Dubai feels the heat in climate of change

The Sunday Times
December 14, 2008

Concern for the environment may slow growth
Holly Groom and Jonathan Leake

The United Nations climate negotiations, whose latest stage ended in Poland last week, are designed to prevent global temperatures rising above 2C by making it harder to keep emitting greenhouse gases. If they are to work, energy from fossil fuels must undergo a rise in price that will last decades, driving up the cost of aviation, air conditioning and all the other power-hungry conveniences to which we have become accustomed. Under such a regime, Dubai would become an impossibly luxurious destination for all but the wealthiest of tourists.
Dubai and countries like it are between a rock and a hard place. In the long term, controlling the global temperature rise is even more vital for their survival than for northern Europe’s. Scientists predict that if we fail to reverse the surge in greenhouse gas emissions, then the average global temperature could rise by up to 5C by 2100. Such a rise could see Dubai becoming waterless and virtually uninhabitable.
In the shorter term, however, slashing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions could also be a disaster for Dubai. This is a country that has staked its future on conspicuous consumption, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, its ruler, announcing plans to turn it into a “world capital for the 21st century”. So far he has drawn up plans to attract 15m tourists to the city-state each year and has created a network of tax incentives and property concessions to prompt the world’s mega-corporations to set up shop there. Last year, 800,000 British tourists visited the emirate. The Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing in Dubai wants that figure to double over the next three years.
What Sheikh Mohammed is depending on to maintain all this is energy from fossil fuels – lots of it, at very low prices – plus cheap air travel and nobody to count the carbon emissions. Until recently, that is just what he has had, but that is beginning to change.
“In the United Arab Emirates, climate change has never been much of a concern,” says Khaled Awad, director of property development for Masdar, the world’s first carbon-neutral city, currently under construction in the deserts of Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s neighbour in the UAE. “We are a long way behind Europe but people are finally beginning to see how the consequences of climate change could affect the Middle East. That is why, alongside the conventional construction boom, we are also seeing a growing interest in sustainable development.”
Nobody would argue that Dubai and its neighbours are anywhere near an environmental revolution, but Awad is convinced some green shoots are emerging. Perhaps the most important of these is Sheikh Mohammed’s own blueprint for development, the Dubai Strategic Plan 2015, in which he commits the city-state to sustainable development principles. Last year, he set up the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development. One of its main tasks is to oversee a green building directive under which all new buildings must conform to high environmental standards designed to cut water use and carbon emissions.
Business is beginning to respond. Earlier this year, entrepreneurs Wadah Abusin and Karim Aly set up Ecobility Energy Solutions in Dubai to promote investment in renewable energy, resource conservation and sustainable buildings. So far, they have built funds of £3.5 billion. “Ecobility was born out of our belief that there exists a critical need to reduce resource consumption as well as diversify our energy mix by tapping ignored energy sources,” Abusin says.
Increasingly, hotel chains are trying to incorporate sustainability into their business plans. Last May, Ecos Dubailand, an environmentally friendly budget brand, announced it would open 234 rooms in the new Dubailand complex. At the other end of the scale, AC Towers, five 100-floor supertowers (three in Dubai) will be clad almost entirely in solar panels. In theory, they should be able to generate more power than they consume – aided by a radical form of natural ventilation, using the sun’s energy to pull cool air down through the towers to reduce the need for air conditioning. Since air conditioning accounts for about 60% of Dubai’s energy use, this could mark a huge saving.
It all sounds impressive – but how serious is Dubai about this green agenda? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the deserts on which Dubai is built, whose sands are derived largely from seashells, coral and sediments. Dubai was once covered by sea.
Dubai’s average elevation is just 52ft above sea level, and much of the land is substantially lower. That’s a rather uncomfortable fact when scientists are predicting a rise in sea levels that could reach several feet over the next century.
