The News
The UAE plans to develop a renewable energy complex capable of providing uninterrupted clean power using massive batteries.
The price tag for such a facility: $6 billion. Abu Dhabi clean energy company Masdar and a local utility will build 5 gigawatts of solar capacity alongside 19 gigawatt-hours of battery storage.
Solving for renewable energy intermittency “has been the moonshot challenge of our time,” Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and chairman of Masdar, said at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. “This will, for the first time ever, transform renewable energy into baseload energy.”
The project is slated for completion by 2027. The UAE plans to generate a total capacity of 19.8 gigawatts of clean energy by 2030 and expects to invest as much as $54 billion to reach that target.