One of the clearest and concrete roadmaps leading to a truly sustainable, equitable and secure energy future is that charted by a world-around electric grid powered entirely by Earth’s renewable energy income with the potential of providing everyone everywhere with reliable, affordable and carbon-free electricity as conceived and first proposed by Buckminster Fuller in the middle of the last century.

“In the early years of Trudeau’s premiership of Canada, when he was about to make his first visit to Russia, I gave him my world energy network grid plan, which he presented to Brezhnev, who turned it over to his experts. On his return to Canada Trudeau reported to me that the experts had come back to Brezhnev with: “feasible . . . desirable.”

Buckminster Fuller | Critical Path

Originally, under the auspices of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, a World Game™ Workshop team has been assembled and challenged with developing a series of exercises designed to illustrate how a comprehensive design science approach to problem-solving can shed new light on humanity’s options for addressing the climate crisis. A primary goal is to engage people around the world in World Game™ Workshop activities designed to help them envision a contemporary realization of Fuller’s world grid and its impacts. We will begin by identifying, tracking and mapping cases of what Bucky called spontaneous cooperation among countries that are integrating their power grids across political boundaries - critical steps leading to the formation of a globally connected grid.  

We will compile a database that includes information on how each project was initiated and by who was involved (government, private sector, private/public partnership etc.); how the integrated grids are managed; current status, etc. We also hope to monitor how technical, regulatory, marketing and security challenges are addressed as well as any unanticipated obstacles and opportunities. In this phase of our initiative, we’re looking to discover the most effective strategies for addressing the challenges associated with transcending political borders to create regional electric grids capable of supporting 100% renewable energy generation.