Employ a hypothetical availability of oil royalties to elaborate a territorial development project. This is the initiative "The Royal Contest", a competition of ideas promoted by Shell Italia E&P and created in collaboration with the University of Basilicata, for which the award ceremony was held on Wednesday 16 May in Potenza.
First classifiedia equal the projects of the teams have resulted “Medusa” (recovery and development of the peri-urban area in Basilicata, in particular the Agna district of Matera) and “Fivemakers” (creation of full-electric buses for urban transport, with smart shelters for recharging, the redevelopment of three escalator systems and an App with which to manage services), in second place is the team's project “Phoenix” (an innovative plant for the production of renewable energy by coupling solar thermodynamics and biomass), third place for the team project “The Economists” (redevelopment of the Potenza-Anzi railway section with the creation of a cycle-pedestrian greenway).
The jury consisted ofChief Executive Officer of Shell Italia, Marco Brun, by Prof. Gianni Schiuma of Unibas and by Dr. Ruggero Faggioni, coordinator of the European Institute of Design in Milan, and examined and evaluated 10 finalist projects (out of 16 initial ones) which involved 40 university students for three months (they were 70 at the start) arrived at the finish line.
First of its kind in the oil&gas sector in Italy, the competition had the aim of stimulating the imagination of young people to transform a natural resource (in this case, hydrocarbons) into a lever of territorial development through the elaboration of a specific project. Five thematic areas to choose from – (1) Environment and Energy, (2) Mobility and Tourism, (3) Rural Development, (4) Infrastructure and digital agenda, (5) Welfare, sport, culture and street furniture – with a only constraint: demonstrate the social and economic benefits that each project would bring to the area.
The response from the students was not long in coming: after twelve weeks of hard work during which the students were accompanied by Shell managers, Unibas professors and industry experts with training sessions on specific topics (e.g. , how a budget is drawn up, cHow to present a project in public, how to transform an idea into an innovative solution, etc.), the 10 finalist teams produced works of absolute value, mainly concentrated in the Environment and Energy and Mobility and Tourism, with 3 projects each, followed by Rural Development (2) and one each for Infrastructure and digital agenda and Welfare, sport, culture and street furniture.
