Scenarios help organisations navigate uncertainty by constructing plausible, structured what-if narratives that inform sharper strategic decisions, strengthen risk management, and spur innovation. By moving beyond a single forecast, they surface blind spots, stress-test strategies against multiple potential futures, and build organisational foresight and thought leadership. Scenario work tests the future relevance of current assets and business models, sharpens strategic thinking, and enables teams to identify options and pretest critical decisions. It also builds readiness for the unexpected by defining triggers and backup plans, accelerates response speed, and future growth opportunities. Ultimately, scenarios enable the creation of future-oriented visions, target positions, and coherent strategies.
After the COVID pandemic, we entered a new uncertainty with the invasion of Ukraine. We saw the need to prepare and look ahead. We therefore initiated an energy scenario project in 2023. This was led by Nette Lehtinen, who had recently joined Wärtsilä; being one of the leaders in this field, we have an unprecedented opportunity to drive and explore this.
Energy 2035 Scenarios
The process started by setting up an internal core team to drive the project forward. We then collected ideas from many employees in various roles in the organisation on the topic, which helped us identify the high-level themes. Building on this, we engaged the organisation in workshops, moving from themes into concrete topics to include in the scenarios. To avoid becoming too inward-looking, we included one external thought leader per topic, and we interviewed them and validated our findings.
This work resulted in three plausible 2035 scenarios, each one with opportunities, risks, and innovation potential for us, which we launched in 2024. Our three distinct energy scenarios explore how our external business environment could evolve by 2035, with a focus on thermal power generation, services, battery energy storage, and adjacent growth opportunities. Together, they created a shared narrative and a reference point for the organisation.
Implication analysis shaping the WISE ecosystem strategy
Scenarios are just a starting point; the next step is implication analysis. If these scenarios occur, what actions should we take? Some actions make sense across the three distinct energy scenarios:
- Build digital capabilities and ecosystem partnerships
- Develop intelligent assets and optimisation solutions
- Secure strategic partnerships for technological requirements
- Develop fuel flexibility and efficiency
These insights feed into the development of the five work packages in the WISE Veturi programme. In WISE we are aiming to develop zero-emission balancing power. We gather players into the WISE ecosystem to innovate technologies and services.
By identifying critical cause-and-effect chains, we can better prepare for the unexpected and enhance our response speed. Building logical yet challenging scenarios is a collective task that should involve our brightest minds. More than 80 of Wärtsilä’s senior leaders and experts, together with more than 20 external global thought leaders, contributed to these scenarios through thematic workshops. In addition, we drew on cross-industry expert interviews and discussions across our communication channels. We have revisited the scenarios in 2025 to see how the scenarios are unfolding and if we missed something. The futures we envisioned are all materialising in some aspect, but the focus on building digital capabilities and fuel flexibility are still relevant bets.
The idea of using strategic foresight in building ecosystem projects came from the Hanken student visit I shared in my latest blog post; in this article you can read about one of the ways we have used strategic foresight when incepting the WISE ecosystem strategy.