Energy is another emerging problem. Dubai began exploiting its then-plentiful reserves in the 1960s and built its economy and lifestyle on the back of those revenues. Nowadays, annual aver-emissions per person in Dubai are a staggering 44 tonnes comparedage CO2 with 10-11 tonnes in Britain and more than 20 tonnes in America. Aviation is excluded from such figures, but if it were added, then the 8m tourists visiting the city-state each year would more than double Dubai’s average per capita emission level.
Now the wells are running dry and oil and natural gas account for less than 6% of the emirate’s revenue. Dubai still produces 240,000 barrels of oil a day, plus gas from offshore fields, but its reserves are expected to run out within two decades. Like Britain, it would benefit from finding sources of sustainable energy.
The Emirates Environmental Group was set up in 1991 to improve the environment through education and community involvement, and initially faced great resistance and scepticism. It has recently experienced a surge in membership and now has 2,500 individual and corporate members, including government agencies and educational institutions.
Such enthusiasm shows just how seriously green branding is being taken. Recently Dubai Properties, part of the state-owned conglomerate Dubai Holding, announced the emirate’s biggest ecological project yet, the £37 billion Mohammed bin Rashid Gardens.
This development, to be designed by architect Eric Kuhne of London-based CivicArts, will spread over 20,250 acres, including educational, financial and commercial facilities, iconic civic buildings and more than 90 miles of water-front and wetlands, all linked by a network of canals, pools and waterways.
The project’s core design feature is the “Grand Canal” that will wind its way from Dubai Creek and Business Bay into the Mohammed bin Rashid Gardens.
Kuhne says: “The parks, canals and ponds will create habitats and attract migratory birds, enhancing local and global biodiversity. Green spaces will release oxygen and capture carbon dioxide, improving local air quality and offsetting the city’s carbon footprint.”
Stuart Bond, head of research at the UK branch of the conservation charity WWF, welcomes the fact that Dubai is talking about environmental issues but worries that most of its efforts so far may be little more than a branding exercise. “They’ve made some moves towards green building design, but the benefits are going to be outweighed by the extra energy use and air travel involved. The whole conspicuous consumption lifestyle that is encouraged in Dubai can never be considered green. They’ve moved forwards – it’s good for Dubai – but there’s a long way to go.”
Dubai’s burgeoning golf industry perhaps epitomises this view, with the emirate announcing plans to establish itself as one of the world’s leading golfing destinations. The state already has seven championship golf courses but plans 11 more over the next three years, designed by leading golfers such as Tiger Woods. Each, however, will require nearly 90m gallons of water per acre each year, mostly extracted from the sea via desalination plants, one of the most carbon-intensive industries on the planet.
There are some countermeasures. The 18-hole championship course at the Four Seasons Golf Club in Dubai Festival City is one of several that make use of the salt-tolerant Paspalum grass, which enables partially desalinated water to be used for fairway maintenance. Ian Scott, the UK and Ireland director of Dubai’s tourism department, says sustainable golf courses are a key priority for the region: “The government is working closely with golf developers to ensure that indigenous flora and fauna are protected, as well as minimising water consumption at courses.”
Dubai’s Emirates airline also sees no contradiction between its plans to expand and the environmental consequences. Emirates was launched in 1985, flies to more than 100 destinations on six continents and plans to increase its fleet of 113 aircraft to more than 200 within the next five years.
However, each person ferried from London to Dubai and back generates . Andrew Parker, the air1.5 tonnes of CO2 line’s senior vice-president of public and environmental affairs, maintains that there is such a thing as “good growth” for air carriers. “You only get that through having new, state-of-the art aircraft,” he says. “Old, inefficient aircraft are more damaging to the environment. We are proud of being the biggest underwriter and buyer of the world’s newest and most eco-efficient aircraft.”
Such views – suggesting it is possible to reconcile surging economic growth with a green agenda – are going to be an increasing source of tension for countries like Dubai. If the world ever agrees on a global regime for cutting carbon emissions, how will Dubai respond? Will it risk becoming a pariah by defiantly churning out CO2 by the millions of tonnes? Or might it have to rewrite its vision of the future?