The UAE is abuzz with clean energy activity. Abu Dhabi and Dubai are in the process of tendering a trio of giant renewables projects, promising to extend the emirates’ regional lead in decarbonising electricity supply.

Europe’s energy crisis is also spurring the government’s efforts to map out a long-term hydrogen strategy, while state oil company Adnoc delivered its first test cargo of green ammonia to Germany in late October.

The flurry of activity comes as Abu Dhabi prepares to host next year’s Cop climate talks.

The UAE and its constituent emirates have set an array of decarbonisation-related targets—supplemented since October 2021 by the pledge to reach net zero by 2050. The federal government aims for renewables to account for 44pc of energy consumption by the same year and for 30pc of electricity supply by the end of this decade.

30pc – 2030 target for renewables’ share of power supply

Abu Dhabi’s key corporate emitters—chiefly Adnoc and state-owned power generator Taqa—also have internal carbon-reduction goals.

Dubai aims to meet a quarter of its energy requirements from carbon-free sources by 2030 and 100pc by mid-century.

The emirate took the lead in the renewables buildout last decade, motivated less by a environmentalism than by the financial burden created by dependence on imported gas. By late August, state-owned Dubai Electricity and Water Authority had 1.6 GW onstream at the Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum solar park, with another 1.2GW under construction.

The utility kicked off the tendering process for the sixth phase in September, with expressions of interest due in November to develop a 900MW PV facility at the site.

Abu Dhabi has caught up swiftly over the past five years—driven initially by pressures on its own gas supplies and the security risk of depending on imports from Qatar, its relations with which had grown increasingly tense.

Large-scale solar

Commissioning of the 2GW Al-Dhafra PV plant, due next year, will add to the 1.18GW Sweihan PV facility, which opened in 2019, and the 100MW Shams concentrated solar powerr/gas hybrid project completed in 2012, taking installed solar capacity to just under 3.3GW and leapfrogging Dubai.

In September, Abu Dhabi-headquartered Emirates Water & Electricity Company (Ewec) released a 19-strong developer shortlist for a 1.5GW PV facility at Abjan. The request for proposals is expected by year-end.

Meanwhile, a client team of Ewec and waste management firm Tadweer is due to receive bids in December to develop the emirate’s first utility-scale waste-to-energy (WTE) plant—designed to process 900,000t/yr of solid municipal waste from a landfill near Al-Dhafra into c.90MW of clean power. Again, Dubai was quicker off the blocks in announcing in mid-September that its landmark WTE project—billed as the largest in the world at 1.9m t/yr and 215MW—was 85pc complete, with partial startup due next year and completion in 2024.

Sharjah, which has the headline environmental goal of becoming the Middle East’s first ‘zero-waste city’ by 2030, beat both the main emirates by inaugurating its 300,000t/yr, 30MW WTE facility in May.

Hydrogen for Europe

The UAE’s fast-evolving hydrogen plans are being shaped by internal and external drivers, with the latter increasingly to the fore. Plans emerging over the past two years to move into large-scale hydrogen production are in part a response to the need to develop alternative export revenue streams to replace future declines in earnings from oil sales.

The government says it aims to capture 25pc of the global low-carbon hydrogen market by 2030—a rather improbable ambition given the growing number of countries now looking to enter the industry. A ‘hydrogen alliance’ of local stakeholders was created in early 2021 to coordinate the sector’s early development, followed by the launch of three giant hydrogen and ammonia production projects, one blue and two green, later that year.

However, external events over the past six months have pushed Abu Dhabi—the only emirate with the gas and the spare land to produce either variety of the fuel at scale—to accelerate and reshape its plans in response to the European race to replace Russian gas imports.

25pc – Targeted share of global hydrogen market by 2030

In September, Germany’s energy ministry awarded a contract to a domestic team of services firm GHD and research company Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to help prepare a national hydrogen development strategy.

The two countries formed the Emirati-German Energy Partnership in 2017, and Kassel-based Wintershall acquired a stake in Abu Dhabi’s giant Ghasha ultra-sour gas concession the following year, but the energy collaboration has deepened since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

A state visit by German chancellor Olaf Scholz in September, three weeks after Russia’s Gazprom indefinitely halted deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, resulted in a new agreement—the Energy Security and Industry Accelerator—to speed-up projects of common interest in areas including hydrogen.

Earlier that month, Adnoc, which is leading the emirate’s blue hydrogen development, delivered a 13t test cargo of blue ammonia to German metals company Aurubis. The shipment was its first to Europe, with initial efforts to nurture a supply chain focusing on Asia, specifically Japan and South Korea—traditionally the bedrock of demand for the emirate’s energy exports.

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Author: Clare Dunkley