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建议 An Oil Giant's Green Dream
An Oil Giant's Green Dream
Monday, Jan. 21, 2008By BRYAN WALSH/ABU DHABI
Monday, Jan. 21, 2008General Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, speaks at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Monday, Jan. 21, 2008.CHARLES CROWELL / BLOOMBERG / LANDOVIf you filled your tank with gasoline today, or warmed your home with natural gas, there's a decent chance you sent some money to Abu Dhabi. The capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is blessed with fossil fuels, including the fourth-biggest reserves of oil in the world. Selling that petroleum at record prices has helped Abu Dhabi achieve the highest per-capita GDP in the world — wealth that's visible in every luxury hotel rising from the desert or spotless Mercedes prowling the streets. All those fossil fuels also mean that Abu Dhabi citizens have among the biggest carbon footprints in the world, and the emirate's exports are a big, if indirect, contribution to global climate change.
So it might come as a surprise to learn that Abu Dhabi is this week hosting the world's first Future Energy Summit, a three-day gathering of more than 4,000 entrepreneurs, analysts and officials from the alternative energy world, including heavyweights like green designer William McDonough and Icelandic President Olafur Grimsson. (Also present was Prince Charles, who gave a speech via hologram.)
But if the idea of an Arab oil power like Abu Dhabi supporting fossil fuel alternatives sounds a bit like a heroin dealer trying to sell methadone, think again. Virtually alone among its Persian Gulf neighbors, Abu Dhabi has embarked on a serious program in alternative energy research, backed with oil money. In 2006 it launched the Masdar Initiative (the name means "source" in Arabic), a multi-pronged scheme that includes a collaborative research institute with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, support for solar and other kinds of green power within the city itself and a clean energy investment fund worth $250 million. The idea behind Masdar — which organized the Future Energy Summit — is a radical one: prepare Abu Dhabi and the UAE to move beyond fossil fuels. "The UAE wants to be more than just an oil-producing country," says Marc Stuart, the co-founder of the carbon-trading firm EcoSecurities.
That will take money, but thanks to record oil prices, money is one thing Abu Dhabi does not lack. At the summit's opening conference, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahaya announced that the government would channel an additional $15 billion to the Masdar Initiative. Although the money comes with no time frame, and officials wouldn't say exactly where the funding will go, Masdar also announced that it would join Rio Tinto and British Petroleum to build the world's first hydrogen power plant, a 500-megawatt operation that would cost at least $2 billion.
These are bold plans — especially for a city that had little green experience until recently — but for Abu Dhabi, investing in alternative power is a way to remain a world energy center in the event that concerns over climate change cut into the demand for fossil fuels. "We have a long tradition as a global energy leader and we have the financial resources to develop new fields of energy," said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Masdar's CEO. "Leadership entails responsibility."
Even more ambitious is Masdar's plan to build a completely new city in the desert that will produce no carbon and no net waste, chiefly powered by solar energy. Designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster, a veteran in sustainability, Masdar City will eventually house 50,000 residents and more than 1,000 businesses, most of them in alternative power and sustainability. Groundbreaking is set for Feb. 9. Today the space that will be Masdar City, near the international airport, is still empty sand — save for 25 different solar panels being run in an 18-month experiment to see which kind of photovoltaic technology works best in Abu Dhabi's punishing environment. (Extreme heat and dust — common in the desert — can reduce the efficiency of many solar panels.) For Gulf nations like the UAE, blessed with no shortage of sunlight, solar power could potentially be the oil of the future. "I think there is great, great potential here," says project manager Sameer Abu Zaid, as he toured the testing facility, the sound of the call to evening prayers echoing over the desert. "This is very exciting for us."
Still, standing by Sameer's solar panels, Masdar City remains an imaginary place. For all the ambitious announcements and bold pledges made at the Future Energy Summit, too much is yet to come, while the climate crisis bears down on us with greater urgency every day. Walking through the summit's exhibition hall, where companies from Spain to the U.S. to Japan hawk wind turbines and eco-cars and thin-film solar, a technologically-driven optimism battles with a fear that all humankind's best ideas, on display here, aren't moving fast enough to save us.
As the summit's hosts were only too eager to emphasize, when they weren't announcing a new hydrogen plant, almost every projection of energy use over the next several decades says that fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. Abu Dhabi will develop hundreds of megawatts of clean solar power, but it will export far more polluting power in oil — because the world will need it and there is nothing else feasible to replace it. "The World Future Energy Summit is nothing less than the future of the world itself," said Jonathan Porritt, founder of the UK sustainability organization Forum for the Future, one of the few speakers at the conference to call for a rapid reduction in fossil fuels. Green dreams are nice, but we need a green reality soon.
