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November 19, 2007
Well I'm here in Frankfurt (yes Frankfurt) as our plane had some troubles today. So we (all 40 of us) ended up missing our connection to come home. Fortunately they have put us up in a very nice hotel and I have luckily having some time to start preparing for school and obligations back home.
I thought it would be appropriate to discuss with you all some final thoughts about the conference. Since the congress has been over I have a lot of time to put things into perspective a really collect my thoughts. There were three main topics that really jumped out at me that I would like to share with you:
1) There are currently 1.6 billion people in the world without adequate electricity. Why is this happening? There just is not enough investment going into these areas (mainly Third World) to meet the needs of the people. Infrastructure is pivotal but also distribution systems. For example, in Africa many people are without electricity because it is simply uneconomical to provide a sufficient distribution system to provide electricity. Well what can be done then? This is where I personally can see renewable energy playing a key role in providing these villages or small communities with energy.
2) Over 12 trillion dollars in investment will be needed in the energy sector to meet growing demand by 2020. So where is this $12 trillion going to come from? Well there was a great roundtable session specifically focused on this topic and I would really like to share with you all what was discussed.
3) How China and India (the next super powers) are going to dominate the energy markets to come?With all this power comes great responsibility though. These nations, mainly producing energy from coal, are going to have to start utilizing and investing in clean coal technologies (CCS, IGCC) to increase efficiency while consequently lowering emissions.
Next Monday at 3pm Gladwin and I will be making a quick presentation on our trip and I really urge you to come and check out what we have learned.
Thanks so much for following my blog and if you have any questions/concerns feel free to email me at markblackwell@shaw.ca
-Mark