The not-so-far-fetched dream of the UAE

Oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) is spending billions to promote its capital, Abu Dhabi as a hub for alternative energy and sustainability.  Writing under the caption "Renewable Energy: Desert Dreams" in time, Bryan Walsh could not have captured it more vividly:

If you want to see the future of sustainable design, drive southwest from Abu Dhabi's international airport, stop when you come to the desert — and use your imagination. You're standing in what will be Masdar City: a radically innovative development powered entirely by renewable energy.

Masdar City, a brainchild of British architect, Norman Foster (watch his video)

...is little more than a dream in the desert today, but the beginnings of Abu Dhabi's transformation are visible in a field of 25 different solar panels sprouting from the sand near the construction site. The shimmering silicon modules are being run through an 18-month field test to determine which kind of photovoltaic technology will work best in this hot and dusty environment. The winner will help power Masdar City — and, eventually, perhaps much of Abu Dhabi, as scientists here learn to tap a renewable energy source that could ultimately be as powerful as the oil that has made this region so wealthy.

The forward-thinking leaders of sun-baked UAE, leaders like 35-year-old Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Masdar's CEO, obviously understand something that other leaders seem to be missing, including those in oil rich African countries.  And what is that something? i think it may be found in a typically precise comment by Klaus Topfer, former head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): "The region is rich in fossil fuels for the time being. But this region will be rich in sun for all time..."

Comments

[Geoff Pound]

Thanks for your good post.

I have written an article on the Masdar initiative which takes a different approach from yours:

http://experiencingtheemirates.blogspot.com/2008/02/masdar-model-city-is-environmental.html

Geoff

[Kyle Laursen]

I am an urban planner and writer. I was the first to articulate and define the solar city vision at Sonoma State University in 1996. The vision statement was sent to many American graduate schools of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. And the vision statement was published again in the Desert Sun (1999)and the CarFree Times (2002).

In 2002, Joel Crawford (editor of the CarFree Times), and I contacted Foster and Partners, because I felt the firm's use of the term solar city for a housing project in Frieburg, Germany was a misnomer.

Kudos to Foster for carrying out the world's first solar city, but it was not his vision.

I have written a manifesto on solar cities that is a syntheses of my research since 1996. I would like this piece to reach a large audience and I am actively seeking a publisher.