A clean green sheet on the Silk Road

The high water level to the northeast would cause the soil to collapse when piling and sunken soil choked the burrowed holes. A solution eventually surfaced - inserting a plastic tube to anchor the soil before burrowing.

Loose soil in the dune-dominated southeastern region was a knotty problem until it was displaced and substituted with concrete to get a more stable structure.

Building the 400 kilovolts GIS (gas-insulated switchgear) substation was also demanding. "It had to be put under the scrutiny of AbuDhabiTransmission and Despatch Company, which adheres to (one of the most) rigorous, hard and fast standards," says Wang.

The rigorous vetting and approval process was a problem too, slowing down construction. "But we still made it within 22 months, which would have been 35 months under the local timeline. It had registered 14 million safety work hours by early June," he says.

The plant serves as a "blueprint" for Abu Dhabi's upcoming projects of the same size and magnitude, says Alobaidli.

Beyond its environmental merits, the project has turned Abu Dhabi's labor market into a hubbub, says Alobaidli. "At its peak, we had more than 4,000 workers from various countries residing in the UAE. A lot of local subcontractors benefited from the project and offered full-time jobs for the people."