Carbon footprints made by necessity

The construction industry consumes a huge amount of water and energy. Jaime Puebla / The National

The UAE is leading the way in water and energy conservation, but there is a limit to what it can do

The rapid development of the UAE and its rising living standards have gone in tandem with the growing use of water and energy. According to some estimates, consumption will double before the end of this decade. This means that the country will need to generate power in a more sustainable way and use less water. As The National reported yesterday, quoting the latest Living Planet Report, the UAE has the third-largest ecological footprint in the region, behind Qatar and Kuwait.

Fortunately, there is a lot of scope for finding harmony between the country’s environmental and developmental objectives. Nuclear and solar power are being introduced to the energy mix to reduce the country’s reliance on non-renewable resources. Changes at the grassroots level, with campaigns encouraging people to consume less power and water, are also playing their part. The results are already encouraging: over the past four years, per capita energy consumption in the UAE has fallen by 4 per cent and water use by 10 per cent.

However, the ecological footprint does not tell the whole story. Take Singapore, for example. Even though the island-state is considered to be a global model for sustainability, its energy and water consumptions are relatively high because it has a major oil refining industry that is resource-intensive.

Similarly, the UAE’s resources industry requires vast amounts of energy to power the extraction machinery and the means of transporting the oil and gas. The booming construction sector is also a voracious user of power and water. All this adds to the overall “footprint”, meaning that one statistic can be misleading.

While energy sustainability is the very clear goal the UAE, the realities on the ground mean that increased power and water usage will be unavoidable in the foreseeable future as the country continues its growth phase. The challenge for the UAE – one which is already being met on many fronts – is to manage that growth responsibly.