A report from our british participants

One of our British participants, Matt Williams, wrote a report on his experiences at the Our Opportunity Summit. The impact it made on the British participants was this:

"For us, taking a group of young people who had not been very active before, it was inspiring to hear how transformational this experience had been. Many said they now felt skilled up and empowered to go and begin their own climate change projects back in their own communities and on their own campuses."

Read the entire report at It's Getting Hot In Here.

Youth fighting for the just administration

We got a note from one of our participants:

"This is a note, a mark, only a little text that could not reflect the most important thing that we lived (or at least I am talking about me) but that it is essential for looking in it when it was happening a few weeks ago, with more perspective and when we are out of the way of behaviour that we had during these three peculiar days. All the people that went in the summit have something in common: the special spirit of become this world in other that could be better. For this reason, many people from many countries and a lot of several backgrounds were there. We were there. And all together could have a little and approximately idea of what is happening with this planet right now. Our degrees were different, our aspirations were different; each one has his or her own idea of a possible solution for the difficult problem.
However…where is the problem?
Who has to show us the troubles? Which is it? , How is it? and How many solutions could be realized in the actual world?… many days later I found an answer: us.
Yes. And it is because we and the people who guided us to the comprehension of the environment problem and the energy trouble did it so good. Many experts from companies, universities, governments and different points of view about it were there. And it is also because the organizers had the same spirit as us … we all were in the same mood.
That is not meaning that we were all together in the “peace and love” topic, because we are not living in a peaceful and lovely world. It means that the summit was a reflection of the real, conflictive, chaotic and “different planets inside a planet that we are living” world. And I don’t know if it is a good or a bad thing, I only know that it is one of the most important true that we have to consider for be IN an ON the environment question. We have to understand that as we are different, the people that work in the governments, companies and universities, are also different…so, the first step is accept that…and when we do it…we could start to speak... “as we did it in the summit”
Thank you very much.
Javier Muñoz Ortega
Spanish journalist."

New collaborations for future work

The last hours of the summit Thursday gave the possibility of organizing new grass roots movements and further work on influencing the decision makers. After the last lunch the participants were spread in several workshops to learn and create new methods of dealing with climate changes.

The workshops were very different where some focused on how to organize voluntary climate work and use internet tools to help movements move forward. One focused on leadership for sustainable development were the participants in a series of assignments discussed the role of a leader and yet another focused on how to make a telecommunications SmartGrid where everything is connected which makes it easier to optimize energy efficiency at the lowest price for any end user. The workshops made it possible for the participants to engage in new collaborations and develop new ideas that hopefully will lead to some sort of result for the benefit of the climate.

In the end we met in the auditorium for the last time, where Mr. David from Uganda showed us his work with a Energy Crossroads conference in East Africa which included students from the neighbouring countries. The climate changes have consequences for the whole world, so everybody needs to pitch in. The direct consequences can be seen in Africa by the fact that the ice on Kilimanjaro is disappearing causing landslides that destroys houses. So a focus on this subject is very important in Africa too.

After this inspiring presentation it was time to say goodbye to our participants. In one and a half year the members of Energy Crossroads Denmark had been working on making an inspiring and exciting summit happen, and without the participants engaging input it wouldn't have been such a success as it was. Three days of enlightening speeches and heated but qualitative discussions was over, and it was finally time for the organizers to relax and start focusing on their studies again.

A massive banner with encouraging thank you-goodbyes was handed over from the participants to the organizers making it all worth it. This also brought out a small tear or two from some of them...

Regulation needed to solve the challenges

The cold facts and what to do about it

Thursday, the final day of the summit, was up and this was the day of big shots. Not that the previous speakers hadn't been interesting and exciting to listen to, but many participants were looking forward to listening at James E. Hansen and Daniel M. Kammen.

