Dubai has made some interesting moves in promoting renewable energy before, but the city has just announced a major new commitment to clean energy—aiming for solar installations on every building's rooftop by 2030. It's part of an overall goal of sourcing 25% clean energy by 2025, a figure that rises to 75% by 2050. Not bad, compared to the kinds of goals we saw from governments until only recently. The announcement was accompanied by the launch of a $27 billion fund to provide low cost loans for investors in Dubai's clean energy sector.

That's a pretty lofty goal. Yet as with many such commitments, it's probably best seen as simply a step in the right direction. With many major cities planning complete decarbonization by 2050, not to mention gigantic corporations aiming to beat that goal by 2 decades, I suspect we'll soon see countries and cities everywhere ramping up their ambitions and scaling up their programs.

Still, you've got to start somewhere. And solar on every single rooftop is not a bad place to start.