An Oil Giant Dreams Green

摘要

The gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi got rich on the back of black gold, but its planned carbon-free city could represent the future of environmentalism. Sami khoreibi can't stop smiling. the baby-faced CEO of Enviromena Power Systems, Khoreibi launched his business a little over a year ago. Now he is looking over a 10-MW solar farm in the desert outside the city of Abu Dhabi, with row after row of solar panels angled to the Middle Eastern sun like bathers lying poolside. The solar farm is the earliest tangible part of Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, a $22 billion project designed to be the world's first zero-carbon-footprint, zero-waste settlement-the embodiment of this oil-rich Arab city's surprisingly green dreams. "This is bring- ing attention and capital from around the world to Abu Dhabi," says Khoreibi. "We're going to use this as a launching pad for clean development."