James E. Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), was first man on the podium to teach the participants about the climate threat to the planet. He was one of the first to notice and draw attention to the evolving climate changes more than 20 years ago, but wasn't taken seriously at first. Now he is. But unfortunately not to the extent that is needed. As Hansen remarked, there is a gap between what is understood by scientists and what is known by the public and more important so, the politicians. That is why he started to speak up about the problems, because he won't have his grandchildren saying that their grandfather knew what was happening, but didn't do anything about it.

The reason he's concerned is not only the climate changes that has happened already, but also the climate changes that can't be stopped, the so called tipping points. So he gave some examples of how to measure the state of the world climate such as sea level temperature and solar irradiance that have been rising since the 1950's. Just within the last seven years the temperatures have increased more than from 1950 to 1980.

The critical question to ask is why care about it when it could just be a natural change in climate? Through the time of Earth these changes have been happening all the time, so it could just be a small weather fluctuation. So in order to prove if there is a problem, it's important to look at Earth's history. At the moment the human history occurs within the warm period of the Holoscene, which is the geological epoch we currently live in, but CO2 and CH4 levels have been increasing outside normal natural behaviour from 2001 to 2007. The humans are simply more powerful than natural change such as volcanos and natural drift of tectonic plates.

This means dangerous changes in the nature of the world and some of them are irreversible like extermination of animal and planet species and ice sheet disintegration which causes the global sea level to rise. To preserve the planet we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm). The symptoms that shows that all is not well, is increasing subtropic areas, more forest fires like the ones in Australia just recently and a recession on mountain glaciers. If we keep up our current CO2 emissions most glaciers will be lost within the next 50 years.

So as this was a summit on energy it was interesting to hear how the goal of 350 ppm could be reached. In Hansen's opinion it's essential to phase out coal and this isn't happening because fossil fuels have the lowest price and the companies selling fossil fuels have too much influence on governments. The technical solution would be to introduce carbon tax and make sure that people who have low emissions get their money back to use for themselves. This will motivate people to do the necessary changes and if the money went into the budgets of the governments, the changes won't happen in a sustainable pace.

A question from the audience was how to keep China from making coal plants? Hansen said that China is very aware of the problems. They actually experience them now with flooding in some parts of the country and drought in others. Carbon tax is relevant in developing countries as well, and Hansen would rather have them using 4th generation nuclear power than coal because it's very different than older generations. With the new technology it's possible to not only burn up all the uranium, but also nuclear waste. In India they even have a lot of thorium which is an even better alternative to uranium.

Hansen was generally positive towards many sources of energy including bio-fuels, although it needs more research, and solar energy, where a fluid is heated, is becoming competitive with coal in price, but it needs a grid of course. The highest priority to come to terms with the energy challenges is however energy efficiency, because it shows results the fastest. The one thing he couldn't tolerate was CCS, which he identified as a green wash tool and at the same time he pointed out that coal power gets more expensive when CCS is included. Another blow for the controversial CCS technology.

Green growth or de-growth?

After the progressive speech and somewhat grim forecast by Hansen, it was time for the day's panel discussion. Our moderator and rock star, as Carlos labeled him, Martin Lidegaard had three new debaters at the participants' disposal. They were Knud Pedersen, Vice President for R&D, DONG energy, Ole Jess Olsen, Environmental Economics RUC University, and John Holten-Andersen, Associate professor, DTU & co-founder of the Danish De-growth Network. Question of the day was: "Can we de-couple growth from energy consumption? Green growth or de-growth?"

Pedersen started off by announcing that the financial crisis is one of the best things happening for the climate. Also he saw energy efficiency as an important tool, just like Hansen, and estimated that more than half of the CO2 reductions would have to come from energy efficiency like producing both heat and power in combination. Olsen agreed that people's behaviour has to change, because renewables can only take us so far. Olsen also pointed out that the increase of growth of economy doesn't mean that the growth of energy increase just as much. Holten-Andersen on the other hand thinks it is desperately needed, that we need to change behaviour. We can't have economic growth at the same time as we want to reduce CO2 emissions and there by preserve our communities and nature. He admitted though that green growth is possible.

