Controversy may have hit COP28 but delegates should look at the host’s sustainable city

The COP28 climate summit may have gotten off to a tricky start for the host, the United Arab Emirates, over claims it is using the talks as a platform for oil and gas sales. But that should not distract from the effort Dubai is putting in create a sustainable city.

More than 80,000 people attended the 28th Conference of the Parties summit (COP28) in Dubai, UAE, that began on 30 November and is scheduled to last until at least 12 December. It goes without saying that the inbound flights and limousines will generate harmful emissions although it is fair to add that meeting like these will never achieve much via Zoom or Teams.

The darker stain on the event has been claims the UAE is using the meetings, which are chaired by Sultan al-Jaber, who is also chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, one of the biggest fossil fuel companies, planned to discuss boosting fossil fuel business in bilateral meetings (something he has rejected as “false”).

The media dogs did a lot of barking but the caravan moved on. Whatever the outcome of the summit, Dubai has been keen to use the summit to display its environmental credentials. The thousands of attendees have been encouraged to take the Metro's Red Line from Dubai International Airport to major hotels, extending from the heart of Dubai to the Expo City Dubai entrance, where COP28 takes place.

For some time, the city authorities have focused on tightening standards of building to make them greener. In 2011 it set out the Green Buildings Regulations and Specification which were declared required for governmental buildings and voluntary for private ones. The municipality made the standards mandatory for all new buildings in Dubai in 2014. The rules cover usage of energy, water and materials and waste as well as looking at ecology and planning and “building vitality”.

The fact that the UAE urban population is forecast to reach 91 million by 2050 — 85% of its citizens reside in its cities — has prompted moves towards delivering what are known as “smart cities”. Although there is no strict definition, the European Commission describes it as a place where “traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital solutions for the benefit of its inhabitants and business”.

Dubai has implemented projects to significantly reduce electricity use, including smart metering, demand-side management, and distributed generation to encourage energy customers to consume more effectively. One study found these methods saved about 1,100 gigawatt-hours of electricity and 5.4 billion gallons of water between 2009 and 2014 and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 536,000 tonnes.

The author from the UAE’s Ajman University concluded that the Emirates government can “step in and help the country build a more sustainable future”.

Solar panels and strawberries

One specific example of that is the net zero Sustainable City, which Diamond Developers, a private sector real estate company, launched in 2014 and welcomed its first tenants in November 2015. The 500-unit community in the heart of Dubai includes a school and an autism rehabilitation centre, as well as recreational facilities like an equestrian centre.

The city takes advantage of the gruelling temperatures by installing solar panels on top of almost all the buildings and car parking spaces, generating enough energy to meet most of the community’s needs. Residents are also encouraged to grow their own food in allotments adjacent to their properties using organic practices. The developer claims self-contained hydroponic grow rooms — branded as "cooltainers" —can produce 1.5 tonnes of strawberries from 300 plant over a three-month season.

The World Bank, which invests an average of $6 billion in urban development and resilience projects every year, dubbed it “remarkable” after a team of economists paid a visit.

Thery found that in 2021, the city “avoided” more than 8,000 tons of CO2e — roughly equivalent to removing 853 cars from the roads for a year. Average daily water consumption stood at 162 litres per person compared to Dubai’s average of 278. And more than 80% of household waste was sorted and recycled.

Both the Bank and an independent academic study by the British University in Dubai concluded that many of the findings were applicable to other countries and regions, especially those with the same social and harsh environmental conditions as the UAE.

One challenge, as another study identified, is that sustainable developments tend to be positioned as premium-priced properties, which make them harder to roll out as sustainable residential options for a broader population mix.

The latest in the region is NEOM, a sustainable development promoted by the Saudi Arabian government, that will include a 170km (105m) long city but just 200 metres wide, called The Line, which will run in a straight line through the desert and clad in long mirrors and house 9 million people.

The jury is out on NEOM, which will be "be rolled out between now and 2045" with some warning that the environmental impact of the construction will outweigh the likely benefits. But Dubai’s Sustainable City shows that what the oil rich gulf states want to happen will get built. It will be the next generation of Saudis who will find whom the city will be home to.