Until this month, the oil-rich United Arab Emirates had modest ambitions when it came to renewable energy: to install roughly as many solar panels each year as the UK.
But then Masdar, the country’s state-owned renewable energy company, decided to make a splash at a huge trade fair in Abu Dhabi.
In front of the UAE president, it announced it would build a $6bn 5 gigawatt solar plant backed with more than 19GWh of battery storage — the largest such project ever attempted.
When it starts in two years’ time, its batteries will give the country a constant output of 1GW, enough to power more than 700,000 homes without having to rely on gas-fired…
