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Masdar City – clarion call of progess, or test-tube city? Giant leap for mankind, or petri dish with a giant budget?
Jamie Stewart meets director of property development Khaled Awad, and goes on site the world’s first zero-cabon, zero-waste city.
A short drive from the current centre of Abu Dhabi city, on the way to Abu Dhabi International Airport, lies what was until recently a 6.5km2 patch of relatively non-descript desert.
In February 2008, however, a remarkable transformation began. The Masdar Initiative, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company wholly owned by the Mubadala Development Company, broke ground on Masdar City. The project will become home to 50,000 residents, 1500 businesses, and will create 70,000 jobs.
In a land driven by petrochemical dollars ploughed into construction, mega projects are no rarity. Last year the pre-credit crunch GCC construction industry was valued in excess of US $2 trillion (AED7.34 trillion) by investment bank Al Mal Capital. A city of 50,000 may not therefore sound as remarkable as it would elsewhere.
Until you reach the point of Masdar City – the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste city.
The $22 billion Masdar City is being developed in seven phases, and is slated for a 2016 completion date. Electricity will be generated by photovoltaic (PV) panels and cooling will be provided by concentrated solar power.
Water will be provided by a solar-powered water desalination plant, while landscaping in the city and crops grown outside of the city will be irrigated with grey water and treated wastewater produced by the city’s water treatment plant.
Cars will be banned within the city. Masdar is exploring a number of models, but one in particular that looks set to be adopted, is a personal rapid transit system, whereby “pods” that accommodate four to six people run on magnets embedded in the ground. All the user needs do is climb in, tell the pod where to go, and the fully automated, centrally controlled system will do the rest.
Making an example
From the planning stage, Masdar City offered an opportunity unlike any other. It was the right time, and the right place. The world was in need of an example, and Abu Dhabi had the resources to begin pulling it off.
“The opportunity to plan from scratch was very important,” says Masdar director of property development Khaled Awad. “Fifty years ago we had beautiful cities in which people lived and were very happy. They were not emitting so much carbon for a reason.
“When we followed technology to the extreme and started thinking it would make things more accessible, we became more abusive. It was here that we forgot what the role of technology is.”
In order to begin the process of reigning in technology, and re-ordering the way that it is applied at the planning stages of a city, British architect Foster and Partners was hired to work on the masterplan.
Awad is the man charged with overseeing the development of Masdar City. The city is one of numerous projects being undertaken by the Masdar Initiative, though it remains Masdar’s flagship project. It is Masdar’s example to the world of how to walk the walk – not just talk the talk.
On the topic of Masdar City, Awad is something of an unsung hero to date. His colleague, Masdar CEO Sultan Al Jaber, has been the public face of the Masdar Initiative and its many facets, and was recently heralded among the most powerful men in the global green arena.
But for Awad, the challenge of Masdar City holds a similarly daunting level of component parts. “At the same time we are the utility company, the water company, the transportation company and the property development company,” he says.
“Integrating all of these things will be a big challenge until the end. This is where all our knowledge as a unique developer stems from. We are not like any other developer in town. We are unique because of the integrated knowledge we are building.”
MIST
Talking of knowledge, US-based CH2M Hill is the main contractor on site, and the city is on course to welcome its first residents in September – the first intake of students at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (Mist). The institute will occupy 6% of the area of Masdar City. Dean of engineering and acting provost Marwan Khraisheh is a man with an ambitious vision.
“We are trying to build one of the world’s premier research driven universities,” he says. “It will be the first of its kind, focusing on renewable energy, advanced energy and sustainable technologies.”
Mist will offer MSc courses in Mechanical Engineering; Material Science and Engineering; Water Environment; Information Technology; and Engineering Systems and Management, and will add five more programmes by the end of 2010, including an MSc in Civil Engineering with a focus on sustainable construction. The setting provides a unique stage on which to study.
“We view the city as our open lab. Our living laboratory,” Khraisheh says. “We will develop policies or technologies, which we will then have a chance to implement and test within the city. We already have a number of faculties working closely on development of the city across a number of projects.
“Masdar City will be developed in phases, and the institute will grow. It is a golden opportunity for the faculty,” he says.
Power up
Masdar is currently carrying out one of the largest ever field studies of solar panel technology. The PV competition is monitoring how over 35 different technologies endure the effects of the Middle East’s heat, humidity and sand.
Systems are ranked for performance, durability and cost efficiency in a series of tests over an 18-month period. The test is being conducted to help Masdar determine which technology to use to provide the 240MW of energy for Masdar City – a contract potentially worth billions. The results will be announced later this year.
Abu Dhabi firm Enviromena is currently constructing a 10MW solar plant within Masdar City, which will be the largest grid-connected PV generation plant in the Mena region when it goes live in March. It will power the first three years of the city’s construction, as well as Mist, and the city’s admin facilities.
“Solar will account for around 220MW of the 240MW required,” Awad explains. “210MW will be generated through panels which will go on the roofs of the buildings. Each building will have enough PV cells on its roof to power itself – plus or minus.”
The remaining 20MW will be generated through a waste-to-energy system, the contract for which is currently being negotiated.
The waste-to-energy concept will also facilitate the city’s “zero-waste” goal. Zero-waste means that all waste is recycled, composted, fertilised, or reused for energy. No waste goes to landfill. A waste of things to come? The world hopes so.
Criticism
Masdar has been as true to its claims as can be expected, though it is inevitable that, when trying to achieve something with the magnitude and sensitivity of a zero-carbon city, every move you make will be scrutinised, and rightly so.
For this reason, all carbon emissions during the construction of Masdar City are being logged, Awad says, and will be offset either via excess energy sent back to the grid, or the city’s landscape strategy, which includes green areas to help offset the emissions.
Sustainable building practices have also been followed, and all construction waste, Awad, assures us, has been recycled.
Looking at the bigger economic picture, Masdar City has come in for criticism from some quarters claiming that $22 billion is a lot of money to spend on a single showpiece city, the likes of which may never be built again. It has been suggested that such an investment would be better targeted by testing green innovations within established cities, as opposed to those that do not exist anywhere else.
“Does the world need Masdar City?” Awad asks. “If not, then we may not be aware of what is happening around us; of how cities over the last 50 years have been abusing technology.
“If we can succeed in achieving our vision, then any city in the world, when it comes to future development, should be asking itself, “Why do we not build a Masdar City?””
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair responded to the same point before delivering his speech at the close of the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi in January.
“The showcase is a great idea. It shows that it can be done,” Blair said. “The purpose of such a city is to lead by example.
“It’s a very creative, imaginative idea, and if they can do such a thing, and do it here in one of the oil capitals of the world, that would be of tremendous persuasive power.”
The climate crisis was labelled “worse than the economic crisis” by German state secretary Matthias Machnig on day one of the WFES. “We can’t afford to postpone action on climate change, because the consequences will be greater than those of the economic crisis,” he said.
Call it the world’s biggest petri dish, a $22 billion test-tube city, or a shining example to the world. It is at times of crisis that the world seeks leadership.
If not too busy stitching together renewable energy generation, solar powered water desalination plants, a back-to-the-future style personal rapid transit system, and billions of dollars worth of property development, Khaled Awad may be the closest thing the GCC has to a new-age carbon hero.