So it might come as a surprise to learn that Abu Dhabi is this week hosting the world's first Future Energy Summit, a three-day gathering of more than 4,000 entrepreneurs, analysts and officials from the alternative energy world, including heavyweights like green designer William McDonough and Icelandic President Olafur Grimsson. (Also present was Prince Charles, who gave a speech via hologram.)
But if the idea of an Arab oil power like Abu Dhabi supporting fossil fuel alternatives sounds a bit like a heroin dealer trying to sell methadone, think again. Virtually alone among its Persian Gulf neighbors, Abu Dhabi has embarked on a serious program in alternative energy research, backed with oil money. In 2006 it launched the Masdar Initiative (the name means "source" in Arabic), a multi-pronged scheme that includes a collaborative research institute with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, support for solar and other kinds of green power within the city itself and a clean energy investment fund worth $250 million. The idea behind Masdar — which organized the Future Energy Summit — is a radical one: prepare Abu Dhabi and the UAE to move beyond fossil fuels. "The UAE wants to be more than just an oil-producing country," says Marc Stuart, the co-founder of the carbon-trading firm EcoSecurities.
That will take money, but thanks to record oil prices, money is one thing Abu Dhabi does not lack. At the summit's opening conference, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahaya announced that the government would channel an additional $15 billion to the Masdar Initiative. Although the money comes with no time frame, and officials wouldn't say exactly where the funding will go, Masdar also announced that it would join Rio Tinto and British Petroleum to build the world's first hydrogen power plant, a 500-megawatt operation that would cost at least $2 billion.
These are bold plans — especially for a city that had little green experience until recently — but for Abu Dhabi, investing in alternative power is a way to remain a world energy center in the event that concerns over climate change cut into the demand for fossil fuels. "We have a long tradition as a global energy leader and we have the financial resources to develop new fields of energy," said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Masdar's CEO. "Leadership entails responsibility."
Even more ambitious is Masdar's plan to build a completely new city in the desert that will produce no carbon and no net waste, chiefly powered by solar energy. Designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster, a veteran in sustainability, Masdar City will eventually house 50,000 residents and more than 1,000 businesses, most of them in alternative power and sustainability. Groundbreaking is set for Feb. 9. Today the space that will be Masdar City, near the international airport, is still empty sand — save for 25 different solar panels being run in an 18-month experiment to see which kind of photovoltaic technology works best in Abu Dhabi's punishing environment. (Extreme heat and dust — common in the desert — can reduce the efficiency of many solar panels.) For Gulf nations like the UAE, blessed with no shortage of sunlight, solar power could potentially be the oil of the future. "I think there is great, great potential here," says project manager Sameer Abu Zaid, as he toured the testing facility, the sound of the call to evening prayers echoing over the desert. "This is very exciting for us."
Still, standing by Sameer's solar panels, Masdar City remains an imaginary place. For all the ambitious announcements and bold pledges made at the Future Energy Summit, too much is yet to come, while the climate crisis bears down on us with greater urgency every day. Walking through the summit's exhibition hall, where companies from Spain to the U.S. to Japan hawk wind turbines and eco-cars and thin-film solar, a technologically-driven optimism battles with a fear that all humankind's best ideas, on display here, aren't moving fast enough to save us.
As the summit's hosts were only too eager to emphasize, when they weren't announcing a new hydrogen plant, almost every projection of energy use over the next several decades says that fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. Abu Dhabi will develop hundreds of megawatts of clean solar power, but it will export far more polluting power in oil — because the world will need it and there is nothing else feasible to replace it. "The World Future Energy Summit is nothing less than the future of the world itself," said Jonathan Porritt, founder of the UK sustainability organization Forum for the Future, one of the few speakers at the conference to call for a rapid reduction in fossil fuels. Green dreams are nice, but we need a green reality soon.
