Energy is the engine that drives our cities. Without it, everything stops. Energy is closely tied to food, transport, conservation, water supply, and municipal solid waste collection, among other things. Therefore, it can be said that cities completely depend on the supply and distribution of energy to function.

We propose an imaginary scenario to base the activity around: A disaster has cut off all the city’s energy supply and it’s not known when they will be reestablished. However, energy reserves are used up because the situation has already lasted a couple of days.

The Town Hall has issued a public announcement that explains the situation and encourages citizens to participate in the crisis committees that have been formed to deal with this serious social, economic, and ecological problem. Once the public announcement has been read, divide the students into four groups that will take on the parts of the four crisis committees:

• Conservation and distribution of food and materials.
• Water supply and waste collection.
• Heating, lighting, energy to cook and refrigerate the food.
• Means of transport and communication.

These committees will have to make a situation diagnosis and propose alternative measures to resolve the problems that are coming up. Each group can start the assignment by making a list of ways in which the lack of energy supply affects their sector. After 15 minutes, give every group the diagnosis sheet (annex 2) so that they can evaluate the seriousness of the situation.

When this sheet has been completed, the committees meet as a group to discuss the diagnosis they have made. Every committee has a turn to talk about their situations and their emergency measure proposals. The task of the rest of committees during this time is to evaluate the viability of the other proposals.

Once all groups have had their turn and all the emergency measures have been evaluated, start an open discussion to reflect on:

• The amount of energy that is needed and how much is unnecessarily spent.
• Our dependency on energy and what the priorities would be if the quantity was reduced.