WWF backs UAE's push for greener cleaner future

Global conservation group WWF on Wednesday backed the oil-rich United Arab Emirates' plan to build the world's first zero-carbon emissions city and a futuristic solar-powered electricity plant.
"It's the only major oil-producing country that has decided to use some of its petrodollars while it still has them to invest in trying to create a future which could be sustainable," WWF International's One Living Planet director Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud told reporters in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi.
One of seven Gulf emirates that makes up the UAE, Abu Dhabi will next month begin construction of Masdar City, which developers say will house 50,000 people in a car-free environment that leaves no carbon footprint.
The city will be run entirely on renewable energy including solar power, exploiting the desert emirate's near constant supply of sunshine. Residents will also be able to move around in automated pods.
The pioneering project, which is part of the wider Masdar Initiative launched by the wealthy Abu Dhabi government in 2006, is being created in collaboration with the WWF. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan, pledged 15 billion dollars (10 billion euros) to the Masdar scheme at the opening of the three-day World Future Energy Summit in the capital on Monday.
"If all the forces that are assembled to try to make Masdar a success actually achieve what they're aiming for, then we will no longer have any excuse anywhere in the world not to do the right thing," Jeanrenaud said at a news conference on the summit's sidelines.
Project chief executive Sultan al-Jaber described Masdar - Arabic for "source" - as an entirely new economic sector fully dedicated to alternative energy, which will have a positive impact on the emirate's economy.
Masdar has announced plans to build a 350-million-dollar (240-million-euro) 100-megawatt solar plant, which will later be boosted to 500 megawatts to help ease peak-time pressure on the national grid.
It is also founding a university for future energy studies in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Abu Dhabi government is "providing a fantastic laboratory for the rest of the world to see what works and what doesn't work," Jeanrenaud said.