World’s First Zero-Carbon City
For those of you like me – with a sizeable Star Trek/Sci-Fi fetish – then this news is going to make your heart leap. The world’s first zero-carbon city will begin construction soon in the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi, starting in February.
Named Masdar City, the city will be able to house 50,000 people and will run entirely on renewable energy. This will include using solar power to its limits in the sun drenched desert. "This is a place that has no carbon footprint and will not hurt the planet in any way," Khaled Awad, director of the Masdar project’s property development unit of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC), told AFP. "At the same time the city will offer the highest quality of life possible for its residents.”
Completion is expected in 2013, and the city will take on a futuristic turn. Light-railway lines and a series of automated transporter pods will be the primary modes of transportation, with cars off-limits. "They’re like a horizontal elevator. You just say where you want to go, and it takes you there," Awad said of the pods.
The city will focus on low-rise buildings, in comparison to the spiraling towers of Abu Dhabi next door (the city). Solar panels adorn each of the roofs of these buildings, as seen in the model on display at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.
Taking advantage of the sea breezes, the city will also sport a perimeter wall which will help to protect it from the hot desert air, and dampen noise of the nearby Abu Dhabi airport.
The zero-carbon city is part of the larger Masdar Initiative, launched by the wealthy Abu Dhabi government, who sits upon 150 years worth of oil reserves, and untold gas reserves as well.
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan, has pledged 15 billion dollars to Masdar, at the opening of the three-day summit.
"Rest assured, the Masdar initiative and Abu Dhabi will continue to play its part" in developing alternative energy sources, Sheikh Mohammed told some 3,000 delegates gathered for the annual event. (Check this out for more info.)
The Masdar Initiative is definitely well funded, with a $350 million 100-megawatt solar plant to be constructed, later to be increased to 500 megawatts, as well as a university for future energy studies which will run in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
AP via PhysOrg - Abu Dhabi to build world’s first zero-carbon city
I love the idea of the personal transport pods! Rockin..
No carbon foot print. So what they building it from air and ideas?
1.i want more ideas like this….i appreciate who make this project successfully. 2.good bye to GREEN HOUSE EFFECT and etc…..
thanks to the UAE