UAE to focus on alternative and renewable sources of energy  

ABU DHABI — Despite being rated as the world's tenth largest oil producer, the UAE would focus on exploiting alternative and renewable energy sources, including the nuclear energy, said Dr Saleh Al Hashimi, Assistant Professor of Petroleum Institute.


"We need reliable sources of alternative and cheap energy to run our expanding economy," said Dr Hashimi.

"We have to exploit all sources of energy including nuclear for power generation, health and agriculture purposes," said the professor at a Press conference organised to announce a two-day international conference on energy which will discuss efficient ways to make use of sun shine, wind, solid waste and other natural resources.

"Each year we waste a substantial per centage of the energy generated, due to inefficiencies at power plants and during the transmission and dispatch stages while we are not producing electric power from solid waste at all," said Dr Saleh Al Hashimi.

Dr Michael Ohadi, acting Executive Director PI, said that there is no doubt that fossil fuels would remain an important energy source for the next two to three decades. But alternative and renewable energy would get its due importance for being environment-friendly and cheap.

He said that the Petroleum Institute will host the first International Energy 2030 Conference, a forum dedicated to addressing energy resources and technologies in 2030, from November 1-2. The conference is sponsored by Adnoc and will be held in Abu Dhabi.

The Primary focus of the conference is to share views and information of pivotal importance in the strategic planning of research and development in the oil and gas industries and on the broader energy areas, including energy availibility and usage, transport and environmental issues.

Energy 2030's technical programme comprises of lectures by executives and distinguished experts from the academia and industry around the world. These invited speakers will express their views on current and emerging energy resources and technologies that are likely to serve as important contributors to energy supply in various sectors 25 years from now.

The conference will discuss topics including, from peak oil to plenty of oil, future of natural gas as a bridge and beyond, nuclear energy as an alternative, solar energy now and in the future, wind energy, hydrogen, methanol and ethanol as fuels. Other topics of the conference would include energy from biomass and wastes, carbon management, impact of energy consumption on the environment, energy efficiency, transport energy and R&D needs in the oil and gas industries.