The future of renewable energies is a fundamental choice, not a foregone conclusion of technological and economic trends.

© World Future Energy Summit

This is one of the key messages of the Global Futures Report that REN21 launched in Abu Dhabi at the World Future Energy Summit. But the key question remains: Are we managing to make the right choice in time?

Along with 30,000 energy experts, the World Future Council and I start 2013 in Abu Dhabi at the first Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. While I am discussing the future of our energy system with representatives from governments, regulators, the private sector, international organisations and civil society, daily news remind and warn me of the huge challenges we are facing. [Read more →]

From Qatar: COP18 UN Climate Change Conference 2012

Jakob Von Uexkull, Founder of the World Future Council and Right Livelihood Award, talks about the need to create new money to save the climate. It is absurd that we are about the destabilise the climate because we claim there is no money when there are actually means of creating new money. He describes an ‘economic witch doctor’ that is able to find huge sums of money to stablise the banks and says all that is needed is for the climate lobby to be as big as the bank lobby and to demand new money to be created. This would have a win-win affect helping to deal with the economy, create new jobs and drive a low-carbon transition.

From Qatar: COP18 UN Climate Change Conference 2012

Despite the frustration felt in the UN climate process such talks are still vital. Countries have to sit together and find consensus on climate change because it is a problem that doesn’t recognise country borders. It is still important for industrialised nations to take responsibility on climate change and for developing countries to clearly say that they have not created the problem but are feeling the effects. That being said, the UN process is not the only way. The process is frustrating as more and more of the population understand the impacts and causes of climate change, while at the same time the political will to act declines. There are, however, signs of hope – Germany is one example. If someone had told me a few years ago that Germany would be able to increase their share of renewable energy from 3-25% and create 380,000 jobs in just 10 years he would have thought they were crazy. We see now that such a trajectory is indeed reality, as policies have enabled households in the country to generate their own power.