At the opening of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) 2025, Sultan Al Jaber said that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) embodied the nexus of next as it transitioned from a poor desert enclave to a global leader in renewable energy. File photo: AFP
At the opening of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) 2025, Sultan Al Jaber said that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) embodied the nexus of next as it transitioned from a poor desert enclave to a global leader in renewable energy.
“As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century we find ourselves at a pivotal moment. We are standing at the edge of two worlds - the world as we know it, and the world as it could be. This is a moment that I like to call ‘the nexus of next’.”
He said three powerful forces were converging to shape our future in ways in previously unimaginable ways.
The first force was the rise of emerging markets, which now drive more than half of the world’s prosperity with for example the BRICS Plus accounting for a larger share of the world’s economic activity, area and population than the developed world’s G7 club.
The second force was the fundamental transformation of the global energy systems with its push for renewables that is reshaping the energy mix and creating entirely new industries.
The third and most recent force was the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that was changing the pace of change itself which has resulted in a step change in energy demand.
“Before AI took off, power demand was already on track to grow from 9 000 Gigawatt (GW) to over 15 000 GW by 2035. But with apps like ChatGPT growing by half a billion visits every month, and using ten times as much energy as a single Google search, demand by 2050 could reach as high as 35 000 GW. We are talking about an increase of over 250%. And I am sure you would all agree that no single source of energy can meet this unprecedented demand,” he said.
He said that the world needed a diversity of energy options, and policies and regulations that prematurely reduce those options are just self-defeating.
“Simply put, we need an ‘and-and’ approach. That’s the thinking behind Abu Dhabi’s newest addition to its diversified energy portfolio, XRG,” he announced.
Abu Dhabi’s XRG will help respond to emerging energy needs across the entire value chain, including gas, chemicals, low carbon fuels and energy infrastructure.
“In many ways the UAE embodies the nexus of next. Our nation has always been uniquely positioned at the intersection of tradition and transformation. And our founding father, Sheikh Zayed, made the impossible not just possible, but inevitable. He turned arid sand into fertile land. And he laid the foundations that turned the UAE into the progressive energy leader it is today,” he added.
One of the problems of renewable energy was its intermittent power production as when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, what the Germans term “Dunkelflaute” or dark doldrums, then there is no power. This can be overcome by battery storage or pumped storage.
“How can we power a world that never sleeps with energy sources that do? How can we transform renewable resources into reliable power?” he asked.
Masdar and EWEC have, therefore, partnered on the largest of its kind megaproject combining 5.2GW of Solar PV with 19GW hours of battery storage to produce 1GW of continuous baseload renewable energy.
The capital cost is estimated to be $6 billion (R113bn), but in response to a question from Business Report, EWEC was reluctant to give a tariff in terms of US cents per kilowatt-hour, but said it would be competitive.
BUSINESS REPORT