Summit reveals Abu Dhabi as world leader in race for future energy solutions

Almost overnight, Abu Dhabi, most renowned for its oil exports has become a mover and shaker in the field of alternative and renewable energy research and development.

The US Energy Secretary, Samuel W. Bodman, told the summit: "The UAE recognizes that, even in a region blessed with tremendous hydrocarbon resources, the time is here to aggressively develop and deploy innovative alternative energy solutions."

The range of solutions proposed at the summit was as wide as the worlds from which the 11,000 individuals and 230 companies, government departments and NGOs attending it were drawn.

Delegates heard top oil company executives arguing for massive investment in technologies like solar power, while an advocate of nuclear power from the UK described such renewable energy solutions as 'marginal'. The development of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) was hailed by oil producers - and some environmentalists - as offering a clean new future for hydrocarbons, but dismissed by Greenpeace as a 'false hope'. And Bodman, while warmly endorsing a variety of alternative energy options, devoted much of his intervention to urging OPEC to hike oil production.

However, within this extensive scope of opinion - often robustly expressed -- the summit revealed broad agreement - inconceivable only a few short years ago - that hydrocarbon production must be both radically reformed and heavily supplemented by a whole portfolio of alternatives. This new consensus is recognition of the radical urgency of the twin crises facing us in the 21st century: climate change, and peak oil coupled with rapidly rising energy demand.

In the words of Lord Brown of Madingly, former CEO of BP, the future of the world energy industry will be "about maintaining a portfolio of options and knowing which to scale up and which to shut down - and when."

All too often, events like this summit simply add to the global surplus of hot air. But the WFES was more than willing to follow the urging of Jonathon Porritt, former director of Friends of the Earth and currently Programme Director of Forum for the Future, Britain's leading sustainable development charity, who said: "Put your money and your political leverage where your mouths already are."

The most striking example was an announcement by H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. He committed the government to an 'initial investment' of no less than $15 billion dollars to the Masdar Initiative, the organisation which hosted the summit. This investment represents 15 per cent of all annual global spending on alternative energies, according to Lord Brown, who called Abu Dhabi's vision for energy as "not just enlightened but also highly prescient".

Masdar is a research and development facility with a mission to develop new technologies that will help meet the world's future energy needs while reducing environmental impacts. The Masdar Initiative was described at the summit by the German State Secretary Mattias Machnig as a project with the ambition and significance of the US space programme, and called on other countries to follow Abu Dhabi's lead.

Among Masdar's many projects is the world's first carbon neutral city, designed by the renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster. A champion of sustainable architecture for 40 years, he showed the summit, in a series of ravishingly beautiful images, how "Form saves Energy" with massive reductions in consumption at his landmark buildings like the new Reichstag in Berlin. Ground will be broken on Masdar City next month.

Meanwhile, BP announced an investment of $2bn in the world's largest hydrogen-fired power station, which will provide 500 MW in clean power, in a joint venture with Masdar and Rio Tinto in Abu Dhabi.

Sheikh Mohamed added that "to be judged a true success the Masdar initiative must engage, inspire and facilitate others to find future sources of energy." To advance this goal, he announced the establishment of the Zayed Future Energy Prize which is "designed to recognise and reward achievements in energy innovation." Each year those recognised by the Zayed Awards will share in a prize pool of $2.2 million dollars.

A senior member of another royal family also addressed the summit, in a virtual visit which was exemplary in that it left no carbon footprint. HRH Prince Charles put in an appearance as a hologram. He warned that the problem of climate change "is so grave and so urgent that we have less than ten years to slow, stop and, indeed, reverse greenhouse gas emissions", and praised the conference for its energetic approach to energy issues.

Gerd Leipold of the environmental watchdog Greenpeace International argued that the climate change crisis was bearing down on us even faster: "The current trend needs to be reversed by 2015 the latest. We have less than 100 months to bring the world into a new direction."

He admonished delegates that "too often nice words are a cover for business as usual". He called for a "a revolution in the way we think about, generate, distribute and use energy", explicitly excluding the options of nuclear power and carbon capture and storage.

However, in a ringing defence of nuclear power, Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, the chairwoman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) declared that: "Disinformation about nuclear [energy] sustains a climate of fearful ignorance. The bad name of nuclear is unjustified by scientific fact and comes in part from its association with nuclear weapons".

An optimistic scenario for the future of a rising star in the alternative energy portfolio was presented by the Icelandic Minister of Industry and Energy, Dr. Össur Skarphéðinsson. Geothermal power, drawing on heat constantly renewed beneath the Earth's surface, is already extensively used in his home country and a new 'deep drilling' technology promises to multiply its potential many times over.

Others contributors also stressed that the coming crisis is an opportunity as well as a threat. Germany's State Secretary Mattias Machnig said that "Climate protection is an opportunity for modernisation, innovation and employment. What we need is an ecological industry policy."

Lord Brown predicted that such an opportunity offers a very profitable future: "In ten years time we will see several carbon billionaires. And we will see renewable and alternative energy 'majors' in the Fortune 500."

Abu Dhabi has already committed to holding the second World Future Energy Summit, on 19-21 January 2009. The keen interest in its work this year is evidenced in the 228,000 Google hits a search for the summit produces, and coverage in prestigious international media ranging from Time Magazine to the Sydney Morning Herald.