One of the Personal Rapid Transit 'podcars' on show at the 3rd World Future Energy Summit. The driverless cars will move the 50,000 inhabitants of Masdar City.
Credit: World Future Energy Summit
ABU DHABI: Energy demand is growing voraciously and the solutions to generating low-emissions power are urgently needed, world leaders warned.
"If we don’t act now, our coral reefs and rainforests will die, desert countries will become unbearably hot and low lying countries like the Maldives, will slip beneath the rising seas," said Mohammed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, at the opening of the 3rd World Future Energy Summit in the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi.
"Tackling climate change is not like dealing with other global issues, such as trade or disarmament. We do not have the luxury of time to meet, year after year, in endless negotiations," the leader of the low-lying Indian Ocean nation added. "We cannot cut a deal with Mother Nature."
The summit, the world's largest renewable energy conference with more han 9,000 attendees, brings together 80 ministers, royalty and heads of states with corporate leaders and scientists from 120 nations.
Many leaders dismissed the Copenhagen climate change conference of December 2009, which ended with a non-binding agreement between nations to contain global warming.
"In Copenhagen, the international community failed to seize the opportunity," said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. "We have, time and time again, chosen to take the path of expediency … rather than do what is needed and necessary."
He described current growth in demand for energy, projected to grow some 40 per cent in the next 20 years, as unsustainable. "Addressing the voracious global appetite for energy seems daunting.
"Nevertheless, it is a responsibility that we can neither shirk nor abdicate. It's the challenge of our times that requires a concerted effort in harnessing the global reservoir of scientific and intellectual capital."
Global investment in renewable energy was rising strongly despite the global economic downturn, said conference host Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of Masdar, a large-scale renewable energy initiative backed by the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi.
"With our population projected to grow to nine billion by 2050, our energy demand is doubling, while carbon dioxide emissions are rising and the planet's temperature is increasing. We cannot afford to falter. We must urgently progress to deploying clean energy solutions and implement energy efficiency decisions to help meet our future energy requirements and address the climate change problem globally."
Abu Dhabi has been investing heavily in renewable energy since 2006, with the goal of making it a global leader in the field within 10 years.
It’s made large investments in renewable energy projects around the world, hired top experts and is building a model city for 50,000 people on a the outskirts of the capital that will be carbon-neutral, produce zero waste and act as a living laboratory for sustainable cities research.
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