A partner company reported on Tuesday, months before the start of United Nations climate talks, that one of the world's largest solar power plants will be fully operational this year in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
The oil-exporting United Arab Emirates is spending billions of dollars to develop enough renewable energy to meet half of its needs by 2050 and aims to become carbon neutral by this year.
Olivier Bordes, Regional Director for Renewable Energy at EDF in France, said that the Al Dafra project, located 35 kilometers south of the capital Abu Dhabi, will provide electricity to 160,000 homes in the country of 10 million people.
"It started producing its first kilowatt-hour of electricity late last year, and it will officially start working before winter," Bourdais told AFP.
When fully operational, he said, it will produce up to 2.1 gigawatts.
State-owned airlines Emirates and Masdar own 60% of the project, which is the largest single-site solar project in the world. The rest is a consortium of EDF Renewables and China's Jinko Power Technology.
The double-sided, sun-facing huge solar panel factory covers an area of more than 20 square kilometers (nearly 5,000 acres).
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who visited on Tuesday, praised the "very close cooperation" between Paris and Abu Dhabi in the field of renewable energies.
The mayor, who was visiting Saudi Arabia and Qatar as part of a regional tour, said he wanted to "support" the oil-producing nations of the Persian Gulf on their journey to "decarbonise".
The renewable energy company, Masdar, announced on Tuesday that Emirati and French companies have entered into a partnership to develop, invest and operate more than 6.2 gigawatts of clean and renewable energy programs around the world.
A source said in a statement that companies in the two countries "attract more than $6 billion in investment and remove 10 million tons of carbon dioxide annually."
In November and December, the UAE will host the COP28 climate summit that environmentalists aspire to. Will one of the world's largest oil producers lead the fight against global warming?
saa / ho / y / ami
