What Does the Future Look Like?
Rethinking Energy, Happiness, and the Choices We Make
We live in a world where it’s easy to take things for granted.
Flip a switch, and there’s light. Tap a screen, and your phone wakes up. But behind these everyday comforts is a vast and complex network of systems, resources, and decisions that most of us rarely stop to consider.
The more I’ve worked across the fields of engineering, supply chains, and sustainability, the clearer it becomes: energy systems are not just technical puzzles.
They are deeply-human challenges.
Understanding them requires insights from across disciplines (engineering, environmental science, economics, sociology, policy, and more!). And even then, a central question remains:
What does the future really look like?
Steve Jobs once said that you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them by looking backward.
When we look at history, we begin to see just how much our needs and desires have changed. A few decades ago, our daily lives looked completely different.
Could anyone back then have predicted the world we live in now?
This uncertainty is why even the most advanced models and calculations fall short without one key factor: human happiness.
What Truly Makes Us Happy?
What makes us happy often depends on what we see bringing happiness to others. That shared perception creates trends, expectations, and habits.
And here is the connection to energy.
The energy transition is not just a technical process. It is a societal one. It aims to meet our current needs and adapt to how those needs evolve over time. It drives economic growth (which is also to be questioned as a societal goal), creates employment, and brings new technologies to life. At the same time, it brings serious challenges. It can cause social inequality, environmental harm, and an intense demand for materials.
The Cost We Don’t See
Despite all this, for most of us, energy is just a service. We pay our bills and move on.
But the price we see on those bills does not tell the full story. It does not show us the full impact of the systems behind them.
And because of this, we remain blind to how these systems shape the world we live in and the future we are heading toward.
More importantly, we are blind to how this affects our happiness.
Rethinking Needs in a Changing World
To move forward, we need to ask difficult questions.
What do we really need?
What truly brings joy and meaning to our lives?
And how do our choices, especially around energy and material consumption, fit into that vision?
My short experience in sustainability has left me with one clear takeaway:
This system reflects our demands.
Every charged phone, every new pair of jeans, every streaming video pulls on global supply chains, ecosystems, and communities.
We cannot afford to stay disconnected from this reality.
A New Definition of Progress
Maybe it’s time to redefine what happiness means.
To rethink what we consider needs.
To look honestly at how our current system shapes our expectations, and whether that system is really built with people or the planet in mind.
Understanding the hidden layers of the energy we consume might seem like a technical task. But at its core, it’s a personal and societal one. The more we uncover, the better equipped we are to choose a future that is not just efficient or low-carbon, but also truly worth living in.
Happiness is not just a feeling. It is a direction. And understanding energy might just help us find the way.