Stop exploiting energy “as if there's no tomorrow”. This – as articulated by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan – was the key message of Tuesday's conference on energy efficiency, attended by EP President Hans Gert Pöttering and 1990 Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev. “More effective energy use is something we can easily achieve”, said Mr Pöttering, launching the Global Energy Conference on awareness-raising and energy efficiency.

The twenty percent increase in energy efficiency, he added, “is completely attainable” – this, “without a drop in well being or production”.

“Climate change is not just an environmental issue”, said Kofi Annan. “It is an all encompassing threat": engendering, as he put it, regional conflict, imperilling the world's food supply, and making areas unsuitable for animals and food harvest. The scientific consensus, according to Mr Annan, is becoming “not only more complete, but more alarming”.  “And yet,” even with some scientists warning that we are “close to the point of no return", he complained, "we continue to exploit resources as if there no tomorrow, in a very unsustainable manner.” If we continue to consume energy at today's pace, warned Mr Annan, by 2020 we'll need 50% more energy to meet our needs. “Let no one say that we can not afford to make emission cuts," he concluded. "It will cost far less to cut emissions now than to pay for the consequences later”.

1990 Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, also speaking at the conference, drew on personal experience - both as a young man growing up in Stavropol and a rising star in the Communist Party - to explain how his understanding and appreciation of climate change grew over the years (leading him to found, in 1993, Green Cross International, an advocacy group). Europe, he later argued, had a lot to learn from the experience (and errors) of the USSR, where - by the mid-80s, under Gorbachev's glasnost - the "number one issue [on people's minds] was the environment".

The day before the conference, The 9th Energy Globe Awards for local environmental projects were presented by the Parliament, Commission and Council presidents. Projects from around the world promoting the use of clean and renewable energies competed in five different categories: Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Youth.

After a ballot in which guests could vote for their favourite project the Energy Globe World Award went to Austria (Fronius International GmbH: CO2-free transport).