Masdar — A green vision for a better future

Abu Dhabi: Gulf News sat down with Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive officer of Masdar, for an exclusive interview on the future of renewable energy in the United Arab Emirates and how the government initiative is set to place the country among the world's top renewable energy providers in the future.

Gulf News: Can you tell us briefly about how Masdar came about to exist — under which circumstances and for what reasons?

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber: Masdar, as a highly strategic initiative, came from a real wisdom and a real understanding of a real interest and a drive for a number of things. One is the diversification of the Abu Dhabi economy away from oil and gas, at the same time looking at how we can create initiatives that will help reform our economic structures. How we can create initiatives that will enhance the human capital and what we can also do to help maintain the position that Abu Dhabi and the UAE in general have already earned in the global energy markets? When Masdar was created the leadership asked itself the question: if we were to seriously invest in the future in something that we know best, what would that be? The answer was very obvious: energy.

Our dependence on energy is finite. It's a resource that at one point in time will finish; it will vanish. Whether it's going to happen in the next 70 years, 100 years or 150 years, it's not the question we are trying to address here. What we are trying to say is how can we better invest in our future by capitalising on our resources today?

What we are doing through Masdar is simply helping extend our reach and our global positioning as far as energy is concerned. So we are no longer recognised as oil and gas exporters. We are in fact serious responsible and accountable energy players other than only exporters of oil and gas.

Masdar will and can provide a really robust platform for human capital development in a field that is new, and we have an advantage, because we will always capitalise on our energy expertise and the substantial financial resources we have access to from oil and gas.

Why are we doing this? The very short and simple answer is we can, and we should, as a responsible energy player — we owe this to the world. You have to reinvest your revenues into securing the future of energy in a way that is responsive and responsible to the planet and the environment. Will oil and gas be the only source that will meet the global energy requirements in the future? The answer is simply no.

When will renewable energy be as competitive as oil and gas is today?

Nobody really knows, but one thing is for sure: renewable energy is going to be as competitive as oil and gas at one point in the future. Demand on renewable energy is going to happen regardless.

Today it is available, but it's not available at a competitive price. In five years from today I think the technology will be there and it's going to have a market and will be demand driven.

Where is Masdar today from its seven per cent target — 1,500 megawatts?

There is the Shams One project in the Western Region and we have plans to deploy such technologies in the next ten years in a way that will help us achieve this objective. This is a target which we will do anything possible to achieve. Maybe the technology will not support us to get to this target by 2020, maybe we'll get there in 2022, but at least there's a real commitment and there's a real drive.

How do we make sure the technology's in place in order to get there?

That is exactly why Masdar is investing around the world today. That's why you find us tapping into established regulatory frameworks that support green power or renewable energy to tap into the expertise, into the knowledge and to bring in the best technologies into Abu Dhabi.

For us to go and inaugurate our first power plant outside the country [Torresol Energy project in Spain] with a technology that has never been deployed before is a very serious statement that Abu Dhabi is making. Today we are supporting the world to grow with clean power with innovative technologies that doesn't exist anywhere else.

Are you worried about having the right talent on board for this industry?

We realised from day one that this [industry] will require specialists and that's why we built the Masdar Institute [of Science and Technology] with the best technology university in the world — MIT. I'm happy to tell you that this past June we graduated our first batch of students and they are employed by the top companies.

How do you envision Masdar City?

People have really misunderstood the concept behind Masdar City. It was born at a time of real estate development, so people assumed that this is another real estate project. This has nothing to do with real estate. We are not a real estate player. We are a technology advancement initiative. We are trying to develop technology to provide an urban plan that will help secure better urban planning in the future in a way that is energy efficient and that has no impact on the environment. We are building the city of the future through a model that the world can learn from.