Masdar City: Testing Times

The plant is run by Abu Dhabi-based Environmena, an Abu Dhabi-based company, and has been online since June 2009. It features a 50:50 mix of 87,777 po
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Masdar City has revised its timeline for the completion of its eco-city on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. Utilities Middle East explored the site in October, gaining insight into the preparations for a sustainable future.

There are few ecological projects that match the ambition of Masdar City, the carbon-neutral development emerging from the desert sands of Abu Dhabi, and skeptics felt vindicated by the announcement earlier this year that parent company Masdar and architect firm Foster & Partners were reconsidering the master plan for the city..

While the new master plan, revealed in October, does indeed allow for a more gradualist approach, it also does little to contradict Masdar CEO Sultan Al Jaber’s claim that “the vision remains the same.”

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Completion of Phase I, the development of one million square metres, has been pushed back by two years to 2015. The final build out of the entire six square kilometre complex is now expected between 2020 and 2025.

Masdar top brass explain this new timeline with the need to adjust to market demand. “We’re not going to build ahead of the market, we’re going to build to market demand,” says Alan Frost, Masdar’s director.

The Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) system, a fleet of remote-controlled, electric-powered pods, will not be the sole means of transport in the future city, and the roll out of the programme will depend on the speed of the city’s growth.

In addition, Masdar has abandoned the idea of generating all the electricity needed for the city within its confines, and will procure power from external renewable sources, which will nevertheless be owned by the cleantech company.

“In the short term, we will rely more on external plants, which will also be built by Masdar, such as Shams I,” says Afshin Afshari, manager of the Energy Management Department at Masdar City, referring to the 100MW concentrated solar power (CSP) plant that the Mubadala-owned company is constructing with Total and Abengoa. Shams I was announced in July, and will be operational by the second half of 2012.

Nevertheless, the company has not lowered its green targets, which is to create a carbon neutral, zero-waste city, Al Jaber said at press conference announcing the Shams I project.

“Masdar City is an important component of Masdar. While the review is very much required, the vision remains the same, and we won’t scale back or scale down.”

“The aspiration and the vision hasn’t changed, but it’s going to take us some time to get to where we want to get to. We’ve learned a lot along the way, we’ve learned that we were very bold in our aspirations, but we’re not giving up on the vision,” Frost said after the new master plan had been made public.

But this vision might not be achievable in the short term, and thus for Phase I of the city. “We may not be able to achieve all the objectives in the first phase of the city, although we will probably achieve operational carbon neutrality considering onsite and offsite renewable energy,” says Afshari.