Prince Charles appears as hologram at World Future Energy Summit

With investment in sustainable energy solutions now running at over $100 billion year – and growing rapidly – the future energy sector is starting to attract top talent from the worlds of energy, architecture and finance.

This was the key message to emerge from last week’s inaugural World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, which featured an array of speakers and exhibitors that ranged from the spectacular to the inspirational.

Following on the heels of last month’s climate change talks in Bali, the World Future Energy Summit provided a forum for exchange and discussion on the technologies and strategies needed to meet the ever-more-urgent objective of mitigating the climate impacts of energy use.

The summit attracted 3,000 delegates – far more than the organisers initially expected – and more than 200 companies took space at the related exhibition.

Delegates, speakers and exhibitors united last week in declaring the summit a resounding success, prompting the organisers – Masdar and Turret Middle East – to start looking ahead to a follow-up event in 2009. The dates already set are 19th-21st January.

This year’s summit began with an announcement – by His Highness, General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces – that the Abu Dhabi government had pledged a further $15 billion of investment in sustainable energy development as part of its aspiration to become a world leader in “future energy” technologies and strategies.

In what is claimed to be the world’s largest single government commitment to development of sustainable energy technology, the money will be channelled into a range of investments, projects and education initiatives through the government’s Masdar Initiative, a company established to explore, develop and commercialise future energy sources.

Masdar – which in Arabic means “the source” – intends to leverage the Abu Dhabi government’s initial $15 billion investment with joint ventures and other investment partners to create a portfolio many times larger. It will comprise projects in Abu Dhabi, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and beyond.

Later during the summit, Masdar’s CEO, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, said: “Masdar signals Abu Dhabi’s intention to build upon its energy expertise and become the leading source of the world’s future energy solutions. It is also an important example of Abu Dhabi’s long-term strategy to secure its future by investing resources domestically.”

The Crown Prince also announced that the Abu Dhabi government is to award prizes worth $2.2 million annually for excellence in the innovation, development and implementation of sustainable energy solutions. The Zayed Future Energy Prize is named after the founding father of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who fostered the nation’s commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility.

The Crown Prince was followed by Britain’s HRH Prince Charles who appeared in the form of a video hologram – a use of technology which became one of the talking points of the summit and generated an astonishing amount of media coverage around the world.

The Prince had a serious message: “Scientists are now saying that the problem of climate change is so grave and so urgent that we have less than 10 years to slow, stop and, indeed, reverse greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

“That is why common actions in each and every country are urgently required to protect the common inheritance that has been given to us by our creator."

But he also found time for humour, closing his address by paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Tempest: “I propose to wish you every success for your discussions, to vanish into thin air – and leave not a carbon footprint behind.”

Among the senior politicians calling for more action to promote sustainable energy technologies were President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson of Iceland, President Ismail Omer Guelleh of Djibouti, and the US Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, who said that more than $22 trillion of new investment would be needed to meet extra global demand for energy between now and 2030.

He continued: “If we are to encourage economic growth around the world, if we are to raise living standards for all people and all nations, if we are to improve our environmental health, the world needs clean, affordable, diverse energy supplies, as well as new suppliers and supply routes.

"This set of global challenges demands responsible action, both from consuming nations and producing nations. I don’t want to sound too alarmist but what we are really taking about is reducing the world’s energy insecurity. That, in my judgement, is the crux of the issue.”

He added: “I challenge governments around the world to make a public commitment to increase investment in the research and development necessary to achieve the technical breakthroughs that we need, as well as the right balance between energy security and environmental stewardship. The Masdar initiative provides a ready example of just what I mean.”

He also stressed that: “The growing use of alternative energy should not be viewed as a threat to any oil-producing nation.”

Another highlight of the summit was the announcement by the head of BP Alternative Energy, Vivienne Cox, that Hydrogen Energy, BP’s joint venture with Rio Tinto, had begun work on a $45 million front-end engineering and design (FEED) for a low-carbon, industrial-scale, hydrogen-based electricity generation project to be located in Abu Dhabi. A decision is expected early next year, which, if positive, would lead to the 420 MW plant coming on stream in 2012.

Cox said the $2 billion plant would use natural gas as a feedstock and that the carbon dioxide produced would be made available for re-injection for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). A significant benefit would be that the captured CO2 could replace some of the natural gas currently used for EOR, freeing it up for the local market.

A fascinating aspect of the summit was seeing leading executives from international oil companies, such as BP’s Vivienne Cox, Shell’s Graeme Sweeney and Total’s Philippe Boisseau, appearing on the same stage and rubbing shoulders with leading figures from environmental NGOs, such as Jonathon Porritt of Forum for the Future and the International Executive Director of Greenpeace, Dr Gerd Leipold.

Some of the most inspirational aspects of the event were the contributions from internationally renowned architects and design “visionaries” such as William McDonough, who presented a vision of a building that “can do everything a tree can do except replicate – a building that receives its energy from the sun, that grows food, that builds soil, that provides a habitat for hundreds of species, that changes colours with the seasons, that creates micro-climates, that would purify water.”

Particularly impressive was the British architect Lord Norman Foster whose firm Foster+Partners has been hired by Masdar to design and plan the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste city.

Foster’s presentation, the culmination of the three-day event, was a vision of the future that held delegates spell-bound.

Ground-breaking for the new development – which will house 50,000 people and a university and will be located near Abu Dhabi International Airport – will take place on the February 9.