An Oil Giant's Green Dream (Abu Dhabi)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1705616,00.html?imw=Y

Monday, Jan. 21, 2008

An Oil Giant's Green Dream

By Bryan Walsh/Abu Dhabi

If you filled your tank with gasoline today, or warmed your home with natural gas, there's a decent chance you sent some money to Abu Dhabi. The capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is blessed with fossil fuels, including the fourth-biggest reserves of oil in the world. Selling that petroleum at record prices has helped Abu Dhabi achieve the highest per-capita GDP in the world — wealth that's visible in every luxury hotel rising from the desert or spotless Mercedes prowling the streets. All those fossil fuels also mean that Abu Dhabi citizens have among the biggest carbon footprints in the world, and the emirate's exports are a big, if indirect, contribution to global climate change.

So it might come as a surprise to learn that Abu Dhabi is this week hosting the world's first Future Energy Summit, a three-day gathering of more than 4,000 entrepreneurs, analysts and officials from the alternative energy world, including heavyweights like green designer William McDonough and Icelandic President Olafur Grimsson. (Also present was Prince Charles, who gave a speech via hologram.)

But if the idea of an Arab oil power like Abu Dhabi supporting fossil fuel alternatives sounds a bit like a heroin dealer trying to sell methadone, think again. Virtually alone among its Persian Gulf neighbors, Abu Dhabi has embarked on a serious program in alternative energy research, backed with oil money. In 2006 it launched the Masdar Initiative (the name means "source" in Arabic), a multi-pronged scheme that includes a collaborative research institute with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, support for solar and other kinds of green power within the city itself and a clean energy investment fund worth $250 million. The idea behind Masdar — which organized the Future Energy Summit — is a radical one: prepare Abu Dhabi and the UAE to move beyond fossil fuels. "The UAE wants to be more than just an oil-producing country," says Marc Stuart, the co-founder of the carbon-trading firm EcoSecurities.

That will take money, but thanks to record oil prices, money is one thing Abu Dhabi does not lack. At the summit's opening conference, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahaya announced that the government would channel an additional $15 billion to the Masdar Initiative. Although the money comes with no time frame, and officials wouldn't say exactly where the funding will go, Masdar also announced that it would join Rio Tinto and British Petroleum to build the world's first hydrogen power plant, a 500-megawatt operation that would cost at least $2 billion.

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[BrklynLiberal]

1. Things that make you go "hmmmmm"..

[bananas]

2. websites

World Future Energy Summit http://www.wfes08.com/
Masdar Initiative http://www.masdaruae.com/