Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Abu Dhabi, the capital of leading oil producer the United Arab Emirates, said Friday it had awarded a contract for a mega solar power plant to French group Engie in partnership with a local firm.
The 1.5-gigawatt Khazna Solar PV plant, expected to have nearly three million solar panels, will avert more than 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions per year, said the local utility operator, the Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC).
Engie and Emirati renewable-energy company Masdar won the contract to build the plant and sell EWEC the electricity, which will power an estimated 160,000 homes, the utility operator said in a statement.
It did not give a timeline for the project, which an Engie executive said would be the company’s biggest solar plant worldwide.
Abu Dhabi is looking to bring its solar energy production to 18 gigawatts by 2035, with a goal of supplying 60 percent of the emirate’s energy needs from clean sources, EWEC said.
The new plant will be “a strategic asset that significantly accelerates our journey towards achieving the UAE’s renewable energy targets”, EWEC chief executive Ahmed Ali Alshamsi said in the statement.
The UAE is one of the world’s top oil producers, but has been investing massively in renewable energy, both at home and abroad.
