Renewable energy leaders to speak

World leaders in the field of climate change will be among the 15,000 people expected to attend the second World Future Energy Summit in the capital next year. Among the politicians, scientists, project managers and financiers to speak at the forum, running from Jan 19 to 21, is Dr Hermann Scheer, whose policy work on renewable energy in his native Germany has helped bring about double-digit growth for renewable energy sector in that country in less than a decade.

Dr Scheer, a member of the German Bundestag, considers among his most important policy initiatives the introduction of the German National Renewable Energy Act, which provided financial incentives for electricity generation using clean sources. Mr Scheer was also behind Germany's photovoltaic solar-energy roof programme, under which 100,000 buildings were equipped with solar panels. He is also president of Eurosolar - the European Association for Renewable Energy, general chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy and president of the International Parliamentary Forum on Renewable Energies.

Delegates will also hear from Prof Nicholas Stern, a former adviser to the British government on the economics of climate change and development, and head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. That report suggests that humanity needs to spend one per cent of global gross domestic product each year to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Keynote speeches will also be delivered by Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Jens Stoltenberg, the prime minister of Norway.

Also addressing delegates are Andris Piebalgs, the European energy commissioner, and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Nobel laureate and chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Delegates will also hear from representatives of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US, the International Emissions Trading Association, the World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace and the European Environment Agency.

The World Future Energy Summit was launched this year. The event is founded by Masdar, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, which is Abu Dhabi's multibillion-dollar investment in the development and commercialisation of innovative technologies in renewable, alternative and sustainable energies as well as sustainable design. The 2009 summit will run with an exhibition dedicated to green technologies. More than 200 exhibitors and several national pavilions are already confirmed, the organisers said.

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