r its excesses, whether reaching toward the sky with the world’s tallest building or hard partying at its beach resorts and bars, Dubai has pulled off another record-breaking feat in the rolling dunes of its desert outskirts.
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, named for the ruling sheikh of Dubai, stretches across some 122 square kilometers (47 square miles) and represents a pledge of billions of dollars by this city-state to reach its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050. It’s a solar-paneled gamble in a city where casinos have yet to arrive — though it always seems to be betting big no matter the risk.
Rising rapidly from a creek-bound pearling village to a city associated with international glamor, Dubai has a long history of finding economic success amid the war-ravaged woes of the wider Middle East. Its ruling family likely views the upcoming United Nations COP28 climate talks as another such opportunity, though it carries the significant peril of becoming synonymous with a collapse in negotiations on limiting greenhouse emissions, or being overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
There’s a risk of reputational damage to the UAE if they fail to make any traction in the talks, particularly as they are a major oil producer, said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute who has long studied the region.
“There is also a risk that media and civil society coverage will focus critically on issues such as the UAE’s planned expansion of oil production capacity and depict the UAE as part of the part of the problem rather than the solution in terms of climate politics,” Ulrichsen added.
A flock of Arabian Oryx graze at a conservation area in front of the city skyline with the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) FROM MUD WALLS TO STEEL AND GLASS
Given the futuristic skyline of downtown Dubai — and how it gleams at night as one side of the Burj Khalifa lights up with a massive 770-meter (2,525-foot) LED display — it can be easy to forget that the city only received its first electrical generator in 1952. Before that, only candles and kerosene lamps lit the night along its eponymous Dubai Creek, where the village first grew.
Oil, first discovered offshore of Dubai in 1966, was never at the levels found in the sands and waters of Abu Dhabi, which would become the capital of the United Arab Emirates when the country formed in 1971. Dubai instead used the oil as seed money for massive infrastructure projects that seemed to strike at just the right moment as the UAE grew into a home for some 9.3 million people — only 10% of them Emirati and the rest foreign workers and their families.
The massive Jebel Ali Port, the U.S. Navy’s busiest port of call outside of the United States, is the world’s largest human-made harbor. It opened in 1979, just ahead of the Iran-Iraq War. Many ships damaged in that conflict ended up dry-docking at Jebel Ali for repairs, bringing money to the area.
That money also built the Dubai World Trade Center, which in 1979 stood out as the sole high-rise in a desert expansive. Today, it is dwarfed by all the towers that followed, fueled by a boom in the city’s real estate market that came with a 2002 decision to allow foreigners to own property.
That decision came after the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan started, and just before the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq. Dubai became a safe harbor for people with the means to flee the conflicts — as well as those needing to park tens of millions of dollars in suspected ill-gotten gains, once again leading to major investments. That has continued with Russia’s war on Ukraine, with Russian investors injecting cash into Dubai real estate projects.
While benefiting during crises, the Emirates — a federation of seven sheikhdoms — waged a war on Yemen that saw its soldiers and allies criticized for indiscriminate strikes and abuses on the battlefield. The UAE also has ties to leaders who are viewed with great skepticism or, at the worst, targeted with financial sanctions in the West. They include Libyan military commander Khalifa Hifter and Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces leader Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who wages a civil war in Sudan with forces the State Department says have committed “conflict-related sexual violence and killings.”
“One of the likely goals of UAE’s hosting of COP28 is reputation laundering,” said Jodi Vittori, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has written extensively on Dubai being a money-laundering haven. “By hosting COP28, UAE can move the media headlines from their support for the murderous RSF in Sudan and facilitation of Russian sanctions busting to their supposed support of green causes.”
In response to questions from The Associated Press about criticism over its foreign policy and other issues, the Emirati government said that “the UAE is deeply committed to human rights and building upon its steady progress in this field.”
“As the host of COP28, the UAE will welcome constructive dialogue and continue to work with international partners and stakeholders to deliver impactful results,” the statement said. “Climate change is a global problem that demands a collective effort, and this significant, momentous event will be a conference of action.”
GOING GREEN WHILE PUMPING MORE OIL
Generators have powered Dubai’s growth for decades, first by noisy diesel units and later through natural gas plants that still provide the bulk of Dubai’s power for its skyscrapers and crucial desalination plants to provide water. The gas comes from both Abu Dhabi and nearby Qatar.
But in recent years, Dubai has started to focus on renewable energy — despite a moment where it appeared it would launch a coal-fired power plant before switching it to use natural gas instead as its hosting of COP28 loomed.
The jewel of Dubai’s clean energy efforts is Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of the city’s downtown. There, solar panels stretch far into the distance, taking in the rays in a country that sees, on average, 10 hours of sunlight 350 days a year.
Towering over everything in the distance is the world’s tallest solar tower at some 260 meters (850 feet). It collects the light off of 70,000 reflectors to boil salt to run an electricity-generating turbine.
In the sparse surroundings of the desert, where camels freely roam, the glowing tower appears otherworldly over the dunes.
Dubai spent billions of dollars on the plant, which involves businesses from China, Saudi Arabia and other countries. By 2030, the city hopes to get 5 gigawatts of electricity from the plant, which could power some 1.3 million homes based on U.S. averages. These days, peak demand in the city-state is nearly 10 gigawatts, according to the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, its sole utility provider.
Overall, the Emirates says it plans to be carbon neutral by 2050. While not specifically outlining plans to achieve the goal, projects like the solar park and Abu Dhabi’s Barakah nuclear power plant, the first on the Arabian Peninsula, aim to make generating electricity a “green” endeavor.
But reporting on these projects is difficult in the Emirates, where speech remains tightly controlled. Authorities have not responded to multiple requests for AP journalists to visit the solar plant. Requests to see the country’s four-reactor nuclear power plant have been pending for years.
On top of all that, while the UAE pledges to zero out its own emissions, it’s also planning to ramp up oil production.
A member of OPEC, the UAE produces some 4 million barrels of crude oil a day. In the coming years, it aims to produce 5 million barrels a day, fuel that will be exported, used by other countries and contribute to climate change.
Those plans have sparked criticism by activists ahead of COP28, with most aimed particularly at the upcoming talks’ president-designate, the oil company chief Sultan al-Jaber.
“The UAE must end its greenwashing campaign, abandon its plans to dramatically increase state oil and gas production and rectify the profound conflict of interest created by” al-Jaber’s appointment, more than 200 groups said in a joint letter in September.