Two pieces of news of relevance to the UAE's efforts to embrace clean energy broke yesterday, from rather different sources. First came of a major research and development agreement between , the Abu Dhabi Government's clean energy flagship, and the German engineering, power technology and automation giant under which Siemens would become the biggest tenant of . That was soon followed by contrasting news that , the interim head of the UN's (IRENA), which is temporarily headquartered in the city of Abu Dhabi while awaiting permanent digs in Masdar City, had after only 15 months on the job. The Masdar/Siemens partnership is unabashed good news for Abu Dhabi's clean energy programme. To start with, it is a shot in the arm for the US$18.5 billion (Dh67.9bn) Masdar City project to build a carbon neutral residential, research and industrial cluster in the desert. The project was in need of a public relations boost after its reality check earlier this month, when Masdar that brought the ambitious development framework into line with post-recessionary economic reality. Siemens has duly stepped up to the plate. Beyond that, a less publicised aspect of the new partnership - an agreement for Masdar and Siemens to collaborate on techinical and economic aspects of post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology - is of more than passing significance. It demonstrates Abu Dhabi's firm commitment to the currently pricey technology for reducing carbon emissions by extracting carbon dioxide from the flue gases of factories and power plants and burying it permanently underground. So far, the technology has gained limited traction elsewhere. Indeed, the big German utility E.ON, which is one of Masdar's partners in an offshore wind development in the UK, said today it to the next stage of the UK government's competition to fund a CCS project to reduce carbon emissions from a fossil fuel-fired power plant. Economic conditions for E.ON's proposed project at Kingsnorth in Kent still were not right, the company said. The news from IRENA is more perplexing. Does it represent a setback to the UAE's hopes of hosting an effective international agency to help champion the renewable energy aspirations of the developing world, or is Ms Pelosses' departure merely a hiccup? IRENA, as a UN agency, is supposed to operate independently of any pressure from the government of the state hosting its secretariat, and there has been no public suggestion of any impropriety in that regard. It had become increasing obvious, however, that Ms Pelosse's ideals and agenda for clean energy development were significantly at odds with those of Abu Dhabi. To start with, Ms Pelosse vehemently opposed nuclear energy development, which is a cornerstone of Abu Dhabi's plan to broaden its energy mix while reducing emissions from its power sector. In January, Ms Pelosse said IRENA would not back programmes aimed at developing nuclear energy due environmental risks associated with nuclear waste. She also argued that nuclear power was "not at all a renewable form of energy". Technically that is correct, although controversial nuclear fuel recycling proposals combined with breeder reactors could make it so. Moreover, the Earth has enough naturally occurring uranium and thorium to provide atomic fuel for thousands of years. Still, because of Abu Dhabi's insistence on pressing ahead with the Arab world's first civilian nuclear programme, critics argued that IRENA would be viewed as a tainted agency. Ms Pelosse countered that argument, saying IRENA would never deal with nuclear energy issues, as they were not in the agency's statutes. Privately, however, she may have bridled at Abu Dhabi's championing of nuclear development. Another problem was her enthusiasm for carbon taxes, which are a non-starter in the UAE and the Middle East at large, as they would spur destabilising political protests. But one of Ms Pelosse's proudest achievements was persuading France's government to back a national carbon tax that the country plans to implement fully next year. "The UAE government can come up with a policy along those same lines. For instance, fuel taxation in itself is a type of tax on carbon," she said in a January interview with . But that was not a suggestion likely to fly in Abu Dhabi, which has only recently started tentatively to roll back government subsidies on petrol and other carbon-based fuels. Abu Dhabi holds most of the oil and gas resources of the UAE, which is an enthusiastic member of . The oil exporting agency's secretariat has argued cogently that the fuel taxes collected by the governments of most industrialised countries are unfair to the economic aspirations of resource-holders in the developing world. Another point of contention between Ms Pelosse and the governments of Arab Gulf oil exporting states is her view that "definitely, our current source of energy, oil, will not be around for many more years". According to OPEC producers such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which are striving to allow their oil resources to serve future generations, that is simply not the case. The group sees a continuing role for oil, albeit one that may diminish gradually over time, for many decades to come. That being said, there could be many reasons unrelated to Abu Dhabi or OPEC energy policy that may have influeced Ms Pelosse's decision to leave IRENA. For instance, the agency has struggled for adequate fundng since its inception. The UAE is not to blame for that. The chief laggards in fulfilling funding commitments are the US and Japan.