Abu Dhabi: With the capital set to launch its Masdar initiative, the way people consume energy could drastically change as the city takes pioneering steps toward tackling climate change.
Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MI) is set to be at the core of Masdar City, the world's first zero carbon footprint city, as it gears up to start the first phase of its activities this month.
Masdar City will also be home to the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) headquarters located near the Presidential wing of Abu Dhabi Airport.
The initiative aims to establish the capital as a knowledge-based economy in key areas of technology and a leader in renewable energy. MI will not only be the Middle East's but the world's first not-for-profit research-driven university to focus solely on renewable and sustainable energy and advance technologies, offering postgraduate studies.
"[MI] will be at the heart of Masdar City which is a kind of living laboratory where we will be developing the concepts of renewable energy and sustainability," MI provost Dr John Perkins said.
According to Perkins, the institute's first five years of operation will cost an estimated $1.2 billion (Dh4.4 billion) - money well spent if it means saving the planet.
"An exciting area of opportunity is solar energy, because the sun is so abundant here in the region," he said.
Established in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), students and faculty will live and work in the city and be shuttled around in pods that look like something out of a science fiction film.
MI aims to foster a culture of research in the region to help advance the energy sector. Its activities will focus on the integration of education and research which spans across the scopes of technology, policy and systems.
"We are looking at it from a comprehensive point of view," Dr Marwan Khraisheh, Dean of Engineering at MI, said.
He went on to say the core part of the institute's success is based on the fact that its faculty is aware of the importance of the integration of its technology into all aspects of society.
So will it change the way the country is run? "It has to," he said.
"We can't just create a new device or technology that will allow us to use solar energy effectively."
Khraisheh explained the existing system and grid, made up of people living in houses, will have to be studied to accommodate new developments. "We have to ask how this fits into the existing system," he said.
"We can't just develop a technology and say okay here is a sustainable city, come and live in it," Khraisheh said.
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