The question was raised in regards to the developing countries if they weren't entitled to economic growth. For them economic growth is most needed, but it's a threat to the CO2-level as China and India holds one third of the World's population. Holten-Andersen definitely believes that everybody is entitled to education, food, a home and so forth and the developing countries of course needs to have some growth in order to survive, but they shouldn't follow our path. Pedersen accentuated China as one of the most developed countries in the field of achieving growth without following the path of the Western World by producing electric vehicles and batteries in much larger extent than Europe. Olsen backed him up by mentioning the fact that most heavy industries have been moved to the developing countries, but they're more efficient and becoming even more so in regards to growth in economy v. energy consumption. So in many ways there's inspiration for European governments to gather from some of the developing countries.

To achieve the needed changes in society to meet the demands of reduced CO2 emissions, Olsen believes that the best way is by economic instruments. As an example he mentioned San Francisco who has introduced high prices on cars with high emission and it works because the very energy efficient and low emission car Toyota Prius is very popular in San Francisco. Pedersen mentioned that the current energy distribution have 85% coming from fossil fuels and only 15% from renewables, so it's an ambitious task, where it's needed to invest heavily in wind and move aggressively on biomass, that still needs better technology. In Pedersen's opinion carbon tax makes sense, but it's difficult to have an agreement on this tool. This might indicate that Hansen was right when he said that people from the coal industry have a great deal of influence on these matters.

Small local projects is part of the solution

The last speaker of the day was Daniel M. Kammen, distinguished Professor of Energy at the Berkeley University. Although he started out by driving to the wrong part of the University Campus, he arrived with an impressive positive and inspiring energy.

He had a lot of suggestions for reaching the goals of lower CO2 emissions: Diverse, measurable cases of low-carbon development are vital, energy efficiency must become a global priority, because it's easy to do and it pays back fast which makes it possible to invest in new technology. Also sustainable energy is needed globally, and a clean energy financing revolution is necessary. The problem right now is that dirty energy grows faster than clean energy and that has to change. One of the ways is efficiency in the energy sector making sure that waste products from producing energy of oil are used for gas to utilize all options available.

Kammen also made it clear that access to diverse energy options is needed. The Western World rarely innovate for the developing countries unless it gets economically positive, but leading companies need to investigate in small projects. The production of solar cells is a good example of this. Kenya is the one country in the World where most people get their energy from solar power. They use amorphous solar cells, but as these are less efficient, the companies producing solar cells cut down the production and switched to crystalline solar cells. In Kenya however they still use the amorphous solar cells because even though they are less efficient they're also dramatically cheaper and therefore have better possibility of getting wide distribution in developing countries. As the neighbouring countries to Kenya started to pick up the same idea it soon became economically feasible for the solar cell producers to make the less efficient amorphous solar cell. This kind of innovation is needed all around to explore all possibilities.

This story also show a change in energy distribution. Kammen don't believe in solar fields in the Sahara because it needs an extensive grid. There's a change from earlier on where big power plants were located away from urban areas to smaller power plants where you live. He thinks it would be much better to exploit the thousands of rooftops in suburban and urban areas and install solar cells there.

As earlier speakers Kammen also finds it necessary with public regulation. A policy is needed and he told another sunshine story from California to prove the effect. In 2008 the State administration of California made a new policy for renewable capacity. The last couple of years the capacity of renewable energy had slowly risen every year and was 113 megawatts in 2007. After the policy was introduced the number rose as much as to 516 megawatts which shows that intervention from public administration has a substantial effect.

Of course Kammen was also asked for his position on CCS. He had a quite pragmatic attitude towards it. If it works and we can afford it, fine, but it's not proven and needs more research. Personally he didn't see so much potential in the technology.

