ABU DHABI: The events accompanying the third “World Future Energy Summit” slip into gear on Sunday as the attending delegates and media tour the Masdar site in Abu Dhabi.
Billed as the single most important event of its kind worldwide for stakeholders in energy and environment, the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) takes place each year in Abu Dhabi where the newly created International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) based itself in February 2009. WFES — which along with being a conference is a coming together of leaders in the renewable energy fields — stages energy and future environment exhibitions during its four-day run.
The organizers intend to provide a meeting place, and an environment to encourage collaboration and a cross fertilization of ideas and technology to tackle policy, innovation and investment issues surrounding renewable energy. Masdar city is the physical result.
Hailed as the world’s first “zero carbon city” the Masdar site is both an experiment in environmentally friendly urbanization and an example of what can be done to minimize or eliminate an urban area’s carbon footprint.
The Masdar Initiative is led by Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mubadala Development Company (Mubadala). The latter was set up to be “a global cooperative platform for the open engagement in the search for solutions to some of mankind’s most pressing issues: energy security, climate change and the development of human expertise in sustainability.”
A major objective of Masdar is to put Abu Dhabi in the lead of research and development of new energy technology, which it perceives as a developing market. Parallel to this is the practical need to encourage the commercialization of other technologies, for example in sustainable energy, carbon management and water conservation.
If it succeeds, Abu Dhabi will successfully transform itself from technology consumer to producer. When finished, Masdar will accommodate over 1,500 companies that will research and develop green technology and put it into practice — the green equivalent of Silicon Valley.
The city is being constructed using designs and materials that maximize the efficiency of energy use. Once complete, the aim is to provide power from alternative energy sources including photovoltaic and solar power, waste-to-energy processes and geothermal sources.
Designed as a “walkable city”, it will supplement the mass transport of the population in a blade runner style rapid transit system. Three thousand automated taxis running 24 hours a day and making 135,000 trips a day will move the population around. The electricity-powered vehicles, which are powered by electricity from renewable resources, will effectively eliminate petrol-burning cars from the city and the chaos that comes with them. A light rail system will cater for longer routes and the movement of goods around the conurbation together with metro and high-speed rail services.
The actual conference will begin on Jan. 18 until Jan. 21.
