NYU School of Law

Dispatches from the World Future Energy Summit

Thursday, January 21: Varieties of Green: Transforming the Carbon Economy?
Wednesday, January 20: Low-carbon Energy Solutions and Finance
Tuesday, January 19: The Future of Energy, and Climate

Thursday, January 21: Varieties of Green: Transforming the Carbon Economy?

The ruler of Abu Dhabi, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, awarded the Zayed Future Energy Prize for at a glittering event held at the Emirates Palace, a sprawling marble extravaganza that is reportedly the most expensive hotel ever built (estimated cost $3 billion). The subtext for this year’s prize seemed to be that technological innovation could let you have it all: vast material wealth and climate protection. Last year’s winner of the $1.5 million prizes was a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur who trained and organized rural women to install low-teach solar electricity systems to replace kerosene for home lighting. Toyota is at the other end of the scale, a huge high-tech multinational with an admirably progressive, but also highly profitable, record of low carbon innovation.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and chair of the prize section committee, urged the audience of more than 1000 climate and green tech notables from around the world on the urgency of the climate challenge and the imperative for aggressive action to limit fossil fuel use, singling out the US for criticism. As he spoke, Scott Brown was in the processing of winning the Massachusetts Senate seat, with ominous implications for US climate legislation.

The contrast between calls for fossil fuel parsimony and the Emirate Place’s oil-fuelled opulence, with acres of marble, Versailles-like fountains, a vast ballroom where the ceremony audience later dined, and Ferraris at the entrance, provoked some expressions of skepticism among the attendees regarding the genuineness of Abu Dhabi’s commitment to climate goals. A survey by the National (an AD newspaper) found that a majority of Emiratis were unwilling to pay higher prices for gas or electricity to combat climate change. Yet the government’s devotion of substantial resources in Masdar, its green tech research and investment arm, is a notable initiative within the region. The government seems serious about making Abu Dhabi a focal center for high tech green innovation, and is investing in major solar and carbon capture projects locally as well as elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, at the World Future Energy conference center, solar technologies were featured at many of the 300 conference exhibition sites, more than any other alternative energy technology. The local interest in solar is hardly surprising in a region with abundant sunshine and wide-open spaces. There were also many wind power displays, although I was told that use of wind in the region has been impeded by sandstorms that pit the rotors and reduce their efficiency. A Norwegian company that uses high-carbon fibers to make luxury yachts is using the material to make rotors suitable for desert conditions. There were also many exhibits and some seminars on carbon capture and store technologies to take CO2 from power plants and bury it in the ground.

The neatest innovative vehicle on display was a personal transporter that will be used to carry up to 4 people around Masdar City, the new carbon-positive city for 80,000 that Masdar is building on the urban outskirts. Battery powered, the vehicles are driven by computer. Passengers touch their destination on a display and are automatically whisked on the shortest route along pathways underneath the buildings above. Hyundai and Nissan displayed models of cars, to be marketed within 4-5 years, that run on fuel cells; their only emissions will be water. The small US pavilion contained only four tiny exhibitors, although there were large booths elsewhere by GE and Exxon-Mobil (which had models of how gasoline powered cars could be made more efficient by use of its product).

There were no displays on nuclear power. But the United Arab Emirates (of which Abu Dhabi is the largest emirate) has announced plans to build several nuclear power plants, while Jordan is proceeding to develop its extensive supplies of uranium ore. Nuclear power is virtually carbon free, but poses its own, dark twist on the relation between climate and security. Just across the Gulf from Abu Dhabi, Iran proceeds with its uranium enrichment programs, assertedly undertaken to develop  nuclear power. On my flight to the conference, we flew over south central Iran: bare jagged mountains, topped with snow, unyielding and implacable. They seemed a fitting symbol of the country’s posture to the international community’s demands that it stop steps to develop nuclear weapons.

Wednesday, January 20: Low-carbon Energy Solutions and Finance

Conflicting perspectives on the energy/climate knot were on display today at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. Many of the speakers highlighted the perils of rising CO2 emissions and advocated dramatic expansion of solar and wind energy systems.  But there was not a clear consensus--the Energy Minister and Deputy Premier of Qatar charged that fossil fuel producers were being made the scapegoat for others’ failures at Copenhagen.

And Richard Jones, Deputing Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, presented IEA figures showing that under current policies the great bulk of future energy growth will take the form of fossil fuels. This growth will predominantly occur in developing countries--where it is projected 1.3 billion people will still be without electricity in 2020—and most of the new energy will be coal-fired. While noting that renewable technologies could make some contribution, he emphasized the need for ambitious promotion of energy efficiency, which could reduce the needed growth in supply by more than 50%.

