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Barreling down a freeway in direction of Abu Dhabi at 4am nonetheless groggy from my flight, the driving force casually waved his fingers in direction of a flickering within the distance. As we swerved across the bend a lone windmill appeared. Its blades blasting pink, blue, and inexperienced lasers down on a post-apocalyptic junkyard. Framing the sun-stricken wreckage (apparently a themed restaurant) was an indication flashing the phrases: The Final Exit.
A becoming omen, I believed, if a bit on the nostril, as a result of I used to be invited to attend the official launch occasion of the UN Local weather Summit (COP28) hosted in Dubai later this yr. And lots of think about it humanity’s final probability to kickstart local weather motion and stop the world from wanting like this restaurant.
When the invitation got here, I wasn’t positive I ought to go. A tech-focused enterprise occasion conceived in 2006 to brush up the inexperienced credentials of a petrostate appeared like a doubtful factor to spend my time on. However I had been in search of a approach to be taught from our non-EU Eurasian compatriots how they understand the world through which we now stay, so I made a decision to make the leap.
Metropolis of the Future
Just a few hours later and even groggier, a bus took me on a guided tour to Masdar metropolis, Abu Dhabi’s sustainable quarter named after the gulf state’s big renewable power firm at whose behest I used to be right here. Building of Masdar metropolis began in 2006. It was supposed to deal with 50,000 residents and function a mannequin for a zero-carbon metropolis and revolutionise eager about the constructed setting.
However the residents by no means got here, and it has now been revamped as a start-up valley.
The one path to get there’s by freeway which cuts by Khalifa metropolis, a walled-off working-class neighbourhood subdivided by blocks of equivalent sand-coloured buildings. On the opposite facet of the freeway, skyscrapers and beachside resorts towered over the low-rise — a mannequin of how to not design a metropolis. “It is the place all of the taxi drivers stay,” the bus driver from Pakistan informed me. “5 per room. No privateness. But it surely’s okay, sir. There isn’t any corruption.”
Masdar Metropolis was utterly empty once I arrived.
Western-looking cafés and eating places had been all open for enterprise, however there was no clientele in sight. And one restaurant nonetheless had worth tags on its furnishings.
Not like nearly each different a part of Abu Dhabi, Masdar Metropolis is made for strolling. There’s additionally a small fleet of driverless pods that ferry folks round, however with occupation charges at very low ranges (just a few thousand folks work right here through the week), this has reportedly been scrapped.
I ponder why they’ve taken me to a spot that by the appears to be like of it has failed so completely. However apparently, US president Joe Biden had visited when he was vp to Barack Obama. “Terribly impressed,” he later tweeted. “A real inexperienced print for cities of the longer term.”
To the moon
After checking some extra eating places for worth tags, I used to be ushered right into a showroom crammed with scrumptious Arabian, French and American snacks. An African man whose job it was to open the door welcomed me. A South-Asian-looking man whose job it was to push the button for espresso gave me espresso. And males sporting white Kandura’s, all administrators at Masdar, sat at a big desk listening.
“We will ship graphene to the moon, all proper?” an American man mentioned with confidence. He held a bucket of gray matter fastidiously taped shut. I had seen it earlier than.
Graphene was first remoted in 2004, and as a result of its properties — it is 200 occasions stronger than metal and does not weigh a factor—it was envisioned to revolutionise development and drastically deliver down the environmental influence of cement. The EU even launched a €1bn Graphene Flagship in 2013, hoping to win “the worldwide graphene race.”
Almost 20 years later, it nonetheless holds that promise however has but to show its price. To not say it will not, however breakthrough applied sciences have a method of not fairly breaking by for many years. Fusion is one other instance. So is inexperienced hydrogen.
That’s the reason I used to be barely unnerved to be taught that the UAE needs to develop into a worldwide chief in inexperienced hydrogen and needs to make use of the UN Local weather Summit as a launching pad for this ambition.
Inexperienced hydrogen has been described because the “swiss military knife” of the transition and can be utilized to wash up sure sorts of industrial manufacturing processes. However excessive prices have prevented its growth, and like graphene, it does not exist but exterior of some pilot initiatives.
Learn up on the UAE’s hydrogen technique right here.