Through the day the discussions now and then had turned towards the old question of capitalism vs. socialism. This is of course an important matter when talking about reducing the energy consumption that might not be possible with the growth rate seen through out the last 50 years. Holten-Andersen also kept emphasizing the need to focus on other values such as community and solidarity and not money value, which only has symbolic value. On this aspect Kammen had some very true closing words: "Capitalism is for the poor, socialism for the rich."

Is a self-sufficient Europe possible?

On Tuesday evening most participants had a fun party at the LIFE Faculty's student's bar, but, in spite of potential hangovers, they rolled up for another day of discussions, panel debates and the second day of the game. This day continued the discussion of CCS and also brought the car into focus as there was a demonstration of a hydrogen fuel cell car and another car running on compressed natural gas in the Marble Hall.

The keynote speaker of the day was John Christensen, head of UNEP-Risø Research Centre. He spoke about how to mitigate the current CO2 emissions. As he see it, it is necessary to keep the average global warming below 2 degrees to avoid major climate damage. This could be achieved by having global CO2 emissions starting to decline by 2015 and have it 50-85% below the 2000 level by 2050. To reach this goal the solution is a combination of different energy sources.

One important source is, of course, renewables, and he used Jutland, with a large part of Denmark’s wind production comes from, as an example of fully functional regional energy production. But even though Christensen thinks the solution for future energy challenges is a combination of different sources, he's sceptical about CCS and sees it as the coal sector’s attempt to confuse the debate.

Afterwards there was an interesting feature by Daniel Sherrard from the EARTH University located in a 3300 hectare big campus in Costa Rica. This is the only CO2-neutral university in the world. To reach this goal, they used different strategies, including carbon neutrality, water management, waste management, alternative energy and energy efficiency. The interesting part about the EARTH University is that they're partly supporting themselves economically by a range of commercial enterprises such as banana production, banana paper, recycling plastic bags and rope and conversion of waste into fertilizer. This not only helps to reduce the CO2 emissions, but actually creates new areas to reduce CO2 that have been taken into use by other companies in Costa Rica.

A question from one of the participants was how Sherrard convinced the board that the university should be CO2-neutral. He replied that it was quite easy, it only needed to be economically feasible and then it was easy to talk the board into the shift. He emphasized that in order to convince companies and governments to make the necessary changes it is important that it has a positive effect on profit.

The panel debate Wednesday was once again controlled with a good grasp of the situation by Martin Lidegaard, who had Svend Friis, Senior Official, Danish Energy Agency, Christian Kjaer, Chief Executive, European Wind Energy Association, and Lars Aagaard, Vice President, Danish Energy Association in the panel. The topic of the day was "How do we tackle energy related security challenges? Self-sufficiency or diplomatic alliances."

Kjaer focused on the self-sufficiency because it makes Europe's position stronger in a negotiation about other sources of energy. If we can't choose another supplier they will demand higher prices. Friis focused on three objectives to secure energy in EU and that is sufficiency, reliance and price, but these objectives are hard to secure in the EU. Aagaard focused on electricity as the main source of power in the future and to succeed we need a mix of sources and more flexible systems.

One of the possibilities to secure electric power in the EU suggested by one of the participants was to use solar energy. The solar plants would be located in Northern Africa to make it as close to Europe as possible, but Aagaard estimated it would be too insecure. Kjaer on the other hand thought it made sense, but it needs a lot of infrastructure, a grid. This is, however, in his opinion easier to establish than a gas pipeline. In Friis' opinion solar power from Africa is much too visionary and he believes more in developing a SuperGrid e.g. with large wind power parks in the North Sea.

The use of CCS is a controversial subject and earlier in the day Christensen expressed his scepticism towards it, but Aagaard emphasized that we won't stop using fossil fuels the next 20 years. This is why CCS is the main answer to handle the climate change. This is an area that needs public funding, because the companies will have to take great risks to develop it and it won't happen without economic backup from the governments. The advantage of coal is that it's easy to get a hold of and it's also easy to store, so there's a low risk of supply disruption. CCS is also cost-effective compared to wind energy. Kjaer is a lot more sceptical towards CCS. He said that there is no one who believes that the technology will be developed before 2020, so it won't help reduce the CO2 emissions within the next 10 years.

