During the 4th Youth Day on October 2 at EXPOFORUM Conventional and Exhibition Centre, a large-scale business game "Lighten Your City Up" took place. The players learnt to make correct investment decisions in the world a-changing and consider the possible consequences.
Six youth teams had to invent some ways of supplying energy to a large city district. They were supported by representatives of major companies: Gazprom, Uniper, Schneider Electric, Wintershall Dea, OMV, and VNG. The training was led by representatives of the Higher School of Economics for the St. Petersburg State University of Economics (Natalia Sarakhanova and Pavel Metelyov), as well as Gazprom International Training Centre (Rob Veersma) and the European School of Management and Technology (Christoph Burger).
The game took all day. Hot arguments at the tables didn’t cease for a minute, the more so because to make things even more complicated, the leaders kept changing the rules. For example, at about noon the players were announced that prices for gas and coal in the hypothetical city where they were acting throughout the game took a nose-dive. In particular, the price for 1 m3 of natural gas went down to 120$, and coal came down to 60$. By doing that, the organisers wanted to demonstrate how volatile the energy resource market can be and how difficult finding an appropriate and final solution might be.
In the afternoon, all the teams delivered their presentations and announced their solutions to the task set. The jury acted like the citizens who could approve the projects provided by young energy workers or reject them. The list of jurors included representatives of major companies: Lars Drage (OMV), Detlef Weßling (Uniper Global Commodities SE), Marcel Kramer (Energy Delta Institute), Olga Orlova (the St. Petersburg State University of Economics), Margarita Hoffman (Wintershall Dea), Maxim Nedzvetsky (Gazprom VNIIGAZ), and Britta van Boven (Gasunie).
The experts gave special consideration to two projects that suggested combining several power sources in the energy supply system. One of the teams offered to focus on peaceful atoms (35%), and extend the system with other sources like gas (15%), wind (25%) and solar energy (25%). Another team suggested focusing on wind energy and gas.
During the coffee break, we managed to interview some of the Youth Day participants. Elizaveta Shmeleva, a student of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University said that she really enjoys creative and yet business-like atmosphere at SPIGF 2019. Informal communication between people from different countries and companies, sharing their knowledge and experience, makes its easy for emerging specialists to make useful acquaintances. Many participants of the Youth Day complained that they were so engaged into the varied agenda that they barely had time to see any stands arranged by SPIGF 2019 participants. However, they hope to catch up on the next days of the Forum that will continue till October 4.