An attraction of the high-tech renewable technologies, on display at many of the exhibitor booths, is that they are marketed by multinationals, can be applied in a wide variety of developing countries, and can befinanced through international carbon markets. Domestic governments, however, will have to support their adoption with feed-in tariffs that effectively subsidize what is still a high-cost form of energy.

High tech hardware will play a significant role in achieving energy efficiency, including components for more efficient electricity grids and computer systems to monitor and adjust electricity use, but much of the reduction in demand will involve smarter, greener forms of urban development and transportation, building insulation and upgrades, and other local initiatives. The appropriate measures are highly context specific and cannot be supplied off the shelf by multinationals. They must also be largely financed by public funds.

A substantial part of the investments needed to reduce emissions while expanding energy supply in developing countries will come in the form of both public and private funds from developed countries, who pledged to contribute $100 billion annually by 2020.But such funds must be leveraged with local investments from developing countries themselves, who will contribute the bulk of the resources needed to meet energy supplies.  The arrangements for international climate finance must allow local flexibility and encourage bottom up innovation by the developing countries. The traditional foreign aid  approach under which developed country donors impose strict conditions on just how funds can be spent has to change. 

At the same time, new mechanisms to ensure accountability for both donors and recipients are needed. NYU’s Climate Finance Project has proposed creation of an International Climate Finance Registry to track developed country contributions, both through the public and private sectors, and to track how these contributions are being used in developing countries to achieve emissions reductions achieved. The NYU proposal featured in the lead Op Ed carried by the National, Abu Dhabi’s leading paper.

Tuesday, January 19: The Future of Energy, and Climate

A new paradigm for the critical linkage between climate, energy, economic development and security was strikingly evident at the plenary opening session of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. Billing itself as the Davos of the energy world, this event is quite an undertaking on behalf of the Abu Dhabi Government, bringing 'delegates' from the world over, including some very high-level industry and government leaders. Among the speakers that first morning were the Prime Minister of Turkey and the President of Greece--two countries with a long tradition of enmity--who announced a new Nabucco gas pipeline that will take gas from the Caspian/Central Asia through Turkey to Greece and Italy. Another new gas pipeline will run from Qatar to Turkey and beyond to southern Europe. The Nabucco pipeline will build ties between Turkey and Greece, supply Europe with natural gas needed to meet climate goals, and help break the near-monopoly that Russia's Gasprom now holds over Europe.

Other speakers, including the Prime Ministers of Malaysia and the Maldives, lamented the failure to achieve more at Copenhagen. The Maldives’ Prime Minister warned that carbon emitters would face responsibility for the damage they have caused. He, as well as the other speakers, was upbeat on renewable energy, stating: "My money is on the Green." He isn't alone. Turkey, for example, plans to have 30% of its energy generated by renewables by 2023.

Indeed, renewable energy and energy efficiency are the big focus here for the more than two thousand participants and hundreds of exhibitors from around the world. Abu Dhabi is taking significant steps to position itself as a world leader in the field--a fairly brilliant move that has the threefold effect of diversifying its oil-based economy, raising its stature on the world stage, and attracting investment. Masdar is Abu Dhabi's vehicle for developing and investing in green technologies. Construction is well along on Masdar City, a carbon-positive development for 80,000 people. It will be a glamorous showcase for the green technologies that Masdar is developing and an unparalleled experiment in green urban planning. The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, being developed by MIT for education and research in green technologies, is the first building being constructed in Masdar City. IRENA, the new International Renewable Energy Agency, will be headquartered in Abu Dhabi (an official of a major US solar company told me that IRENA was created because the existing International Energy Agency has been "captured" by the fossil fuel companies).

There are scores of exhibitors at the convention, with products and services in wind, solar, geothermal, smart grids, energy services, and carbon capture and storage. Many of the major oil companies are here as well proclaiming their green credentials. The halls are teeming with many young professionals who see their future in the field, including a substantial number from the Middle East. Sitting on my left at lunch was a young lawyer from Cairo, whose consulting firm specializes in sustainable real development projects, such as Masdar City. On my right was a young Lebanese architect. After doing graduate work and practicing in London for a number of years, she came back to spearhead the family business's launch of a solar energy business. They already have a substantial installation in Lebanon, and she claims that by using local knowhow, they can underprice their bigger international competitors. The potential for solar in the region was evident outside--the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, the temperature 75.

There was no US presence on the plenary podium, and little US presence otherwise here. The US federal government is simply not organized to deal with or take advantage of the new linkages between energy, economy, climate and security. The Energy Department is structured mainly issues of technology, while domestic environmental regulation drives energy policy and the economic and finance 'hubs' of decision-making power are scattered between Commerce and Treasury, among others. Crucially, none of these elements is integrated with foreign affairs and security functions, themselves divided and stovepipe. These governance failures are bound to be a serious handicap for American policy in a world being rapidly transformed by climate-based energy dynamics and conflicts.

top of page