Another topic brought up in the discussion was the electric car. Aagaard says that in order to switch from fuel-driven cars to electric cars, we need an extensive storage grid and it's a big logistic assignment. Policy makers have to make long-term decisions on the matter because it's a big investment and risk. In a defence for CCS, he pointed out that electric cars are more effective on electricity from coal-powered plants than petrol-fuel cars. Friis specified that electric motors are up to four times as effective as petrol-fuel motors. Kjaer couldn't argue against the fact that a combustion engine is a lot less effective than an electric engine, but he emphasized that electric cars are only as clean as the sources producing the electricity, so in his view we will have to change to renewable energy in all EU-countries before making the shift.

Closing the discussion on how to tackle the energy related security challenges, all three members of the discussion board could agree that it's important to have a flexible mix of both centralized and de-centralized energy producers. To make that possible, there needs to be both public regulation and private investors. Aagaard pointed out that most people in Denmark who invested in wind energy, did it for profit, e.g. many farmers invested in their own wind mill to make a profit out of it. The private sector is needed to overcome the challenges of the future energy solutions.

CCS continues to be a big conflict point and it seems that the debaters and speakers can't agree on the matter. The question is whether it's an excuse for the energy sector to keep using coal powered plants or if it really is needed to reach the goals of lower CO2 emissions by 2020.

Changing the Game

For the two first afternoons of the summit, the participants grappled with a complex political strategy game developed by Energy Crossroads. The purpose was to get an understanding of the difficult processes going on when politicians try to work out a sustainable energy plan for the future. The goal was to work out an energy plan that can serve as inspiration for the politicians in the countries the participants come from - a solution for future energy challenges. The participants definitely succeeded in obtaining the goal, although it was a difficult process.

On the first day of the game the participants were divided into four regions: Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern Europe. Each region looked at the present composition of energy sources for their region and created a ‘Dream Tower’ of how they would like the composition to be in 2030. This dream tower was build out of LEGO® blocks, where each block represented energy sources such as gas, coal, wind etc. When building their Dream Tower, however, they had to take into consideration the technical limitations and relative costs of the different solutions.

After they built their dream towers, they chose a path to fulfilling their vision by sorting and paying for the implementation of policies, mostly by taking out a loan. Policies were represented on cards – one card per policy – and the groups were required to collaborate and agree with each other on which policies to play, or not play. The available policies were diverse, from behavioural options such as “Live where you work” to “develop more efficient electric motors.” This is where it got tricky. They had to make some choices and every choice could shut out other choices because of economic or technical limitations. This led many of the groups to much heart-felt discussion. The next step was to reconstruct their Dream Tower of 2030 into a tower that recognised their technical and economic limitations, relative to the policies they had chosen.

On the second day of the game, things became more difficult as the four regions had to present their local plans and then agree on a united plan for all of Europe. This was particular difficult because not only had the groups chosen different paths on how to deal with the energy challenges, they also had to consider special needs for every region. For example, Southern Europe would benefit of installing solar power plants, but this might not go so well in cloudy Northern Europe.

So that the separate regions could begin to negotiate a central agreement, each region first chose and prioritized eight policies out of the approximately twenty they chose on day one. Then, when the regions met, any policies that had been chosen by two or more regions were left as only one policy choice up for negotiation. This meant the regions had to reach a consensus on the most favourably policies to pursue. Out of the approximately twenty policies left, they could only choose between 8 and 12 for the entire European region.

The subsequent negotiations were very interesting to follow. The participants were thrown into a ‘fish bowl’ negotiation, where one representative from each region sat face-to-face with the other regions and fought for their chosen policy. Everyone else had to be quiet. Sometimes this was too much too ask. The person in the hot seat changed for each policy until a total of eight was reached. Consensus or majority? Choose this policy or leave it out, because there was a better one to choose later? Often the discussions started off new dilemmas and the debate quickly became heated. As more and more policies were chosen, and the field narrowed for the final choices, tactics became more important. Fervent whispering, hand signs and hurried group v group discussions before a policy was chosen for the next round influenced many of the decisions – not unlike a real negotiation.

