Is a zero-carbon, zero-waste, zero-car city on the horizon?

Masdar City: Vision of an ecological utopia

The Gulf state of Abu Dhabi, which sits upon eight percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, has caught the world’s imagination with its ambitious plans to create Masdar City, a carbon-neutral community.

With the backing of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince ruler, the Masdar Initiative commissioned a team of architects led by Norman Foster to develop the conceptual design of a new city that will house 50,000 people.

In what was until recently desert by the sea, Masdar City will provide employment in business and education, powered entirely by solar or other renewable energy sources. The Initiative is owned by the Abu Dhabi government through the Mubadala investment fund.

After an initial investment of USD 15 billion, the plan calls for Masdar to be self-supporting, in large part by selling the technology and services that it develops along the road to energy self-sufficiency.

Thin-film photovoltaics, spherical PV, beam-down solar towers and thermal storage for solar power are among the technologies expected to emerge as academia and industry bond in pursuit of a renewable energy market valued at USD 6-8 billion in the Emirate alone. Abu Dhabi has pledged that green energy will account for at least seven percent of the country’s total power generation by 2020.

“Masdar will be at the forefront of the research, development and deployment of solutions that will enable governments around the world, including our own, to meet the targets they are setting for the adoption of renewable energy,” says Dr. Al Jaber, CEO of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company.

Overall responsibility for the Masdar Initiative lies with Jabar, a University of Southern California, Los Angeles educated chemical engineer and MBA who also holds a doctorate in Business and Economics from Coventry University.

To attract entrepreneurs the world’s first zero-waste economy will offer a zero-percent corporate tax rate, supported by a legal structure that protects intellectual property while keeping paper work to a minimum.

Masdar will eliminate the need for cars by combining public transport with an urban planning scheme featuring narrow walkable streets. The city’s design will, according to Foster + Partners, give the world a model to combat low density sprawl, a major cause of energy inefficiency. In many environments buildings have been the responsibility of architects while urban planners have overseen infrastructure. The separation of these two areas of responsibility is now seen as incompatible with sustainable development.

“Masdar looks at the bigger picture, acknowledging that you cannot divorce the issue of energy from architecture and urban planning,” says a representative of Foster + Partners.

The firm sees the project as a blueprint for changes far beyond the Gulf. “Crucially, Masdar’s design springs from the recognition that to survive, we have to change, and with that change can come a better way of life,” she concludes.

Words: Davrell Tien