Masdar City: Making the Middle East a Mecca for Post-Oil Technologies

In the middle of the United Arab Emirates desert, a 30-minute drive south of oil-flush Abu Dhabi city, clean-tech pioneers are constructing Masdar, which backers say is world's first carbon-neutral city powered completely by renewable energy.

Construction began in early 2008; by 2016, Masdar will be what is billed as world's most ambitious green business project – a zero-emission city with a clean-tech university and the foundations laid to become the world's clean-tech Mecca.

Masdar means "source"

The underlying plan behind the Masdar Initiative is to position Abu Dhabi as the epicenter of alternative energy sources, as demand of non-fossil fuel energy sources is forecasted to increase heavily in the future.

By establishing a center for clean-tech engineers and financiers to collaborate, Masdar is intended to provide a hub for creativity and a source (Masdar means "source" in Arabic) for new ideas, technologies, and strategies that could potentially alter the world's future energy demand and supply. According to Chairman Ahmed Ali Al Sayegh, Masdar will be "setting the pace as a global leader in the energy industry, in technology and in sustainability."

Of the many research areas, an important focus will be on developing more efficient ways of producing, storing, and transmitting wind and solar power, as well as hydrogen-based fuels. Other work areas will be: energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and water management and desalination – critical in the dry Middle East.

Zero-emission city

The most eye-catching feature of the Masdar Initiative is, however, Masdar City itself. Currently being built from the ground up, at an estimated cost of $22 billion (U.S.), the city will be the world's first zero-emission and zero waste city. Designed by world-renowned British architects Foster + Partners, the city is planned to be the home of some 40,000 residents plus up to 50,000 daily commuters, as well as around 1,500 companies.

But how can so many people and companies live without producing carbon emissions? The answer is twofold, comprising both a demand and a supply side of the energy equation.

No cars allowed

A remarkable part of Masdar's efforts to reduce energy demand is to ban the use of cars within the city's walls. Instead, inhabitants will have to use a light electric rail-system, which will be no more than 200 meters walk from anywhere in the city.

Constructing the buildings to be as energy efficient as possible is another way for the city to keep its energy demand down. This will be an important aspect, as the hot weather outside is likely to require a lot of indoor cooling.

Further, the Masdar planners intend to deliver a city with "no waste," repurposing as much as 99% of its waste though recycling, converting it to energy, or by adding it to crop fields to be planted around the city's walls.

Finally, it has been decided that energy-intensive industries will not be allowed within the city borders – a decision criticized as "fudgy" by The Economist because it means that nearby manufacturing won't be incorporated into the project emissions calculations.

Solar and other forms of energy

The main source of the city's energy supply will be solar energy, be it rooftop installations or concentrated solar troughs, from two huge solar power plants under construction.

A recent German Aerospace Center's study shows that the greatest energy potential of the Middle East lies in solar power, as there is no lack of sunlight in the region. However, there has also been investment in wind power; and the Abu Dhabi government is examining other renewable energy alternatives.

These plans include thermal tubes to be integrated with the city's buildings to provide hot water, and possibly a deep geothermal "hot rock" borehole to provide a constant source for a 24-hour cooling system.

At night, though, Masdar City will have to import gas-fired energy from Abu Dhabi. But Masdar will still be overall carbon neutral, as the solar power plants will generate so much excess energy during the sunny hours of the day that it can be exported to Abu Dhabi.

Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

A central component of the city will be the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), a name that signals the academic partnership the city has struck with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States. From 2009, MIST will offer master's degrees in five areas of clean technology, with the first doctoral students to matriculating by 2011.

A Clean-tech Silicon Valley – tax-free

By creating an academic foundation, Masdar planners hope to establish a synergy between science and business, and to incentivize clean-tech companies worldwide to build branches and partnerships in Masdar.

According to Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Masdar Initiative, a fundamental goal of the project is to overcome the fragmented global approach to research, development, and marketing with clean technologies. "There are other examples of pioneering alternative energy ventures," he says, "but they are under-funded, under-supported by regulators, and under-recognized. Each country does not have to reinvent the wheel" (see article in The Australian, November 20, 2008).

But a new green Silicon Valley does not form overnight, so the Masdar planners have also decided to entice entrepreneurs by promising a tax-free business environment, a high degree of intellectual property protection, and as few or as transparent of regulations as possible.

Further, by concentrating clean-tech R&D, Masdar is intended to function as a financing machine to spur the growth of green inventions. So far, the Masdar Initiative has gathered investments of up to $100 million (U.S.) from foreign investors such as Credit Suisse and Consensus Business Group.

Will it work?

The Masdar Initiative is 100% owned by Mubadala Development Company – the investment and development branch of the Abu Dhabi government. And the bulk of that funding comes from big UAE and Abu Dhabi banks, including the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Emirates Bank, and First Gulf Bank.

This has caused Elliott Wilson of Euromoney.com to question the plan, as it is "certainly not international in its financial banking and management" (read article). "Questions will continue to be raised," he writes, as there is no specific plan of "how inhabitants will be taxed, how the entire city will generate finances, what the expected future returns will be for investors, and who will ultimately control the project."

Another recurring theme in the intense international media coverage of the Masdar Initiative is the question of why people should want to live in a walled city in the desert with temperatures reaching 40°C – apart from prospective employment (read this piece in Power Engineering International, for instance). For one answer to that question, one might just have to look at Abu Dhabi city itself, which has grown from sandy beaches and mud huts to a wealthy city with a towering skyline in less than 40 years.

World Future Energy Summit

A last point of critique on the Masdar Intiative is that it will not have a direct and immediate effect on Abu Dhabi's energy consumption. In 2006, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) ranked the United Arab Emirates as the world's largest per capita energy consumer – primarily because of the affluent population's fuel-guzzling cars and air-conditioned mansions.

Even so, this point could be turned around to say that Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates would be a brilliant place to start looking for ways to build a cleaner future. If the ambitious plans of the initiative become a success, Masdar could become a source of inspiration for others to follow.

So far, it is still an open question whether Masdar will deliver. Perhaps the answer will become clearer, when Masdar City hosts the World Future Energy Summit from January 19-21, 2009.

Lasse Skjoldan, Copenhagen Climate Council