Sunrise in the desert

By Chris Nelder | January 23, 2013, 3:00 AM PST

One of the world’s most remarkable — and unheralded — energy transitions is taking place in the unlikeliest of places: United Arab Emirates, home of the world’s seventh-largest crude oil and gas reserves.

In Abu Dhabi, the emirate responsible for 2.5 million barrels per day, or 93 percent of UAE’s oil production, an ambitious program of transition to renewables has been under way since 2006. TheMasdar enterprise, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Government-owned Mubadala Development Company, has been working to develop and deploy renewable energy production, energy efficiency, and best-of-breed building technologies in search of truly sustainable modes of living in its sun-baked, dusty desert climate, where the mercury soars over 120° F in the summertime and drops to only 95° at night in sticky 85 percent humidity.

The heart of the proving ground for these technologies is Masdar City, a six-square-kilometer site with two square kilometers of built area. Its six buildings currently house residential apartments, a library, offices, and the nascent Masdar Institute, where 337 students from 140 countries are exploring the science of sustainability, from low-energy building design to nanotechnology research into the best materials for solar cells. It’s entirely powered by a 10 megawatt (MW) grid-connected solar farm and one megawatt of rooftop PV modules, and features a number of technologies that make it 65 percent more energy efficient than typical Abu Dhabi buildings.

In addition, Masdar will flip the switch this quarter on a 100 MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant dubbed Shams 1 (”sun” in Arabic), situated 164 km from Masdar City. The enterprise has also invested in the 19.9 MW Gemasolar plant — the world’s first CSP plant to use molten salt heat storage and run 24×7 — and the 100 MW Valle CSP solar plant, both in Spain; as well as the 1,000 MW London Array offshore wind farm off the coast of the United Kindom, the largest offshore wind array in the world.

By invitation of Masdar, I visited Masdar City and Shams 1 last week and attended the World Future Energy Summit, also hosted in Abu Dhabi. (Disclosure: Masdar paid my travel, lodging and meals, but did not require or suggest any sort of quid pro quo; writing about this is strictly at my personal discretion, and I do so because I am truly impressed with what I saw.)

A strategic choice

It may seem strange that the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, pumping over 3 million barrels per day of liquid fuels and over 5 billion cubic feet per day of gas, would see the attraction of investing in renewables, but that’s only where the ironies begin in this part of the world.

A building next to the conference center (Photo by Chris Nelder)

Abu Dhabi, like the emirate next door, Dubai, boasts clusters of gleaming new glass-clad skyscrapers designed by adventurous architects, all constructed over the past 10 years. All the vehicles on the road are powerful SUVs and luxury sports cars made by high-end manufacturers like Mercedes, BMW, Bentley, and Ferrari, and they’re all new. Even the pavement is new. The hotels are modern and designed to make Westerners feel right at home, with pop music from America on the P.A. and a KFC or Burger King never far away. It hardly seems like the place from which to launch a transformation of the Middle East’s energy strategy.

And yet that’s precisely what it is.