Dubai’s Carbon Market Gets Another Big Push

DUBAI - A new company has been launched in the Dubai International Financial Centre focused on mitigating the UAE and GCC region’s climate impact, as the emirate broadens its focus on the carbon market.

By (Staff Reporter)

Published: Thu 24 Dec 2009, 10:40 PM

Last updated: Wed 17 May 2023, 4:22 PM

The company, Tanager Holdings Limited, is active in the areas of carbon reduction, initiatives that drive down energy costs and projects that enable industrial and domestic sustainability.

Tanager Holdings will acquire stakes in high-growth US, European and Asian companies active in the sustainable building and resource reduction technology sector. Tanager will establish UAE subsidiaries of these corporates, offering licenced technologies or materials to markets from the Middle East to North Africa and China to South Asia.

Terry Temescu, Tanager’s Chairman and CEO, said that with the limelight on these sectors, especially with the recent Copenhagen conference, the timing was right to assist local companies, investors and government entities.

“We have been committed to these sectors for many years and we see an enormous opportunity in transferring the technologies and materials operations to the UAE,” Temescu said, in a statement this week.

The building environment is responsible for 40 per cent of all the world’s energy use, according McGraw-Hill.

The sectors related to sustainability are growing much faster than the overall construction industry, and the opportunities to retrofit existing non-green buildings are enormous.

Dubai has taken steps to encourage green buildings in developments in the emirate which involves use of sustainable technology that reduce energy and water use.

Legislation is yet to be released but many international green building certification bodies have also set up in the emirate.

From next year the Dubai Centre for Carbon Excellence is also expected to begin operating in earnest.

The centre has already identified several possible projects which could qualify under the Clean Development Mechanism. The term involves recognising a project’s reduction of carbon emissions qualifying it for credits which can be traded on the carbon market.

The Abu Dhabi sustainability initiative Masdar has also taken such steps and invested in CDM projects.

“Since both Abu Dhabi and Dubai have set strong policy goals related to both reducing their carbon footprints and increasing economic activity and jobs in the small to medium enterprise sectors, we think this country is the perfect spot for us to operate from,” Mr Temescu said.

Unlike a private equity fund, Tanager is an industrial holding company whose goal over time, both through its foreign acquisitions and its UAE operations, is to increase the value of the whole by growing each of the parts. Depending on market and economic conditions, Tanager’s eventual goal is to create a multi-billion dollar platform.

While not specifically an economic development business, Tanager is aware that it could create thousands of new, mid to highly skilled jobs in the UAE, said Temescu.

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