As CSS have been much discussed during the summit, it was interesting to observe that the solution seemed unpopular among the participants. Very few chose this solution, even though some of them reluctant realized that it would be difficult to reach the goals without it.

When they finally agreed on which policies to pursue, everyone was split into non-regional groups. Each group was arbitrarily assigned two or three of the successful policies from the negotiation round and asked to both identify stakeholders and think up practical ways in which their policies could be implemented. Each thought was scribbled into booklets. At the end of the day, each group had a workable plan for their policies that could be used to push politicians into make the necessary changes to reach the goal for a cleaner and sustainable energy future. As a final demonstration of solidarity, the participants put their signature on the finished result, which will be posted on the our-opportuntiy.com website and sent to key energy stakeholders in Europe.

Written with substantial help from Michael Chapman.

Updates incoming...

It's been an intense couple of days and there have been too much to experience to get the time to write about it, but full reports on what went down at the Energy Crossroads summit will be uploaded in the next couple of days.

It's a hard knock life

After the participants Tuesday night were presented a reflective speech by David Whitby, who is CEO at Rambøll Whitby Bird, they could grab large portions of welldeserved food from the buffet to recharge their batteries after a long and educational day. And even though they did their best to eat it all, we still had loads of food afterwards so we decided to donate it to Maendenes Hjem which is a shelter for homeless men, and Reden who help prostitutes, many of them addicts or foreigners, to get a break from their hard day to day life.

Elizabeth, Ida Maria and I took the van down to Vesterbro to deliver the food. First stop was Mændenes Hjem, and when we arrived a guy was outside shooting up heroin as we walked in the door. The working people there also suggested that we should the lock up the car not to risk anything, so Elisabeth stayed in the car to protect it. A guy tried to help carry the food inside, but as we already had taken in what was meant for them, I told him so. This made him react quite strongly and he told me to fuck off explaining he only wanted to help. These men are obviously stressed by life. As we drove away, Elisabeth told that one of the guys outside was picking things up from the pavement and eating it, so they probably needed the food badly. At Reden it seemed a lot more cosy and the clientele was friendly.

After this experience it was nice to join the rest of the participants in the student's bar for a beer.

Should nuclear power and carbon capture & storage be a part of a future energy plan?

The theme for the first day of the Energy Crossroads summit focused on how to make the transition from the current mix of energy sources which rely heavily on fossil fuels and to a greener more CO2-friendly energy plan.

The keynote speaker of the day was Professor Jaqueline McGlade who is executive director of the European Environment Agency and gave an enthusiastic speech on the consequences of the current use of energy. She told that more and more people come up to her worried about the future and wondering if it's too late to change the infrastructure for energy use. People who desperately need positive answers. And she could deliver. First off she pointed out some of the reasons for the problems such as the fact, that people have been making money from money instead of selling real products, ever increasing over consumption, ignoring early warnings and the capital destruction.

But the financial crisis actually has become part of the solution because many of the rescue packets employed by European governments include new infrastructure for green energy. This is important because with the current rate of production and reliance on fossil fuels as the primary source of energy production, we will experience higher temperatures which causes more species to extinct, the water exploitation increases and the marine food stocks are in danger. In McGlades opinion the solution is renewable energy which is cheap, all over the place and there's plenty of it.

After Max Stern Dahl introduced his intelligent designed social platform Intelliplat specially fitted for any group of people to work towards a goal in decentralized and geographically dispersed groups, it was time for the daily panel debate. Martin Lidegaard had the difficult task of moderator and Tuesday's question was "How do we manage the transition to a clean energy future?". The panel debaters were Charles Nielsen, Chief of R & D, Dong Energy, Professor Jim Skea, Director of UK Energy Research Center, and Marianne Bender, chairman of NGO OVE. After a short introduction round where the participants presented their vision of a sustainable future energy plan, it was time for some highly interesting remarks and questions from the participants.

