The UAE’s clean energy capacity is “on track” to reach 14 gigawatts by 2030 as a result of new initiatives and projects, according to the country’s minister of Climate Change and Environment.
The UAE is “home to the three largest-in-capacity, lowest-in-cost solar parks in the world” and is the “first country to have a carbon capture utilisation and storage facility, which is right now at a capacity of 800,000 tonnes per annum and is being expanded to five million tonnes per annum", Mariam Almheiri said at the RAK Energy Summit on Wednesday.
The Arab world’s second largest economy has also launched the 5,600 megawatts Barakah nuclear energy plant, where the third reactor went online recently. Once fully operational, it will supply up to 25 per cent of the country's electricity needs from a carbon-free source and support the reduction of up to 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, she said.
This is equivalent to removing 3.2 million cars from the road per year, Ms Almheiri said.
The UAE is investing Dh600 billion ($163.5bn) in clean and renewable energy projects over the next three decades as it aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It is building the world’s largest solar plant in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi with a capacity of 2 gigawatts, as well as the Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park in Dubai with a 5 gigawatt capacity.
Ms Almheiri also said the country is “exploring the potential of clean hydrogen … hydrogen is one of the future fuels that we are looking at”.
The UAE, Opec’s third-biggest producer, has an ambitious hydrogen strategy and aims to capture about 25 per cent of the global hydrogen market. It is in discussions with many countries to export it, according to Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Suhail Al Mazrouei.
In a separate panel discussion, Fawaz Al Muharrami, acting executive director of clean energy at Masdar, said hydrogen development is “much more economical today” compared with 10 years ago and the company is moving ahead with new projects.
“We have already established a base through our hydrogen demonstration plant and we are willing to take that to a large commercial scale project,” Mr Al Muharrami said.
“We have signed ... [preliminary agreements] with a number of partners, there are plans in the UAE as well as internationally. We are very bullish on our plans.”
In April, Masdar and Hassan Allam Utilities signed two preliminary agreements with Egyptian state-backed organisations to co-operate on the development of green hydrogen production plants in the Suez Canal Economic Zone and the Mediterranean coast.
“We are going to show that this is more economical to do and we are very much set on our strategies and targets with green hydrogen implementation,” he said.
Green hydrogen is derived from renewable sources, while blue and grey hydrogen are produced from natural gas.
Hydrogen is projected to account for 12 per cent of global energy use and 10 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions reductions by 2050, driven by climate change urgency and countries’ commitments to net zero, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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