OREANDA-NEWS. Shell Russian and the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO held “Student Energy Debates”, where 10 students and postgraduates of the leading Russian and Dutch universities - Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Higher School of Economics, Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, Hanze University of Applied Sciences and University of Groningen - took part.

Five Russian-Dutch student teams had to answer the question, how significantly the demand for energy is going to increase and through what resources it may be satisfied. After that each team had to work out a scenario of future energy development, having chosen a certain fuel kind: oil, gas, coal, nuclear energy and renewable energy resources.

The students' presentations were assessed by the jury: Olivier Lazare, Chairman of Shell Russia, Jean-Marc Soucy, Head of the Schlumberger Project Management Chair at the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, Grigory Vygon, Head of the SKOLKOVO business school's Energy Centre, and Alexey Kharnas, Head of the “Izdatelsky Sindikat” service at Kommersant.

Andrei Sharonov, Dean of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, said in his welcome speech, “The energy topic is extremely important for the SKOLKOVO business school. The research centre dedicated to actual energy issues was among the first ones established at the school”.

Olivier Lazare underlined, “It is assumed that by 2050 consumption of energy resources will have increased twice as much. Finding new safe energy resources will be a challenging task, and the generation of today will have to find a solution. That is why it is really important to engage students and young specialists in that dialogue”.

The team of Anastasia Popova from Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas and Stefan Wiersema from Hanze University of Applied Sciences has won the debates.

For the first time “Student Energy Debates” were held in November 2012 among Russian students, and this year the intellectual battle took place within the official programme of the Russia-the Netherlands cross year. Among the special guests there were: Ron van Dartel, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Russia, Kirill Molodtsov, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, Alexander Voloshin, SKOLKOVO business school's Coordination Council member, Alexey Yankevich, Deputy CEO for Economics and Finance at Gazprom neft.