UAE | Environment
Gulf can power green future
Region has space and ideal weather to tap renewable energy, Irena chief Helene Pelosse says.
- By Abbas Al Lawati, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:04 July 4, 2009
Dubai: The UAE and the Gulf region are in a unique position to harness renewable energy for domestic use and eventual export, said the newly elected director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).
"What [Gulf states] have, which I think is a great advantage, is space; room; desert.
"That's fantastic. If you're starting to build solar plants you need a lot of space, so it's a unique opportunity for them to build huge capacity," Helene Pelosse said from France in a phone interview with Gulf News.
Pelosse was voted director-general by the member states of the recently established Irena in Sharm Al Shaikh on June 30, and will be based at the headquarters in Abu Dhabi.
Her role will be to set up the agency, recruit personnel and eventually give policy advice to countries, help them build capacity, and transfer technology to them.
She said companies in Europe faced difficulties in building solar plants due to a shortage of space and ideal weather conditions.
"The Gulf region is just blessed from God with that," she said.
Pelosse, who is the deputy head of staff for international affairs in the office of France's Minister of State in charge of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development, said the UAE could eventually export renewable energy, as the technology to do so is "available" and "feasible".
"At some point we're not going to be exporting oil any more, and will move towards renewables only & Gulf countries have a unique location to build up the plants and export renewable energy worldwide," she said.
The transition to renewable energy reliance, she added, is likely to occur in 20 to 30 years and oil-producing states would come to realise the oil would eventually "be gone" and "that the sun is tomorrow's oil".
Asked to describe renewable energy to the common man, she said it is from nature. "Wind, sun, waves, rivers. You have to grab it and harness it and it's going to always be renewed so you don't have to worry about it being over one day. If everybody wants to achieve a good level of development we need energy and there won't be energy available only with fossil fuels."
She said the technology is there to make the UAE an exporter of renewable energy in the future.
"We are probably going to stop exporting oil before it is over because we'll be transitioning to a new model."
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