Section Menu

Masdar Partnership Event

Gareth Thomas MP,  Former Minister for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs (jointly with DFID)
BERR Conference Centre, 1 Victoria Street, London,  17 November 2008

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Khaled Awad and his colleagues.

I think the size of the audience speaks volumes about the level of interest in the UK in Masdar.

I am also delighted to see so many representatives of UK low carbon businesses and academia with us.

Today’s event – the first of its kind in the UK - is aimed at creating an environment in which potential business partners can come together.

We will be hearing today about the vision that is MASDAR, the government of Abu Dhabi’s ambitious plan to become a world leader in alternative renewable energy.

And within that initiative we will hear about their plans to create Masdar City - the world’s first zero carbon, zero waste, car free city.

A city set to be completed by 2016 which will eventually house 50,000 residents, 1500 businesses and be home to international businesses in the field of sustainable and alternative energies.

This is no idle pipe dream; substantial funding is earmarked and the first ground for the City was broken in June.

Importantly for Britain several UK organisations are already involved with the project.

Foster and partners designed the concept, Imperial College is part of the university network.

BP, Shell and Rolls Royce are involved as is the WSP Group from whom you will be hearing later.

But it is not just large companies that have a part to play in the Masdar story.

The UK has a diverse, dynamic and well established environmental technologies sector that has a global reputation for world leading capabilities and outstanding solutions and services.

A broad range of such companies and institutions are here today and, I know, are keen to make contact with, learn from and contribute to Masdar.

For us in government, we want to create a business environment that fosters innovative partnerships at home and overseas to help solve the global low-carbon challenge.

We have in the UK a bold energy and climate change policies - we are enshrining in law ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets – 80% on 1990 levels by 2050.

Britain wants to play a leading role in securing climate deals in Europe, and globally in Copenhagen in 2009.

We want the UK to pioneer and promote low-carbon energy industries which will improve our energy security and reduce our dependence on polluting fuels.

We are now the second most attractive market in the world for investment in nuclear power, we will be one of the first to demonstrate carbon capture and storage on a full scale plant.

We are committed to meeting our share of the EU 2020 renewable energy target – which is likely to mean sourcing 15% of our energy, up to a third of our electricity, from renewable sources by 2020.

We are already making good progress - in October we became one of only seven countries to generate three gigawatts of power from wind energy.

We also overtook Denmark to become number one in the world for offshore wind operating capacity.

The only way we are going to meet the challenge of reducing CO2 emissions and move and move economies into less environmentally damaging routes is in partnership to help accelerate the development and deployment of new energy sources and technologies, in short – to invigorate low-carbon growth.

One example of this is the Low Carbon Development Zones being discussed by the EU and China.

The Zones, piloted in a small number of Chinese cities and provinces, could both support China’s transition to a low carbon economy and accelerate the development and deployment of low carbon goods, technologies and services to EU, Chinese and global markets.

Closer to home, we were delighted to learn last month that Masdar would be entering a global renewable energy partnership with EON.

The first step being Masdar’s acquisition of a share in the London Array offshore wind farm, at 1000MW the largest project of its type in the world.

For our part, recently the Prime Minister, the Business Secretary and the Energy Secretary were in Abu Dhabi and were briefed on the Masdar project.

They were impressed.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed with Masdar which will strengthen our relationship still further and provide a framework for future cooperation.

The visit will be followed up by UK participation in the World Future Energy Summit in January.

Collectively our challenge is to do all we can to help ensure that visions such as Masdar succeed.

We are all well aware that the world has to build a low carbon economy because unchecked climate change will undermine the conditions for jobs and growth.

But it will also exacerbate other stresses – in particular water and food security.

These in turn can lead to a raft of other problems from conflict, migration and starvation.

We need to engineer a transformation of the global economy. We need to take carbon emissions out of the global energy sector by 2050.

This is not incremental or marginal change.

It is profound and fundamental.

It is transformational change in our economies and radical change in our homes.

For those countries and businesses that make this leap and take early action to embrace low carbon solutions the opportunities are huge.

By 2010 it is estimated that renewable energy, waste management and water treatment industries will be worth $700 billion globally.

The UK Government, under the leadership of UKTI, is developing a UK Low Carbon International Marketing Strategy.

This will demonstrate UK expertise in low carbon solutions and help create business partnerships overseas in tackling the challenge of climate change.

This is why projects such as Masdar must succeed.

The prize for doing so is huge.

The consequences of failure, dire.

Thank you all for attending this partnership seminar. I know it will be a great success.

I look forward to hearing in due course about the business relationships that are conceived here today.