brown2020

Abu Dhabi is set in the heart of the Persian Gulf and home to 10% of the world’s oil reserves. An unlikely place for a leading international summit on renewable energy and clean technology? On the contrary. Inspired by the environmentalist passion of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, the leadership of Abu Dhabi has defined the emirate’s legacy as becoming a center of renewable energy and cleantech innovation.

Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar, at WFES

Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, opened the summit by describing the vision and rationale for Abu Dhabi’s plan to invest $15 billion to build a carbon neutral future energy city from the ground up in the desert of Abu Dhabi. Masdar has already attracted the leading innovators in cleantech, not only for energy supply from the sun and wind, but also for smarter consumption: smart utility grid and metering, transportation and water systems, energy efficiency and consumer education.

More than just an early cleantech customer, Masdar seeks to become a development and innovation center for future energy, green technology, and sustainability, reversing the brain drain from the Middle East and becoming a magnet for the brightest minds in the field. To help do this they have partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create a Masdar Institute of Technology.

Dr. Jaber cited the undeniable momentum in renewable energy: America will invest $150 billion in future energy over the next 10 years. Europe has committed to carbon reduction targets for its members. Not only will Abu Dhabi invest billions in cleantech, Abu Dhabi also has committed to an energy plan that calls for 7% of the emirate’s energy to come from renewables by 2020, creating a $6 billion to $8 billion market.

“Our progress is irreversible,” said Dr. Jaber, and Masdar intends to be at the forefront across the complete value chain of renewables, helping Abu Dhabi maintain its position as a leading energy supplier to the world. Dr. Jaber stated the reasons clearly: “Because we can, and because we should. This is still true, despite the economic downturn. We still can and we still should.” Dr. Jaber concluded, “If you invest in cleantech, the first place to visit is Abu Dhabi and the first organization you should talk to should be Masdar.”

The book Eating Fossil Fuels looks at agriculture and our food supply through the lens of energy and energy balance. When you add up the energy inputs of fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, irrigation, and tilling, the food produced on a typical acre of land today takes many more calories of energy to produce than the maximum energy that could possibly be generated from the sun through photosynthesis. Where does the extra energy come from? Mostly from fossil fuels. What does this mean? The current food system is unsustainable and in many more ways than most people realize. If you look at the energy content of the food we eat, we are literally eating fossil fuels.

Mother Jones recently published this is a fabulous picture of where greenhouse gases really come from. It is particularly interesting to see that when you add up the impact of deforestation, fertilizers, and methane, our taste for beef may have a bigger carbon footprint than our need for transportation.

At TEDGlobal 2007, William Kamkwamba showed us how necessity is the mother of invention, making a windmill out of simple scrap materials to power his home in Malawi. Without any money, but armed with a book from the library and some ingenuity, this teenager from a rural village in Malawi gave a fitting answer to an earlier speaker’s opinion that renewable energy is “too expensive” for developing countries.