A traditional band complete with cowbells, accordeon, yodelling singer and one very large horn welcomed the delegates, who feasted on a great selection of melted cheese, cured meats and chilled wine. It was a perfect chance to recharge the batteries for those who had exhausted all their energy ‘talking energy’.

The day began with a plenary session featuring speakers from industry and civil society. Amongst the most persuasive personalities on the panel was Morten Albaek, Senior Vice President of Group Marketing and Customer Insight at Vestas Wind Systems, whe argued that ‘everyone in the world is born sensible’ and that we all understand that the ’sensible’ thing to do is to invest in renewable and sustainable energy.

I later asked him why it was that Danish politicians seemed to accept the sustainable energy argument more freely than many of their counterparts in other parts of Europe, and he replied that developing clean energy systems was deeply anchored in Danish politics, and that the voters genuinely considered it to be an important issue in their lives.

Given that the question of how to engage the general public in the energy debate was one of the overriding themes of this first debate session, it seems that the Danes once again probably have a few things to teach the rest of us about being good citizens of planet earth.

The Masdar stand dominates the entrance to the exhibition hall, and although it was great to be able to meet some of the people involved in the project and to see some of the plans that are being put into place, it certainly seems to me that the whole project is taking a great deal of time to get off the ground, and that for the moment there are a lot more fancy videos and nice interactive 3D maps than real-world sites that we journalists could hope to visit and film. Of course it’s a big initiative, and it will take time to complete, but I can’t help thinking that Masdar have done such a good job of publicising their project so far that the reality of what will be achieved may be something of a let down once we finally get to see it finished in the flesh.

In this picture to the right you can see the Swiss President Ms Micheline Calmy-Rey and Solar plane innovator Bertrand Piccard inspecing the Masdar plans, complete with a media scrum and a few dozen dignitaries.

Wandering around the stalls it was a welcome surprise to see so many well advanced solar thermal devices on display. The Swiss-Italian start-up TVP Solar made a show of unveiling their latest module, a one square metre panel that they hope to sell for around 250 euros a unit, with the intended market being industrial sized cooling applications using absorption chillers. I spent a while talking to CEO Piero Abbate, and he’s certainly convinced that the market for solar thermal chilling is about to explode, especially if the price is as low as he hopes to make it.

Nearby the chatty boffins of SRB Energy Research were also promoting their solar thermal devices, using reflective technology rather than self-contained units like TVP, but with the same aim getting an early foothold in a market which for all intents and purposes doesn’t really exist yet, but is expected to boom in the coming decade.

Jennifer Jacquemart / © European Voice.

Steiger, who is director of future technologies at VW and charman of European technology platform ERTRAC made the key point that we should decouple transport from mobility, and optimise transport infrastructure.

He certainly did not sound the death knell of the private car, but instead imagined constantly connected cars that warned their drivers of congestion and suggested alternative routes, cars which used a combination of renewably produced electricity and oil-alternatives like biogas, and cars that were much more efficient than those we have now. 

Steiger argues that current cars are often not suited to the task they perform. For example a large family estates is often overkill for the school run,  but can feel small on a 700km trip to see the relatives, and that’s because they’re designed as a compromise.

His focus was on city mobility, and there he saw a great move towards that most traditional of transport methods – two feet. In the future he believes we’ll walk a lot more, use electric scooters and electrically-assisted bikes, and adopt a new class of what he called ‘micro-vehicles’, often electric, to complete the last few kilometres of our journey.

The idea is that we switch, swap and match our transport modes to our mobility needs, much the same argument that we heard from Portuguese Professor Tiago Farias on Comment Visions earlier this year.

Where Steiger went a few steps further, however, is in explaining how urban areas would be transformed by new mobility systems. At the moment if you look at your average city street, whether it’s in the suburbs or downtown, and you’ll see at least one line of cars. These are parked, motionless, and as far as everyone apart from their owner is concerned, they are uselessly cluttering the road.

