NEW ENERGY IN ABU DHABI

Abu Dhabi Explores Energy Alternatives
Hassan N. Fattah, March 18, 2007 (NY Times)

WHO
Abu Dhabi, Persian Gulf boomtown, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the fourth largest OPEC oil producer…

WHAT
…seeking to become a center for the development and implementation of clean-energy technology… The sun, the wind and hydrogen… a $250 million Clean Technology Fund… a special economic zone for the advanced energy industry...a 500-megawatt solar power plant…Alternative energy has attracted increasing interest over the past year as American industrial leaders have called for more aggressive action… In Silicon Valley, the excitement over clean-energy technology startups recalls the flurry of new Internet companies in the 1990s…

WHEN
… the next energy wave… Last year, the emirate launched the Masdar Initiative (masdar is Arabic for source), which has signed up major oil and technology companies, universities around the world and U.A.E. ministries to help develop and commercialize renewable-energy technologies backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of Abu Dhabi’s money…

WHERE

WHY
The United Arab Emirates has been singled out as one of the world’s highest per capita emitters of carbon monoxide and other greenhouse gases… The U.A.E. has especially high energy demand to maintain a luxurious life of air-conditioning, chilled swimming pools and even an indoor ski slope in the emirate of Dubai, a neighbor of Abu Dhabi. U.A.E. officials say the Masdar project is one way to reduce demand for fossil fuels internally… The U.A.E. is only the most serious among Persian Gulf oil-producing countries whose thirst for electrical power has spawned efforts to find other sources of energy to save high value fossil fuels for export. Most Persian Gulf states get their water from desalinating gulf waters, an energy-intensive process…

QUOTES
“They’ve seen the writing on the wall: where will all these places be, post-oil?” said Virginia Sonntag-O’Brien, managing director of BASE, a center in Basel, Switzerland, that promotes investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. “It’s their message that they are an oil-producing nation taking the energy and climate issue seriously and developing their own economy, which is important.”

“We realize that the world energy markets are diversifying, so we need to diversify too,” said Sultan A. al-Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, the government arm that manages the Masdar Initiative. “We see the growth of renewable energy as an opportunity, not as a problem.”