Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) 2022 brought the world together in January to discuss key issues in sustainable development. Clean technology (cleantech) and renewables were high on the agenda, and several exciting major deals in renewables and cleantech have been announced since.
Since I’ve been living here, it’s been fascinating to watch the UAE increasingly investing in renewables, including solar energy. The UAE has said it will invest $163bn in renewable energy by 2050 to achieve its net-zero target and will host Cop28 next year. It is also home to the largest solar park in the world, the Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (MBR) Solar Park, which has lowered the cost of solar power worldwide.
Projects such as these are key in establishing a cleantech industry locally. In particular, they play a role in facilitating a green hydrogen industry, as local renewable energy production is an essential component of ensuring clean sources of hydrogen.
With 90 per cent of the world’s hydrogen already coming from the global oil and gas industry, the UAE is not the only Gulf country eyeing up the potential of this market.
Carbon-zero city Neom in Saudi Arabia has a $5bn green hydrogen project in the pipeline and Oman wants its economy to be hydrogen-centric by 2040, with a $30bn project to produce 30GW of green and blue hydrogen. However, there is still a long road ahead in transitioning from blue hydrogen, a less environmentally friendly version, to green.
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