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3rd World Future Energy Summit opens in Abu Dhabi
Wednesday, 24 Jan, 2010
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Tough talk as 98 government delegations, diverse stakeholders debate renewables in the heart of the hydrocarbon world
Three years in, the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi is starting to live up to its name, bringing together heads of state, academics, researchers, financiers and consumers from South and East Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas to discuss, negotiate and shop their way to a more sustainable energy and emissions future. Writes Mildred Fernandes in theenergycollective.com
At the first major post-Copenhagen industry gathering, opinions about the December conclave flew thick and fast. Within half an hour of the WFES 2010 opening, Karolos Papoulias, president of Greece, alluded to a world community limiting itself to the lowest common denominator; Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed fingered powerful vested interests trying to combat change; and Malaysian Prime Minister Sri Mohammed Najib Bin Tun Abdul Razak said the international community failed to rise to the occasion and had once again chosen the path of expediency.
Strong words from an event previously viewed in global circles as primarily a talkshop or procurement market for Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s multi-billion dollar programme in renewable energy. Downturn-trodden delegates might be thinner on the ground than in previous years, but the quality and diversity of attendees and level of discourse makes up for it, a fact that must please summit hosts Masdar immensely.
The gap between developed and developed nations, a stumbling block for Cop15, Kyoto and other transnational agreements, was in keen focus later on day one, when energy ministers from India, China, Japan, Korea, Ghana, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates debated the limits of clean energy technology and policing.
For Ghana, a nation with a strong tradition in hydro, increasing water security poses both ecological and economic hurdles. India, faced with the double-whammy of a rising population and parallel energy demand, finds itself unable to meet that demand, according to Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Minister of New and Renewable Energy. In one of the world’s fastest growing economies, 40 per cent of the population lives without any form of energy. “People,” said Abdullah, “need energy to grow.”
Where that energy will come from, and at whose cost, remains a hot-button topic. Abdullah called on western and economically powerful nations to share technology and open up financing for those who are late coming to the table. China’s ambassador to the United Nations said the BRIC nation is aware of its responsibilities and is doing everything its power to pursue sustainable development. Obligations, he added, are equally binding on all nations.
And to prove the old saw that there are more than two sides to every story, an unusual but thought-provoking viewpoint from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): Qatar’s Deputy Premier and Minister of Energy and OPEC President Abdulla Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah said oil and gas producers are being unfairly scapegoated for all the world’s energy and climate change problems. Europe, the OPEC president alleged, makes more money from taxes on oil and gas than the cartel itself.
Al-Attiyah was not the only rainmaker calling for balance at the Summit – both energy balance and a balance of needs. “We don’t need to create enemies, or scapegoats, and we don’t need to phase each other out. We need a mix of energy sources, we need each other, but we should not eliminate each other.”
In the third plenary session of the day, the United Kingdom’s Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change suggested a change in tack.
“The thing we failed to do in Copenhagen is give significant reassurance to developing countries,” he said. “We have to come up with sufficiently tough targets for ourselves and persuade (them) that they have nothing to fear and only to gain. If the message is an austerity message, we’re not going to succeed. It has to be a prosperity message, but a low-carbon prosperity message.”
This, then, suggests why Abu Dhabi’s World Future Energy Summit will continue to grow in reach and influence in coming years: because it brings together fossil and future fuels, diametrically opposed national interests, buyers and sellers, without judgment or regulatory pressures. For a world that needs to quickly pick up and rearrange the pieces from Cop15, a talk shop driven by a hydrocarbon producer turned clean energy locus may be just the right answer.
Valere Tjolle
Source: theenergycollective.com
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