In 2017, Václav Smil, professor emeritus in environment at Manitoba University, Canada, published an ambitious work called Energy and Civilization: A History. Smil, according to Science magazine the world’s foremost expert on energy, unpicks in his work how energy has come to model human society over the past two thousand years.
Of course, energy use and human wellbeing are intimately linked, but with one important subtlety. In a recent interview, the professor pointed it out that “economic growth and the increase in energy consumption must only be considered as ways of achieving a better quality of life, a concept that involves not only satisfying basic physical needs, but also human intellectual development, from basic education to individual freedoms.”
At ACCIONA, when we asked ourselves how we could contribute to improving the quality of life in less-developed regions, we realized we needed to do what we know best: energy and water infrastructure on which human reality is built. This was the origin of the acciona.org foundation and the logic behind its moniker The Energy & Water Foundation.