One of the greatest privileges of the week was speaking with the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. He has been on the Jury of the Zayed Future Energy Prize for years (since the beginning, actually), and I was able to interview him one-on-one following the Zayed Future Energy Prize press conference. Below are a few videos from that interview.
The first one is all about the Zayed Future Energy Prize, which I have been closely covering for the past 8 months or so. I love the prize and Ólafur does too. Check out his comments here:
Ólafur is a strong advocate for climate action. It is one of his true priorities. Luckily, Iceland has thoroughly tapped geothermal energy. It gets ~26% of its electricity and 87% of its buildings’ heating and hot water requirements from this source. I asked Ólafur about geothermal energy potential around the world, and he had a very interesting answer:
I was also curious about Iceland’s work on electric vehicles, since the country seems so ideal for electric vehicles (relatively small island country & super-clean electricity). Here’s his response:
*Full Disclosure: My trip to and accommodation in Abu Dhabi for the Zayed Future Energy Prize, World Future Energy Summit, and other Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week events was covered by Masdar. That said, I have full editorial control over the work and am publishing it without feedback. I am only covering things that I find very interesting or important, and that I think others will find interesting or important.
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