What Steiger proposes is to create purpose-built compact high-rise carparks where residents would be obliged to leave their vehicles. And there are many benefits to his plan, prinicpally that all that space currently occupied by motionless private vehicles could be used for bus lanes, bike lanes and pedestrian pavements. The car parks could host a new suite of services for the owners, and excess heat from the vehicle engines could be captured and used too.

It was a fascinating presentation, and an interesting insight into how a company like VW may see mobility developing. To hear such a radical, multi-modal vision of sustainable mobility from someone high-up within one of the world’s largest car-makers was also, in my opinion, a pleasant surprise.

The next step is to find a city with the courage, conviction and budget to implement those kinds of plans, because I’m pretty sure that once we’re able to see the ideas in action then most of us will be convinced of the benefits.

Which energy sources will we be using in 2050? How does that compare to the current situation? Which clean energy source is forecast to see the greatest growth by mid-century, and which current energy source is forecast to see a downturn by 2050?

With the weather being wet, drizzly and windy, it was a battle with the elements to record the interviews outdoors as I’d planned, but we managed to dodge the showers and get some good footage from Europe’s Green Capital 2011.

This first dramatic shot was taken on Hamburg’s ‘Energy hill’, a former refuse dump that’s now used as a site for windmills, solar panels and biogas production.

The second shows cameraman André Wawro and soundman Gerd Hogenfeld fending off the elements as they shoot some panoramic views of Hamburg city centre and port.

In the third photo the Europe Green Capital 2011 display is somewhat dwarfed by the towering mass of Hamburg town hall.

The latest Comment Visions programme will be on-air on Euronews from 13th September.

More smartness about the way we do everything would make a huge difference to cutting carbon emissions, and combating climate change. Anyone reading this blog is probably trying to do their bit, being smart, re-using what can be re-used, turning off what can be turned off, and generally being conscious of their energy consumption. But there are limits to how much time we can spend exploring new ways of thinking about what we already do.

Thankfully there are people like Seppo Yrjola to think about smartness on our behalf. I had a chat with Seppo, Principal Innovator at Nokia Siemens Networks, a few days ago to find out about his work, which involves trying to work out smarter ways of using what we already have.

Seppo helps develop network management systems and is looking at how some of the models developed in the mobile phone industry can be applied elsewhere in order to increase efficiency and overall functionality, thereby cutting energy usage and in turn helping us cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the key trends he’s interested in is portability. So, if my mobile phone becomes my payment tool, which these days looks like a strong possibility, how will that development connect with the roll out of smart grids in electricity supply?

The models being explored are pretty smart, and the ideas sound pretty innovative. One example from the retail world: if I’m the manager of a large furniture store I may decide to offer free electric vehicle charging to certain customers who’ve paid for my premium credit card services. Customers could behave in smarter ways too: if I use a charging point at a retail store to fill up the batteries on my electric car, then the system could help me understand whose power am I using, and where it came from, and the cost could be amalgamated into my monthly bill. The power company or retail intermediary could then look at how the cost of that energy and its distribution is spread between customer, charging point supplier or themselves. As a customer I could decide that I would like to pay a little more to have electricity from renewable energy sources in my car, my phone, or my computer, and I could then monitor that usage to maximize or minimize as I wished.

It’s an attractive business model, but one that throws up all kinds of issues. And that’s where telecoms industry specialists like Seppo come in, as his sector has worked hard on portability problems such as identity management, smart tariffs and cross-border payment. Roll those models out into the field of energy and you have all kinds of interesting possibilities – as a consumer I could chose my energy provider  just as I choose my mobile network provider, and so my energy costs could roam with me just as my mobile phone connection roams with me.

If a customer’s energy consumption is monitored as they travel, then just imagine the ’smartness’ that could evolve, especially for business customers and frequent flyers – “plug in here and we’ll give you some bonus points on your home account”, “charge-up there and your energy costs will be at your personally negotiated overnight tariff”, “cut your energy costs at our hotel and we’ll credit your account back home”, that sort of thing.

