Renewable Energy: Desert Dreams

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. Created by the British architect Norman Foster, the new city will be the centerpiece of the Masdar Initiative, a multi-billion-dollar project to promote Abu Dhabi, the hydrocarbon-rich capital of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), as a hub for alternative energy and sustainability.
Masdar City 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. “I think there is great potential here,” says project manager Sameer Abu Zaid, as he tours the testing facility, the call to evening prayers echoing over the empty desert. “This is very exciting for us.”

What’s happening in Abu Dhabi could be very exciting for the rest of us, too — and very surprising. The emirate is the world’s fifth largest exporter of oil and sixth largest producer of natural gas, making it immensely rich, with per-capita gdp of $63,000, compared with $45,000 in the U.S. and U.K. With oil at around $93 per barrel, business is better than ever. So the notion of this fossil-fuel colossus supporting alternative energy might seem a bit like a heroin dealer trying to sell aspirin. But the Masdar Initiative is much more than a fig leaf to cover Abu Dhabi’s contributions to climate change. Through investments in clean-technology companies, a sustainability research center, major green power developments, and Foster’s city, Masdar represents a dramatically new direction for Middle Eastern energy. Fossil fuels won’t last forever, and the need to cut greenhouse-gas emissions could force a quicker transition away from petroleum. Middle Eastern nations that want to remain viable in the next century can’t rely entirely on hydrocarbons. With Masdar, Abu Dhabi may be pointing the way to the long-term prosperity of the Middle East.

Time