image so what they do they bought windmills makes sense right now apparently in that area the wind wasn't too good so these windmills will not turn by themselves so what did they do for the sake of upholding this sustainable image they connected them to the power grid and made them turn so that was sustainability good I went on and ask even more questions about consumption for instance or sales if you will and of course sales people would show me charts like this one you all know these charts sales are going to go up why well because people all around the world are going to consume more and more and more and more energy and I thought to myself wait a minute if we are selling a fossil resource and we're basically depleting the resources how can we sell more and more and more and more isn't it the case that the chart should look like this in fact scientists that I spoke to approved that we are here we're on the verge of the big turnaround we're going to consume less and less and less and less fossil fuels this particular picture taught me so much for one I found out that whoa whatever we call alternative energy is not alternative Sun wind water have been energy resources that we've been using for thousands of years oil coal gas are the actual alternative energy resources because we've only been using them for a hundred and some years and in a little while they'll be gone now this big turnaround is a very interesting thing and they call a transition and there are only three reasons why we are going to get back to this situation where we're going to rely on renewable resources first is that we run out of fossil fuels second is that we run out of people we're up there anymore I don't like that option third is we find something better and I like the third option in fact the Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones right but then what were we going to do because in the mean time three and a half billion people in the world still suffer from what we call energy poverty and I believe that all humans are equal why not give them access to energy learning about all these numbers made me really sad it made me angry I wanted to do something about it and I didn't know what and I learned this quote by Richard Buckminster Fuller who said you don't change things by fighting the existing reality if you want to change something build a new model that makes the old model obsolete now I wanted to know what is this new model and I figured energy companies make money as they sell energy the more they sell the more they earn but in doing that they only serve one stakeholder being themselves couldn't we find a way to design energy companies in such a way that they serve every stakeholder in a positive way including the environment including society including human beings such as you and me and I thought of this energy company that would actually earn more money when it would sell less energy sounds impossible right I like impossible so I started to think about this model and somehow it happened to work out without going into all kinds of details it finances your energy transition and you become completely independent of other people's fuel and in the meantime your energy bill is going to turn all the way to zero this is very good for us nobody believed it but I decided I believed enough to quit my job found this company start it up get it going a few years later the path to zero as I called it became successful got a lot of attention and this was the view from my office so apparently this very very crazy plan worked and as I was looking over the city of Rotterdam and thinking all these thousands of buildings that were engaging on their path to energy independence I decided to quit my job again it was time for a big reset why what just happened I believe that a company is a means to an end it's never an end in itself and I wanted to serve the end but I needed to find out what the end was the higher purpose now in order to get there I decided to go back to New Year first for the first time in 26 years I was there exactly there where I grew up this is my old school and this is my brother and I in front of her classroom and this is my brother and I in front of our classroom and I went inside the classroom and I saw that despite the fact that they have no electricity they do have Excel vintage Excel which is really really cool I found my old teacher Monsieur to hold oh great great guy remembered all my grades even the bad ones and as you can see was holding a mobile phone now in a share most of the people in the streets are playing around with their mobile phones how would you do that in a country where 90% of the people have no access to electricity well wherever you go you find shops like these where somebody connects a diesel generator to a number of AC outlets that's where you charge your phone smart isn't it I went there not empty-handed I brought a suitcase filled with lights solar-powered lights and some phone chargers also and I wanted to distribute them among children and students why children and students because I believe that the Nobel Prize winner of the future needs light now the fact is that these kids go to school during the day then they come home they have to help out their parents on the land then the Sun sets and they can do no homework so by giving them light from a renewable resource you give them the power to educate themselves and build a future I brought these lights to a number of villages such as this one go low and in this particular village I gave away 25 lights but I didn't give him away for free I wanted them to be worth something so I wanted something in exchange not money I didn't want to have a payback I wanted to have a pay forward I wanted these kids to do something that their community would benefit from so for every kid that received a light that kid would commit to plant a tree and maintain it so that in turn the positive yield would be larger that's said and done one of the villagers thought that wasn't enough so that afternoon he came to me and he gave me his sheep I named her Sean and I decided not to eat her Sean is doing very well in fact cuz a few days ago I received a message that Sean had given birth to Timmy I have two sheep now which means I've got to go back and as I was in leisure I saw these stories of positivity amazing positivity that whole big change that we need that whole transition is already happening I found out for instance that the whole mobile network in here is powered by sunlight and as you can see sometimes one or two of these panels are borrowed for other purposes the very first street lighting in the town that I grew up in is powered by the Sun so yes we found something better we are on that third option the one that I liked good so to end this talk energy I believe is a basic need nobody can go without therefore it should be a basic right my wish is to see if we can get clean energy included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I know for a fact that every company every energy company but even every individual can reshape their business model in such a way that it positively affects every stakeholder not only themselves not only themselves in customers but themselves our shareholders customers employees employees families suppliers society and the environment and in the end it's not our intentions that make the difference it's not our ideas that make the difference it's erections thanks a lot

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 318,780

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Life, Adventure

Id: 7qkfKo4m-6A

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2015