Stopping climate change – theory and practice

Abu Dhabi by night: room for energy-saving?

I bumped into someone from a German ministerial delegation on my last day in Abu Dhabi. It’s always interesting to hear different views of these international events. He was disappointed that the water and energy summits taking place at the same time weren’t really inter-linked, although the topics themselves clearly are. We had a big conference in Bonn last year about the “water, energy and food security nexus”. Since then, this nexus idea has been popping up more and more frequently. It seems like a good idea to bring water and energy experts to the same place at the same time – but there seem to have been a lot of events held separately.Some people were talking about “summit inflation”. How many water, energy, climate conferences do we need? Good question. No easy answer.

In my taxi to the airport, the driver was surprised to hear Masdar City was famous. I told him about the technology being showcased there: insulation, energy-saving, recycling, solar power –” And when do we get that in the rest of Abu Dhabi?” – was his reply.