Will solar-powered desert city be a shining example?

Abu Dhabi is going down the sustainable route to development and is planning the world’s first ‘zero carbon, zero waste’ city

WITH DUBAI in the doldrums after building far too much far too fast, the focus of attention for development in the Gulf is shifting to its fellow emirate, Abu Dhabi. And this time, there is even some chance that it will be more environmentally (and economically) sustainable.

The wealthy oil-rich emirate, run by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has already signed up a slew of “starchitects” to design elements of Saadiyat, a new “cultural island” for Abu Dhabi, including Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel – a veritable Who’s Who on the international circuit.

Ando is designing a maritime museum, Gehry a new Guggenheim, Hadid an arts complex and Nouvel a branch of the Louvre; obviously Sheikh Khalifa is not suffering from irritable Bilbao syndrome. But whether all of these facilities will materialise, and how soon, depends on an upswing in the world economy.

But Abu Dhabi’s most ambitious single project, with a potentially wide-ranging impact globally, is Masdar City – billed as the world’s first “zero carbon, zero waste” urban development. In less than a decade, it “will be a vibrant place, full of brains and talent trying to create the best clean solutions that will save the world”.

That’s what Masdar’s development director, Khaled Awad, told journalists attending Abu Dhabi’s “World Future Energy Summit” last month. Asked why bother to aim so high when the world capital of unsustainable development (Dubai) is just up the road, he insisted that Masdar City would be “a catalyst for change”.

The initiative, whose name is derived from the Arabic word for “the source”, will combine Abu Dhabi’s substantial oil revenues with foreign investment to develop technologies for creating cleaner energy and combating climate change worldwide – with Masdar City as the hub for high-powered research and development.

Although the city’s masterplan has been drawn up by Foster + Partners, individual buildings will be designed by other architects. A commission to design the Masdar Initiative’s own headquarters, for example, was awarded to Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, following an international competition.

Smith and Gill’s design features a huge canopy lined with photovoltaic cells, resting on 11 glass hyperboloids that also serve as cooling “chimneys”.

These are also sculpted to bring diffuse daylight into the 148,640sq m (1.6 million sq ft) complex, which will have a series of internal courtyards with water gardens and green roofs.

Marcus Fairs, author of Twenty-first Century Design, expressed surprise that Norman Foster "has gone all Arabian nights, tempering his usual glassy militancy in favour of Ali Baba courtyards for his Masdar Initiative university city [masterplan] and Lawrence of Arabia alleys shaded by timber lattices at the Abu Dhabi Central Market."

Other elements of Masdar City will include an “Eco-imagination Centre” being planned in collaboration with General Electric (GE) and a technical innovation centre in partnership with MIT.

These are intended to form the core of an “eco-cluster” that would provide jobs to many of its projected 50,000 residents.

This brave new world will combine the latest in sustainable design, renewable energy and low-emission technologies – aided by a $15 billion (€11.75 billion) fund, which Abu Dhabi plans to invest in their development worldwide over the next 10 years or so, with the explicit aim of turning itself into a “green global player”.

As well as GE’s involvement, other big players, such as Siemens and BP, are expected to open showrooms or research facilities in the city, turning it into the Middle East’s “Silicon Valley”. This would enable Abu Dhabi to become an exporter of clean technologies that would help reduce carbon emissions worldwide.

On the site of Masdar City, a 10-megawatt solar power plant – the first on this scale in the Middle East – is being commissioned. Its 87,000 photovoltaic panels, manufactured by an American-Chinese joint venture, captures something that the area has in abundance – sunshine – nearly every day of the year.

The plant is being set up to provide power for the construction of Masdar City and it will continue to generate some 17,500 megawatt hours of electricity for the completed development, or about 5 per cent of its energy needs. Indeed, Abu Dhabi plans to boost its overall use of renewables to 7 per cent by 2020.

According to Awad, the Masdar development will steal a march on Dongtan, the “eco-city” being planned by Treasury Holdings and its Chinese partners north of Shanghai.

“We studied Dongtan as a benchmark. It will be low-carbon, not zero-carbon, and its schedule is 25 years, as opposed to seven or eight here.”

The new city will be surrounded by walls to protect it from wind-blown desert sands and all of its buildings, fronting onto piazzas or narrow alleys providing shade, will have roofs (1 million sq m/10.764 million sq ft in total) decked out with solar panels to meet its energy needs. Water is to be supplied by a solar-powered desalination plant.

Transport has also been considered. Although Abu Dhabi is chock-a-block with cars and suffers serious traffic congestion, Masdar City will offer the alternative of driverless electric-powered taxis that residents and business people can call up at the touch of a button to take them to restaurants, shopping malls or wherever.

How effective will it be in tackling climate change? Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who spoke at the World Future Energy Summit (presumably for a fat fee), said he believed Masdar City would have “tremendous persuasive power” as a showcase for alternative technologies and “creative, imaginative ideas”.

But will this new city be built at a time when oil revenues are declining and the world is in recession?

Eduardo Goncalves, who runs the World Wildlife Fund’s sustainability campaign, said he believed it would succeed. “A lot of people these days are talking about a green ‘new deal’. Well, Masdar may be the real deal.”

This remains to be seen. After all, it was revealed earlier this month that Abu Dhabi – richest of the United Arab Emirates – has stepped in to bail out Dubai. It would be ironic if the consequences of Dubai’s profligacy became a drain on its resources, even damaging its own efforts to promote sustainable development.