Dubai leads green initiatives

Dubai - Emirate stays on track to become world's cleanest city by 2050

Riding on the back of government-owned entities, Dubai is leapfrogging in its endeavours to transform itself into a sustainable and green economy and also to become world's cleanest city by 2050.
Speaking at the World Green Economy Summit on Wednesday, industry experts were confident that the Emirates will achieve its ambitious goals to reduce carbon footprint and achieving 75 per cent renewable energy target by 2050.
"Dubai is already contributing remarkably towards that effort of reducing carbon emission and development of green economy. I am quite confident that Dubai will achieve its target of 75 per cent renewable energy," said Christina Figueres, former secretary general of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Hailing Dubai Electricity and Water Authority's (Dewa) efforts to bring down the solar tariffs to nearly 3 US cents for the 800MW third phase of Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, Figueres stressed that the target is to bring the cost down to one cent per watt.
Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, inaugurated the two-day summit.
Former French president François Hollande, Cabinet Member and Minister of Climate Change and Environment of UAE Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi and Dewa chief executive and managing director Saeed Mohammad Ahmad Al Tayer addressed the conference.
Highlighting Dubai's leap into a green economy, Ahmad Al Muhairbi, secretary-general of Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, said the difference between Dubai and others is that ratio of implementation and executing projects is very high.
He said 1,500MW of projects under execution in Dubai and this capacity will expand to 5,000 by 2030 at a single site of Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.
Dubai Supreme Energy Council launched green mobility project which called on government entities to purchase of 10 per cent of green vehicles.
"We started it almost two years ago and we have 4,000 vehicles, including 1,000 electric vehicle. Dewa installed 200 charging stations in addition to other stations installed by car suppliers. Then we embarked incentives plan for green mobility by introducing free charging, free registration and free parking by Roads and Transport Authority. Our objective is to reach 10 per cent by 2030 in green mobility, which is equivalent of reducing over 270,000 tonnes carbon emission," he added.
"Our ultimate objectives is to be the cleanest city by 2050. Green economy, green mobility and green city are all aimed at towards this target."
Dubai is also on track to reduce electricity and water demand by 30 per cent by 2030.
In order to further cut down on CO2 emission, Nasser AbuShehab, CEO of strategy and corporate governance at RTA, said the authority is using public business which are equipped with Euro 4 specific engines since 2008. And it is planning to introduce buses equipped with more environment-friendly Euro 6 engines next year.
"Using this engines contributes to reducing thousands of tonnes of carbon emission. For taxi, we are planning to use 50 per cent of our existing taxi to hybrid by 2021. Around 50 electric car taxis have been added, including Tesla taxi in our fleet to support green mobility. We are planning to add another 150 electric vehicles to reach 200 mark by 2019," AbuShehab said.
"Sustainability is one of the criteria of evaluating cities. Firstly, this will create better image for the city. Secondly, if you are leading in this segment you will be model for the others to follow. So people will be coming here to see the initiatives," he said, adding that RTA has strategy to have 25 per cent of trips through autonomous cars by 2030.
He said RTA study showed that autonomous vehicles will improve safety by 12 per cent; efficiency by 20 per cent, productivity by 30 per cent and reduce need for parking space requirement by 50 per cent.
Dr Waddah Ghanem Al Hashmi, senior director for sustainability, operational and business excellence at Enoc, said Dubai and UAE are very good at producing new concept.
"(But) it is all about implementation and this is why Dubai can be a driving force for green economy. Challenge for us is a much bigger as we have to reinvent ourselves as industry keeping. The biggest challenge oil and gas industry faces is that it is not as attractive as it used to be among the youth. It is an industry considered to be dying and not clean. Young people don't finding oil and gas interesting," he said.
- waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com