Photo by the author.

One of those standards jokes/complaints that you hear a lot in the Middle East is “well, unfortunately, we have no oil in this country.” I hear this line often in Israel. People use it to express how much better life would be for us if we were an oil producing nation, like those Gulf sheikdoms. Last weekend, I heard the same line from a Jordanian taxi driver.

Well, now I know the truth: it is indeed good to be a Gulf oil kingdom.

I am in Abu Dhabi right now, covering the World Future Energy Summit, a huge international conference ostensibly devoted to renewable energy technologies. The real objective of the conference, however, is business. In Abu Dhabi, everything is business.

Abu Dhabi is not as loud and flamboyant as its neighbor to the north, Dubai. There are no underwater hotels or artificial palm-shaped islands here. But Abu Dhabi is the political capital of the United Arab Emirates, and also the richest of the Emirates. The wealth (it’s no secret) comes from oil and natural gas.

In fact, fossil fuels built this country from scratch. Only a few years ago, there was almost nothing here. Today, this city of around a million people sports all the trappings of a modern metropolis: sparkling skyscrapers, wide boulevards, manicured promenades and parks. The real estate market here has apparently not heard about the global crisis, and new projects are going up everywhere you look.

However, Abu Dhabi is not content with being just another OPEC member. At the initiative of the sheikhs who rule the emirate, Abu Dhabi is attempting to reposition itself as a global leader in renewable energy technologies. In 2006, it founded the Masdar Initiative, a government-owned body charged with creating a significant domestic renewable energy industry.

Through Masdar, the government hopes to leverage its experience and status at the forefront of the nonrenewable energy industry into a future based on a renewable economy, including clean energy R&D, production and transmission. The annual World Future Energy Summit, founded in 2008, was intended to emphasize to the world Abu Dhabi’s position as a leader in this nascent field.

This morning, the country officially announced its aim of getting 7% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, an ambitious goal for a country that owes its stunning prosperity exclusively to the black gold.

However, Abu Dhabi is not stopping there. They’re also building a futuristic, ecological city, Masdar City – probably the world’s most serious attempt yet at green urban design from scratch. Designed by Foster + Partners and built by CH2M Hill, Masdar City will be a 6.5 square kilometer, carbon-neutral walled city. Energy use will be way lower than normal cities, shading and wind will be used for cooling (as well as solar-powered air conditioners for the interiors of buildings) and solar panels will sparkle on every roof. Not a single car will travel through the city; instead a light rail and “personal rapid transit” pod-cars will move people around.

All of this is already being built – I visited the building site yesterday.

In addition to all that, Abu Dhabi is investing in “concentrated solar power,” factories to produce photovoltaic panels, wind power generation, experimental hydrogen power technologies, and the list goes on. The underlying goal is to move beyond a fossil fuel economy in order to lead the way to the energy economy of the future.

So imagine my shock when I learned from here that Israel has apparently struck enough natural gas to last the country for 20 years, off the coast of Haifa.

From what I can gather from over here, people in Israel are pretty excited about this. (I was not able to read up on the discovery more extensively in the news, since access to Hebrew websites is blocked here. It is still the Middle East, after all.)

Natural gas, while neither renewable nor sustainable, is nevertheless a blessing for Israel, if used wisely. It burns cleaner than coal and oil, and can be used to bridge the gap until renewable energy provides a greater share of the country’s power. Following a previous decision to shift toward greater use of natural gas, power plants and factories have already begun moving over to natural gas, but with the gas supply thus far coming from Egypt and off the coast of Gaza, implementing the move to natural gas has been problematic.

Although it probably won’t bring us the fabulous wealth of the Gulf states, domestic natural gas could potentially solve many of the energy sector’s problems, including the projected shortfall in energy generation expected to occur over the coming years. Greenpeace Israel has already suggested that, in light of the new reality, the Infrastructure Ministry should reconsider its decision to build a controversial new coal-fired power plant in Ashkelon.

The risk, however, is that natural gas would be perceived as a magic bullet. Decision-makers could easily descend into complacency and inaction if they perceive that all of their energy problems have been solved. (A similar risk exists with desalination as a magic bullet solution for the water economy.)

If, in fact, natural gas does exist in significant quantities off the coast of Haifa, it must be used as part of a strategy of moving toward wholesale adoption of renewable energies. Cheap, local natural gas could provide the energy security and the economic boom not only to build a handful of solar power plants in the Negev, but to create an entire new clean energy economy, along with new industries and neighborhoods designed according to green building principles.

For those who are interested, the models for this are already being built, here in Abu Dhabi.