What happens when the oil and gas dwindle in the Persian Gulf? The answer is called, at best, Masdar City in the UAE. A stone’s throw from the airport in Abu Dhabi built an experimental city of 40,000 inhabitants, all dependent on the sun as an energy source.
A five-storey wind tower catches the cooler air headed down towards a square, all enhanced with computer technology for maximum impact. It can therefore be up to ten degrees cooler inside the center compared to the heat outside Masdar City.
Iman Ustadi at Masdar Institute. Where conducted 300 research projects in areas such as energy, microsystems, water and environment.
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We leave the petrol scented car garage behind and travels quietly in the electric car, designed by the Italian Zagato who also designed cars for Ferrari, Bentley and Aston Martin.
Now it’s no race car that will take us the 800 meter magnetic loop from the garage to the entrance to the University, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, but 40 km / h feels all right. The exhaust-free and silent.
PRT car, Personal Rapid Transit, was supposed to stand for all communication in the eco-city project in the desert started in 2007. But during the economic crisis of 2008-2009 forced to revise the overly ambitious plans. In addition to the fleet was reduced radically abandoned the idea of ??building the entire Masdar City on piers to avoid traffic up in the city itself. Now scheduled traffic with electric minibuses between the prospective neighborhoods. A small fleet of conventional electric vehicles already exists.
Is Masdar City a bold state-funded pilot projects? Energy of the future society? The world’s first carbon-neutral city? Or just lavish showroom for oil sheiks? Opinions differ.
Around 2025, the City shall be completed and then make way for the 40,000 residents as well as a workplace for 50,000 people. Unlike Abu Dhabi and neighboring Dubai, built no monsters scrapers in steel and glass. The houses are built in local, ocher colored sandstone, in boldly shaped aluminum or demands certified wood.
architecture, designed by world renowned Foster + Partners, is to shut out the sun by including shaded windows, dense pedestrian areas and patios, shady balconies and tinkling fountains that bestows coolness in the desert heat. Simply an ancient building tradition coupled with modern technology.
Today’s city center is growing in all directions in the desert. Latest addition is German Siemens headquarters for the Middle East and a few hundred meters from the center grows IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency’s future headquarters, front. Several international companies and organizations are queuing up to set up in the desert town, which is also an attractive economic free zone.
The idea behind the initiative in Abu Dhabi is to build a city that is powered by alternative energy sources like solar but also wind power and by combustion of waste and with such a closed loop as possible. Greatly reduced water consumption is high priority.
At the center is already the university Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Mist, who began a close collaboration with considerably name proficient MIT in the U.S.. Mist started in 2009. Four years later, there are 417 master students and doctoral students including 162 from Emirates. 55 percent of local students are women. The research is obviously focused on sustainable urban development.
– When I first came here I wondered what it was meaningful for us to conserve energy in abundance, says Iman Ustadi as the day was finished with his master’s degree in engineering.
years at Masdar Institute made her think about.
– Today we are 96 percent dependent on natural gas for our production of electricity and gas, we have to import from Qatar. 95 percent of our drinking water comes from desalination plants that require a tremendous amount of energy, says Iman Ustadi.
American Mike Tiner from the oil state of Texas bazaar in the basement of the department’s research on nanoparticles.
– We are here to contribute to sustainable development. The UAE has one of the highest consumptions of water and energy. We can change that by convincing people that it is possible without having to give up their comforts. We want to ignite a flame of technological thinking among people here and show students the way. Among the students there is potential for change, says Mike Tiner who says that money is not the problem in Abu Dhabi.
– What we can not get back is time. So every penny invested to save time is a good investment.
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