This nation is building the world’s cheapest solar farm
A collaboration in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) will help to install the world's cheapest solar farm in 2022. The public electric utility in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., chose a bid that will bring the cost of solar power down to 1.35 cents per kilowatt hour. The U.A.E. is home to many of the world’s biggest solar farms because of its extremely abundant sunshine and wide, flat, empty stretches of land.
The U.A.E.’s public image is dominated by Dubai, a cutting-edge city full of indoor skiing, the tallest skyscrapers, and record-breaking theme parks. It’s where Richard Hammond drove a six-wheeled, $500,000 Mercedes on Top Gear. You’d need a lot of even the most cost-efficient solar farms to counteract indoor ski slopes in the desert.
But Abu Dhabi is different. “Abu Dhabi is a much calmer, more traditional city and more family and community led than Dubai,” one expat told Aetna. By bringing in this cheap solar farm, Abu Dhabi Power Corporation (ADPower) says it will add power for 160,000 homes in Abu Dhabi and throughout the U.A.E. That’s two gigawatts of power on top of the 1.2 gigawatts another solar farm already produces in the Abu Dhabi area.
“This will reduce the Emirate’s CO₂ emissions by more than 3.6 million metric tons per year—equal to removing around 720,000 cars from the road—improving efficiency and driving sustainability, while catering for the growth in demand across the [U.A.E.],” ADPower said in its statement. Indeed, overall population growth in U.A.E. flattened in the aftermath of the 2008 recession and is now on the rise again.
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