Going all in on inexperienced hydrogen might assist scale up the expertise. But it surely’s a high-risk gamble, and the overtly business nature of this yr’s summit has raised some hairs amongst local weather advocates.
Blue lasers
Because it seems, Europeans and Emiratis view planetary collapse by a distinct lens—demarcated by the truth that the EU goes by an power disaster and the gulf states are experiencing the primary oil growth in over a decade.
It was due to this fact maybe unsurprising when Sultan Al Jaber, an Emirati oil CEO who had simply been elected director of COP28, emphasised financial alternative on the opening occasion. “All of us share the identical local weather,” he mentioned in opposition to the background of an enormous blue tree manufactured from lasers. “However I consider we are able to flip the best problem we face into the chance of our lifetimes.”
To realize a “simply transition for all,” he mentioned, the UAE aimed to set out a path to a “high-growth vacation spot” and make investments its petro-profits in “breakthrough” applied sciences.
To my ears, it appeared fairly primary ‘fixing issues by development and innovation’ fare, however the gulf state has set a tough goal: 100 gigawatts of inexperienced power by 2030 (a couple of quarter of the EUs present photo voltaic and wind capability), 25 p.c of which will probably be used to create ‘inexperienced hydrogen.’
And in accordance with secretary-general of the World Power Discussion board Angela Wilkinson, some of the highly effective voices in power, Al Jaber is the true deal and a “visionary chief.”
Though Wilkinson admits “throwing cash and expertise on the downside” is not going to resolve all the problems — the UAE has not dedicated to phase-out fossil fuels — she suggests Europe and the US might use their monetary clout as leverage to get the World South together with petrostates to extend their ambition. “World management is about studying what different international locations goal for and what their tales are, not dominating them and telling them what the reply is,” she mentioned.
Reverse emissions?
A part of UAE’s story is that it needs to “reverse emissions” and broaden oil manufacturing on the similar time, which is why many local weather advocates have sounded the alarm.
Within the coming years, the gulf state has earmarked $127bn [€116bn] in new fossil-fuel manufacturing, which can improve output from 4 to 5 million barrels per day by 2027.
UAE officers insist they will compensate for these newly-created emissions by exporting renewables and inexperienced hydrogen. However this declare shouldn’t be supported by the Worldwide Power Company, and local weather advocates have pointed on the market’s nothing new about petrostates hedging on renewables whereas maximising oil income.
In Sharm el Sheikh throughout COP27, petrostates made positive the phasing out of oil and fuel couldn’t be mentioned and held it off the official agenda. However corruption or cynicism might not inform the complete story. It is also concern. “With out oil, we now have nothing,” a delegate from a gulf state informed me.
The issue is that it does not matter. In a widely-shared rant, former US vp Al Gore talking (or yelling) on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland, final week, reminded the room the planet solely offers in laborious limits and irreversible tipping factors. There isn’t any room for tales and excuses, he mentioned: “We’ve received to cease utilizing our ambiance as a sewer.”
Windmills
On my method again, I seemed out for The Final Exit. I had realized the windmill overlooking the rust-and-petrol-themed restaurant was a reproduction of a Nineteenth-century mannequin produced by the Aermotor Windmill Firm.
The corporate nonetheless exists and is now owned by a gaggle of fiercely patriotic west Texas rangers. Though a small participant within the power sport these days, when it was first launched within the Eighties it remodeled rural life in the US. First as an irrigation system and later as a supply of electrical energy, till it was made out of date by the onslaught of low cost oil and fuel by the mid-Twentieth century.
It made me consider the little-known prehistory of renewables that existed earlier than the fossil period. Just like the solar-energy system that impressed judges on the 1878 World Exposition in Paris by creating ice with the facility of the solar; like early electrical vehicles that outcompeted petrol-driven fashions and had been unfold extensively sufficient to have had their very own ‘golden age,’ low cost modular Aermotor windmills inform the story of a historical past interrupted.
As a schooled historian, I’ve discovered historical past can act as an antidote for hype, and I used to be reminded to not put an excessive amount of credence into the necessity for breakthrough applied sciences to save lots of the day. We’ve however to select up the thread that has been there all alongside. Though if we had, the United Arab Emirates almost definitely wouldn’t have existed.
EUobserver was in Abu Dhabi as a part of an expenses-paid journey by Masdar Clear Power.
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