The booming installation powers the UAE’s sustainability vision going forward…

Abu Dhabi is no stranger to visionary mega-projects, and a massive solar plant has just opened in the run-up to COP28. Interestingly, it also happens to be the world’s largest single-site solar project.

Images: What’s On archive, Unsplash

Spanning over 20 square kilometres of the vast Abu Dhabi desert, the Al Dhafra Solar PV project catalyses the country’s sprawling energy transition and sustainability ambitions with a marked boost, as the inauguration is a giant step in the nation’s net-zero by 2050 vision.

Developed by the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa) in partnership with Masdar, EDF Renewables of France and China’s JinkoPower, the impact of the project is easy to quantify. The Emirates Water and Electricity Company will utilise the power generated here, and supply a whopping 200,000 homes with clean energy. That means, we’ll have the equivalent of 470,000 automobiles’ worth of carbon dioxide emissions reduced from around us. But that kind of impact doesn’t come easily, and close to 4 million bi-facial solar panels are doing the heavy lifting with all this clean energy ramping up the capital’s energy output to 3.2 gigawatts. The project even began changing lives in the country long before it was inaugurated, creating around 4,500 jobs during the peak phase of its construction.

The future’s brighter than ever for the UAE’s sustainability vision, and that’s likely because it’s being powered by clean energy…