60 J. KRANE
of demand are driven by high incomes, low fixed prices, high ambient
temperatures, and inefficient designs of buildings and communities.
Cooling buildings accounts for roughly 60% of power consumption.
Major disparities in demand occur between UAE nationals and generally poorer expatriates who make up 90% of the population. Emirati
households in Abu Dhabi consume around three times more electricity than (typically smaller) expatriate households, and about five times
more than a household in the US state of Arizona. 5 Further discrepancies exist among residents in the poorer northern emirates of Sharjah,
Ajman, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, and the dominant emirates of Dubai, the UAE financial capital, and Abu Dhabi, the
political and economic capital. The disparities are bound up in constitutional provisions enshrining ownership of natural resources in individual
emirates.
In 2018, fossil fuels made up 99% of primary energy consumption in
the UAE. Oil, the dominant transportation fuel and a backup feedstock
for power generation, held 40% of the overall energy market while gas
retained nearly 60%.
Coal use, once nearly nonexistent in the UAE, rose by 22% per year
over the decade to 2018, driven by substitution for natural gas in cement
and ceramics manufacture outside Abu Dhabi. The UAE is destined to
become a much more significant coal consumer upon the 2020 startup of
Dubai’s 2.4-gigawatt Hassyan coal-fired power plant. A planned expansion of the $3.4 billion Hassyan plant would push its capacity to 3.6
GW. 6
The UAE’s aspirational power mix calls for expanding coal-fired power
to generate 12% of the country’s electricity, an installation estimated at
11.2 GW of capacity, 7 more than coal capacity operating in Canada or
Malaysia in 2019. 8 A quadrupling of coal capacity is unlikely, however,
given the associated environmental and reputational damage, as well as
the falling cost of competing technologies. 9 Since little coal is found in
the Middle East, and none on the Arabian Peninsula, Middle Eastern coal
is imported, mainly from Colombia (3.5 mtoe in 2018), Russia (1.7), and
South Africa (1.5) 10 (Fig. 3.2).
Much of the diversification referenced in the introduction was yet to
arrive at the time of writing. Some 98% of the UAE’s electricity in 2018
was produced by combusting fossil fuels, nearly all of it from natural gas
(41 bcm of a total 77 bcm consumed in the UAE 2018 11 ) with small
of demand are driven by high incomes, low fixed prices, high ambient
temperatures, and inefficient designs of buildings and communities.
Cooling buildings accounts for roughly 60% of power consumption.
Major disparities in demand occur between UAE nationals and generally poorer expatriates who make up 90% of the population. Emirati
households in Abu Dhabi consume around three times more electricity than (typically smaller) expatriate households, and about five times
more than a household in the US state of Arizona. 5 Further discrepancies exist among residents in the poorer northern emirates of Sharjah,
Ajman, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, and the dominant emirates of Dubai, the UAE financial capital, and Abu Dhabi, the
political and economic capital. The disparities are bound up in constitutional provisions enshrining ownership of natural resources in individual
emirates.
In 2018, fossil fuels made up 99% of primary energy consumption in
the UAE. Oil, the dominant transportation fuel and a backup feedstock
for power generation, held 40% of the overall energy market while gas
retained nearly 60%.
Coal use, once nearly nonexistent in the UAE, rose by 22% per year
over the decade to 2018, driven by substitution for natural gas in cement
and ceramics manufacture outside Abu Dhabi. The UAE is destined to
become a much more significant coal consumer upon the 2020 startup of
Dubai’s 2.4-gigawatt Hassyan coal-fired power plant. A planned expansion of the $3.4 billion Hassyan plant would push its capacity to 3.6
GW. 6
The UAE’s aspirational power mix calls for expanding coal-fired power
to generate 12% of the country’s electricity, an installation estimated at
11.2 GW of capacity, 7 more than coal capacity operating in Canada or
Malaysia in 2019. 8 A quadrupling of coal capacity is unlikely, however,
given the associated environmental and reputational damage, as well as
the falling cost of competing technologies. 9 Since little coal is found in
the Middle East, and none on the Arabian Peninsula, Middle Eastern coal
is imported, mainly from Colombia (3.5 mtoe in 2018), Russia (1.7), and
South Africa (1.5) 10 (Fig. 3.2).
Much of the diversification referenced in the introduction was yet to
arrive at the time of writing. Some 98% of the UAE’s electricity in 2018
was produced by combusting fossil fuels, nearly all of it from natural gas
(41 bcm of a total 77 bcm consumed in the UAE 2018 11 ) with small