The event drawing the most buzz on day two of the World Future Energy Summit was certainly the Zayed Future Energy Prize award ceremony. The show was held at the preposterously opulent Emirates Palace -- rumor has it that it's the 2nd most costly building ever built (whatever that means) -- and featured speeches from luminaries like Rajendra Pachouri. This year, the $1.5 million prize was awarded to the Dutch wind power company Vestas -- and Vestas immediately proceeded to give it all away.
Company CEO Ditlev Engel took the stage after receiving the award, and wasted no time in donating the whole sum to a variety of sustainable causes. $750,000, the first half of the award, would be given to a brand spanking new NGO that Vestas helps to launch called WindMade. The nonprofit group will act as a kind of quality stamp for wind power products, and will help generate consumer confidence in the market. Here's a video of the press conference where Engel explains the project:
The second half was to be split between each of the other top finalists in the jogging for the Zayed prize -- $250,000 will be given to First Solar, an American solar energy company, Bunker Roy, the director of Barefoot College (the "only fully solar electrified college in India", which trains females to join the clean energy workforce), and Terry Tamminen, the CEO of 7th Generation Advisors, a renewable energy firm in California.
The Zayed award is something of a curious beast: this is only the third time that the award has been given out, and the earlier two winners were a Bangladeshi man who started a movement training females who live in rural areas to put in solar panels -- and Toyota, the biggest automobile company in the world. nevertheless, it's lovely to see some recognition given to what are arguably a quantity of the most successful green projects in the world.
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