“Green” City to Rise in the Desert
May 6th, 2008Oh sure.
Via: TheStar:
A new kind of oasis is forming in the middle of the desert.
In one of the harshest environments imaginable, where temperatures regularly rise to 50C and sandstorms can limit visibility to a few metres, construction has begun on what will be the greenest city on Earth.
Abu Dhabi is developing the world’s first solar-powered, car-free subdivision. Called Masdar City, the initiative is harnessing the region’s enormous wealth, and zeal for glitzy construction, to build an eco-friendly community of 50,000 in the heart of the Persian Gulf.
If successful, Masdar City will become a haven for green living in one of the most polluted areas in the world; showing what’s possible when governments and business leaders join forces.
From futuristic pods that transport residents to work on solar-powered magnetic rails, and state-of-the-art composting and recycling facilities, developers are billing Masdar City as the world’s only zero-carbon, waste-free city.
Produce will be grown in local greenhouses and fresh water will come from a nearby desalination plant. Buildings must adhere to strict energy conservation regulations and air conditioners will be powered by wind towers.
Masdar City is expected to cost more than $20 billion and will take a decade to complete.
While it may seem ironic for a place that relies almost exclusively on oil wealth to be building a car-free city, Abu Dhabi’s project is an important step toward developing alternative energy technology. With gas prices soaring, supplies dwindling and concerns over global warming, our reliance on oil has again come under scrutiny. But progress on breaking this dependence has been painstakingly slow.
Masdar City is only one element of Abu Dhabi’s push toward clean, renewable energy. In 2006, the UAE capital launched its Masdar Initiative (Masdar means “the source” in Arabic), a multi-billion dollar investment into the research and development of environmentally friendly technology, such as solar and wind power.
An aspiring leading producer of green energy solutions, Abu Dhabi partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a graduate university in Masdar City to study alternative energy.
“For an Arab oil country to start this kind of research, it actually makes a lot of sense,” says Lester Brown, president of Washington-based Earth Policy Institute. “Besides oil, the one really abundant resource they have is sunlight.”
This sounds like something from the trilogy of “Dune.” Yes, isn’t it ironic for a place that relies almost exclusively on oil wealth to be building a car free city and renewable energy.
Yes, its ass backwards. The U.S. – a country that USED to have all the wealth spends it on oil instead of developing oil free technology, but the one who reaps the rewards of U.S. substance abuse gets the good stuff. Makes a person wonder what path the U.S. would be on re energy policy if the two oil men and their cast of thousands hadn’t stolen our country for their own enrichment.
Lester Brown (if it is the same person used to be at Carnegie Mellon). Almost twenty years ago he would have been laughed out of town re his comment as per sunlight.
Who said all Arabs are a bunch of backward idiots? I can see a downside to this (some sort of clean green fascism), but a lot of what Abu Dhabi and Dubai are doing is great! I think it would be very ironic if those “backward” Arabs actually wound up showing the rest of the world the road to the world of tomorrow.