ABU DHABI // The oil-rich countries of the region should follow the UAE’s example in recycling their wealth into renewable energy, the UK’s secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs said.

“The countries of this region have a choice,” said Philip Hammond at Masdar City on Thursday. “They can choose to do very little and hope climate change will not affect them, or take a lead from the UAE, investing in renewable energy and clean technology.”

Also speaking at the event was Dr Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and chairman of Masdar, who said the UAE was committed to significantly increasing its use of renewable energy through the Intended Nationally-Determined Contribution plan it has submitted to the United Nations.

“Within the plan is the UAE’s national target to generate 24 per cent of its electricity from clean energy resources by 2021,” he said.

Mr Hammond praised the UAE’s investment in renewable energy domestically and globally as well as its ambitious plan of increasing its use of it. “Your target to achieve a quarter of your energy from clean sources within six years is bold and impressive,” said Mr Hammond.

While the UAE has the world’s seventh-largest reserves of oil and gas, Mr Hammond said it was to the nation’s credit that it was “already planning for a future beyond oil”.

The talk took place ahead of the global climate summit set to take place in Paris in December.

Mr Hammond said the time to invest in renewable energy was now, as climate change had the potential to significantly impact every country.

“Climate change knows no borders and will respect no sovereignty,” he said. “While the UK would suffer from more extreme rainfall, storms and flooding, this region would be at risk from evermore extreme heat, water scarcity and drought.”

Adnan Amin, director general at the Masdar-based International Renewable Energy Agency, said that although significant strides had been made in the sector over the past decade, much more had to be done to prevent the global surface temperature increasing by 2ºC, which some experts said could be the tipping point to major climate change.

At the current rate of growth he said, by 2030 only 20 per cent of the world’s energy will come from renewable sources, up 2 per cent from 2010. “This rate needs to increase seven-fold,” he said.

Helping to drive the expansion were significant falls in the cost of producing renewable energy.

Mr Amin said the price of solar panels had declined by 75 per cent in the past decade, which had helped the UAE achieve the lowest cost for solar power anywhere in the world, with a 200-megawatt solar energy plant that produced a kilowatt hour of energy at a cost of 6 US cents.

“That is the real sign post to the future,” he said.

Another major challenge was effectively storing the energy produced, said Sir David King, the British foreign secretary’s special envoy for climate change.

“The sun doesn’t shine at night and wind doesn’t always blow,” he said.

Innovative ways to save energy on a large scale is needed to provide continuous supplies of energy. One way is to cut a cylinder of land and raise it by pumping water underneath it, and producing energy when the water underneath the land cylinder is squeezed back out through a turbine.

“That is what you need to make renewable [energy] cheaper than fossil fuels today,” said Mr King.

newsdesk@thenational.ae