A clean green sheet on the Silk Road

Venturing into the scorching summer heat of up to 43 C takes guts. Just a few minutes' exposure to the uncompromising ultraviolet rays and heat could set you on fire and give you vertigo. The sun's glare is so piercing that, without sunglasses, your eyes would sting and run dry.

It was a real baptism of fire that a PV solar project of such gargantuan magnitude and significance was completed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the heat.

Why is the UAE - an energy giant with its vast fossil fuel reserves a rich seam to mine - so bent on undertaking an energy transition to become a global clean energy powerhouse?

There is a real need for change, contends Abdulaziz Alobaidli, chief operating officer of Masdar - the UAE's flagship renewable energy company and a major developer of the Al Dhafra solar power project. The UAE has benefited from the underlying "wisdom of its leadership", which has been very dynamic in "thinking about the future", says Alobaidli.

"We need to diversify our economy and energy resources to enhance our energy security," he says, as relying on a single source of energy is just too risky. Therefore, decarbonization is a "necessity" rather than a "luxury" or "privilege". "We're committed to decarbonizing the value chain of all processes relating to energy, upstream and downstream."

Most importantly, says Alobaidli, since climate change is a global issue, the UAE feels compelled to share its knowledge and solutions with the world to support collective efforts to reach net zero by 2050. This is a tenet of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Wang Jinwei, general manager of the Abu Dhabi branch of Beijing-based China Machinery Engineering Corporation Group, explains that fossil fuels, while being a carbon-intensive resource for electricity, are subject to market fluctuations and don't promise a secure supply of electricity. Hence, the "Clean Energy Strategic Target 2035", initiated by Abu Dhabi's Department of Energy, envisions 60 percent of the region's electricity being generated from clean and renewable sources by 2035. The projection is the first legally binding clean and renewable energy target in the Middle East, and integral to Abu Dhabi's energy transition process.

Resolved to do its part for the "Green Silk Road", CMEC secured the $1 billion engineering, procurement and construction contract to build the 2GW Al Dhafra solar photovoltaic project in Abu Dhabi in October 2022.