It all sounds pretty smart, and would greatly help build awareness among consumers as to the real cost of their energy consumption, in so doing making them smarter and more efficient, encouraging them to pay attention to the detail of what they use and where, just as most people already pay attention with the calling, texting and data connecting costs of their mobile phones.

Our guide was Futurol project manager Benoit Trémeau, who began the tour by suggesting we shoot from the top of one of the grain silos where the raw material is unloaded and stored. I have to say it smelt wonderful, like a big box of muesli. Benoit explained how the grain is graded and sorted, with the parts not suitable for food production used to make fuels.

The main focus of our visit was the newly built building that houses Futurol, the site of the French national second generation biofuels project. This pilot plant should be online and functioning now, allowing engineers to process, test and refine different feedstocks for advanced biofuels. At the entrance to the site a series of storage areas will be filled with the supply materials – when we were there we saw piles of poplar and straw – which are then broken down, cooked, brewed and fermented into fuels.

As with the other biofuels plant I blogged about earlier on Comment Visions, the Futurol project is more about the journey than the destination – that’s to say that the reported 100 million dollars spent on the eight-year research project is all about developing and marketing the process of turning lignocellulosic biomass into biofuels, and then hopefully licensing or selling that production technology to companies worldwide, rather than selling the product itself. The ethanol they do produce will be blended in with the first generation fuels and distributed to pumps in France.

Benoit is still sticking to the orignal plan which sets targets of developing a demonstration-scale plant by 2015 and a commercial-scale plant by 2016, which I have to admit I thought seemed rather optimistic, but good luck to them if they can do it.

We finished the day’s filming rather dusty and hot, and so were offered a glass of the ‘traditional local tipple’. Turns out, the local tipple is top quality champagne. Yes, they’ve been brewing and fermenting in this part of France for centuries, and from my experience they’re getting pretty good at it by now .

And it wasn’t just any old car either, but that rather special Aston Martin DB6 Volante given to Prince Charles by the Queen for his 21st birthday. 

The Duke of Cambridge’s father asked Aston Martin to convert the car to run on E85 in 2008. The fuel is made from waste from the English wine industry – it apparently comes from a wine firm in Wiltshire which produces more than its EU quota, and so sells the excess on to Glucestershire firm Green Fuels, who in turn process it into ethanol for vehicles.

The decision to change the Aston over to greener energy is apparently part of the Prince of Wales’ drive to cut his carbon emissions, and although the convertible only covers a couple of hundred miles a year it does only make about 10 miles per gallon, so the conversion has probably saved quite a few kilos of CO2!

Let’s hope that the newlywed Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge follow Charles’ example and bring some more bright, green ideas into the public gaze.

The European Commission published its new transport white paper, a strategic document that sets the tone of EU transport policy for the next decade. The main stated objective of the white paper is to make transport more sustainable, from an economic, social and environmental point of view.

Over the past decade, the environmental dimension of transport policy has grown in importance, as climate change mitigation has risen to the forefront of EU priorities.

Transport accounts for 27% of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, a share that is set to grow. If current trends are left unchecked, growth in transport emissions could even offset reductions achieved in other sectors. If the EU is to de-carbonise its economy by 2050, this issue will have to be addressed.

Commissioner Kallas recently stated that the Commission would probably aim at a reduction of GHG emissions from 50% to 70% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels, by halving Europe’s transport sector’s reliance on oil. Linked objectives include a pledge to fully de-carbonise urban mobility, a shift of most long-distance inland freight to rail and inland waterways, and a shift of most medium-distance passenger transport to these same modes.

To achieve this, the Commission is betting heavily on technologies, with the hope that a shift to greener and smarter transport will help to establish a competitive low-carbon economy, deliver green jobs and change users’ habits.

Beyond research and development, the deployment of new technologies will depend on political will and financial resources. With investment in transport infrastructures at an all-time low, and in a context of shrinking public resources, how can this be achieved? Is the private sector ready to step in? Are national governments ready to commit? Will citizens follow?

Comment:Visions convened a high level panel of experts to debate the future of European tranport.