石油大亨的绿色梦想
当你为你的汽车加油或者当你用天然气在屋里取暖时，你可能正在为阿布扎比（Abu Dhabi）赚钱。 阿联酋（United Arab Emirates）首都阿布扎比享有得天独厚的化石燃料资源，拥有全球第四大石油储备。以创记录的价格出售石油使得阿布扎比成为世界上人均GDP最高的城市。在阿布扎比，到处可见财富的身影──矗立在沙漠里的奢华酒店，还有驰骋在大街的梅赛德斯汽车。当然拥有丰富的化石燃料资源也意味着阿布扎比公民可以踩出世界上含碳最多的脚印。阿联酋的石油出口间接地对全球气候变化作出了巨大“贡献”。
所以当获悉本周阿布扎比主办了第一次世界未来能源峰会(World Future Energy Summit)，你一定会感到十分吃惊。此次峰会为期三天，聚集了来自可替代能源领域的4000多名企业家、分析家和官员，其中包括绿色设计师 William McDonough 和 冰岛总统格里姆松（Olafur Grimsson）。英国查尔斯王子也通过全息影像发表了讲话。
像阿布扎比这样的阿拉伯石油大亨支持可替代化石燃料，听起来有点类似于海洛因贩子试图出售美沙酮。如果你有这样的想法，那请你再思考一下。实际上，阿布扎比已经开始利用石油赚来的钱对可替代能源发展进行认真的研究。并且阿布扎比是在其波斯湾的领国中唯一一个。2006年，阿布扎比启动了Masdar Initiative （阿拉伯语意为“源”）计划。这个多管齐下的计划包括一个与麻省理工学院合作的研究学院。此计划支持太阳能和其它绿色能源在其城市内的应用，以及价值2.5亿美元的清洁能源投资基金。Masdar组织召开了未来能源峰会的，并且Masdar背后的想法是非常彻底的：使阿布扎比和阿联酋超越化石能源的局限。Marc Stuart （碳贸易公司EcoSecurities 的合伙创办人）说：“阿联酋希望自己不仅仅是一个产油国。”
这样做当然需要很多钱，但阿布扎比并不缺钱，这得感谢创纪录的油价。在峰会开幕会议上，阿布扎比王储 Sheikh Mohammad 宣布政府会引入另外的150亿美元资助Masdar Initiative。虽然何时这些钱会到帐，有并没有具体的时间表，政府官员不会确切地说明基金将会用在何处，Mastdar也宣布它会加入力拓矿业公司（Rio Tinto）和英国石油公司（British Petroleum，与它们一起去建设世界上第一个氢能发电厂 （50万千瓦的运作将会耗资至少20亿美元）。
这样的计划是非常大胆的，特别是对一个直到最近才有一点绿色环保经历的城市来来说。但是对阿布扎比而言， 一旦人们对气候变化的担忧削弱了对化石能源的需求，投资可替代能源是维持自身世界能源中心地位的有效途径。“我们具有担当全球能源领导者的悠久传统，并且我们有财力去开发能源新领域，” Masdar的CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber 说，“领导意味着责任”。
更具雄心的是：Masdar计划在沙漠里建造一座全新的城市。这座城市排放无碳和循环废物（no carbon and no net waste），太阳能是主要的能源供给形式。由英国建筑师、资深的可持续专家Lord Norman Foster设计的Masdar城将最终容纳5万名居民和1千多家企业，它们中的大多数涉及可替代和可再生能源领域。开拓性进展定于2月9日进行。Masdar城将选址于临近国际机场附近，那里至今仍是一片空地。在那里，25块不同类型的太阳能电池板将运行18个月，以此来测试哪种光电技术最适合阿布扎比受污染的环境。（沙漠地区普遍存在的极高气温和大量沙尘会削弱多种太阳能电池板的能效。）对于像阿联酋这样的海湾国家来说，天赐充足的阳光，太阳能发电可能成为未来的“石油”。项目经历 Sameer Abu Zaid在参观了测试设备时说：“我认为存在非常巨大的潜能。”那时， 号召祈祷声音响彻彻整个沙漠。“这太令我们兴奋了。”
但是，仅依靠Sameer的太阳能电池板，Masdar城依旧是一个幻想的地方。所有在未来能源峰会上作出的雄心勃勃的宣言和大胆的承诺，很多都还未见踪影。然而气候危机正步步逼近。走过峰会展示会大厅，可以看到各种黑鹰风力涡轮发动机、生态汽车和薄膜太阳能，从西班牙制造的到美国、日本制造的。由技术驱动的乐观主义在与恐惧搏斗着，全人类的杰出想法在这里展示着。然而人们却没有加快推进它们，来拯救我们面临的危机。
当峰会东道主还未宣布新氢能发电厂时，他们就迫切地强调，因为每个人都预言化石能源在未来的几十年后将不被使用。阿布扎比将会发展数百兆瓦的清洁太阳能发电，但是它将会出口更多造成污染的原油，因为全世界都需要无法取代的原油。“世界未来能源峰会就是为了世界自己的未来，”英国未来可持续发展组织论坛（ UK sustainability organization Forum for the Future）的创始人 Jonathan Porritt说。 绿色梦想很美好，但我们更需要绿色现实赶快到来。
