The finest days of Dii Desert Energy coincide traditionally with the ‘Annual Desert Energy Leadership Summit’. This year that took place in Dii’s ‘hometown’, Dubai, on November 6th and 7th. More than 350 participants from all over the world and Dii’s energetic team enjoyed the time together.
Underlined by keynote speaker, HE Sharif Salim Al-Olama (Under Secretary at the UAE’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure), in particular Dubai and Abu Dhabi are vibrant pioneers and prominent leaders of clean energy innovations and implementation. UAE is a.o. a proud holder of solar project world records. It is now also taking the lead on energy efficiency, storage, data centers, blockchain, hydrogen and clean energy trade.
HE Al-Olama’s contribution has set a tone of optimism to than 350 attendees in two days of inspiration, professional networking and personal friendship.
Presentations and talks highlighted actual and future plans, clean energy projects, businesses opportunities, financing, regulation, innovations and their related dilemmas and learnings. Many ups, but also many downs! The ever better news is that renewables in MENA are about the cheapest in the world and principally abundant. The long period of ‘uphill battle’ for renewables has quickly been turned into to a period of ‘victory’. However realities cannot be ignored. We are still living in a ‘fossil energy dominated‘ world, where the big players have deep pockets and the sector receives yearly subsidies (!)the order of over 7 trillion$. With huge reserves waiting to be exploited they keep governments, including UN COP under control. As a consequence the most dramatic cost factor, carbon emissions, is still not priced in effectively into present markets and financial systems. Although solar and wind energy is the most competitive yet that is unfortunately not yet the case for clean hydrogen and Efuels. They are still forced to an ‘uphill battle’.
Dii’s Summit offered an ideal tour d’horizon of all strategic and practical aspects of the transition toward cheapest, secure, climate neutral energy in the MENA region and its potential to serve the world with clean instead of fossil energy.
In this challenging geopolitical and vested interests context Dii is unshakeably keeping its eye on the ball, pursuing a path toward ‘no emissions’. In spite of setbacks this is delivering numerous business opportunities for its industry partners.
In my traditional opening address I had the pleasure to introduce Dii’s ‘Clean Energy Pyramid’. This can be considered a ‘rock solid model’ for energy supply for billions of people for thousands of years, rock solid like the pyramids in Egypt.
Such models may help structuring discussions in the Dii Desert Energy community, guiding plans for modern climate neutral energy systems, markets, energy carriers, information exchange for planning and control and for socio economic benefits for the people.
Emission free energy was, is and will be there for ever. To date it is the most economic, safe, secure, healthy and socially beneficial energy. Feel ever blessed to be working on it!