One of the big issues was whether or not to take carbon capture & storage (CCS) in use. Marianne Bender only saw it as damage control and emphasized that the strategy should be to focus on 100 % sustainable energy such as wind, solar, wave and geothermic energy. Nielsen on the other hand said it was absolutely necessary to use CCS as part of the solution because it takes time to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources only. It was questioned by one of the participants whether there was enough room in the soil to store the carbon, but according to the investigations Nielsen knows of there should be enough storage capacity in The North Sea to store the CO2 for all of Europe in 100 years.

Another big issue was nuclear power which has been demonstrated against since the 1970's, but is unlike fossil fuels CO2-friendly. Bender didn't want it as a part of a future energy strategy because there's still the problem with waste from the nuclear plants and the plants are insecure. But it seems that the opinions is moving in this area as Skea told that the head of Greenpeace in England, who used to be a big opponent of nuclear power, now have changed his stand on this topic.

Although CCS, nuclear power and sustainable energy all could or should be a part of the solution for cutting down the CO2 emissions of the EU, Skea pointed out that a change in people's behaviour and awareness of how they spend energy daily is most important to solving the energy solutions of tomorrow and unfortunately also the hardest thing to change.

After these enlightening speeches and discussions the participants took part in a fun bicycle demonstration with police escort to move to the Faculty of Life Sciences, where they had lunch before the energetic participants engaged in the energy- and climate game especially developed for the summit. Because of the enthusiasm, the time schedule were overrun. So much that only one group finished the first part of the game. It's a thrill to see that the participants look like they are enjoying themselves and engage in the game fully hearted.

Name the game!

Energy Crossroads have developed a game, where the participants are divided in four groups and have to develop an energy strategy for their region taking into consideration the individual challenges and opportunities for their region. The plan will be build in LEGO® blocks.

The game is entirely new. Actually it is so new, that we don't even have a name for it yet. So we have asked the participants to come up with suggestions in a competition to find the perfect name. This blog is also a place to discuss the name.

Name the Game!

A tough couple of days

The sun was up early this morning to shine a bit of light on the arriving summit participants. Actually some of the arrangers of Energy Crossroads might have seen it rise. They hustled through the night getting all the LEGO® bricks sorted for the different game boxes, so that the game would be ready for Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately it took longer than expected, so some of them greeted the participants with only a few hours of sleep behind their eyelids.

Actually, as our host Carlos mentioned in his opening speech, there have been a lot of problems arranging this summit. We had problems getting a location as the rent at the Bella Center where the IARU conference arranged by the University of Copenhagen is taking place, was too expensive, but fortunately the University of Copenhagen aided with giving us facilities at both the old University in the city and The Faculty of Life Sciences at Frederiksberg.

Also we had trouble gathering the LEGO® bricks for the game. For a long time we couldn't get them from LEGO® itself. We were starting to think that we had to sweep every toy store in Northern Europe to get enough. But Michael, responsible for sponsors, showed his impressive rhetorical skills and persuaded the CEO of LEGO® to donate the bricks for free. A huge relief for all of us.

And if that wasn't enough, one of our panel debaters cancelled yesterday, which struck panic somewhat into the group, but once again we were saved. This time by Marianne Bender, who is chairman of the NGO OVE and agreed to step in on a last minute call.

Some of the hardest working guys in our group have been stressed beyond belief, and if this had been a summit on human rights, it would have been ironic that the working conditions have been highly illegal the last couple of days. So it's nice to see that everything fell into place at last. The summit is now at full roar.

Silence before the storm

In a few days the Energy Crossroads Summit will engage students, speakers and discussion board-participants in solving the global energy challenges for the future.

Read updates from the summit right here.