As I mentioned in my first blog, when I started Imaginea Energy over two years ago, it was to pioneer a new kind of energy company that values all three of Planet, People and Profit. I thought if we could show that it is possible to smash energy and environment together in a positive way, then perhaps others would follow and we could transform my industry into a force for good.
Imaginea stands for Imagine A new way of doing business. We are an oil and gas producer, but our extraordinary high dream is to show that you can produce clean hydrocarbons, which I define as hydrocarbons produced without emissions, without pollution and without the use of fresh water. Our message is of "AND" -- that we can do much better for the Planet AND we can do much better for People AND we can do much better for Profit. Constraints improves creativity by its very nature. Humans can be fantastic problem solvers. I will contend... why wouldn't we want to solve this problem and find an "AND" solution?
Changing the world in some ways is really quite simple. One, you have to want to. Two, you have to try.
Our message isn't that we are right and everyone else is wrong. We just have a different vision of what the future can be and how we can contribute to making it better - and we are prepared to spend all our time, energy and money into showing it is possible.
For Imaginea to have a new way of doing business, it must include positively disrupting many of the paradigms below that are common in our current hydrocarbon industry.
- We want hydrocarbons to eventually be produced ONLY for use as clean energy or clean hydrocarbons for manufacturing products such as plastics, clothing, chemicals rather than fossils fuels being used in inefficient combustion vehicle engines that pollute.
Burning fossil fuels needs to come to an end -- and it will eventually. Whether that is 10 years from now or 100 years from now, I don't know. The world however is moving to clean, affordable energy without or without the fossil fuel industry. Be it right or wrong, trillions of dollars have been spent in developing a fossil fuel industry over the past several decades. It is economically inefficient to just strand all those assets and start all over. However if we change the product that we are producing -- to a clean hydrocarbon -- I will boldly and potentially controversially suggest that the fossil fuel industry has a tremendous opportunity to produce clean affordable energy faster and more economical -- by transforming what we already have. We would be able to contribute another option to the basket of clean energy alternatives.
We are excited with the possibilities ahead of us. We will be re-purposing our assets to create better value. Hydrogen and carbon will be two important molecules of the future. We will be finding different end products for them that can be created in ways that we can be proud of, using our "AND" ingenuity. We envision technologies such as Big Data/IoT, drones, local refining, blockchain, water desalination, Cloud computing, 3D printing, robotics, etc. and other things yet to be discovered, will help us improve and transform the way we do things.
We don't have all the answers, but we will not stop until we find them. We aren't there yet and have a long ways to go, but we will not stop until we reach our high dream.
I feel very Columbus-esque some days. We have declared the world is round, not flat. We believe we will not fall off the horizon when we get there. We know that there is a world of wonder and discovery that is waiting for us, just beyond our sight.
We can't change the world all by ourselves -- we are hoping to see as many people as possible come with us!