Nearly 1.8 billion megawatt hours of energy was consumed by the UAE to achieve a total annual GDP of $377 billion in 2013, according to Heliocentris, a German market leader in energy saving solutions.
This amount of energy could be sufficient to power all of the nation’s households for more than 15 years and around 70 million households for a whole year.The figures were released ahead of Critical Communication Middle East 2014, a trade specific show dedicated to critical communications technologies in the Middle East.
A research report by World Resources Institute revealed that in 2013, the UAE used 481 tonnes of oil equivalent for every $1 million of its GDP.
By comparison, a predominantly urban population such as Japan uses 154 toes for every $1 million of GDP, more than two thirds less than the UAE. On the basis of a total annual GDP of $377 billion in 2013, the energy used to achieve the total GDP equates to 1.8 billion Megawatt hours.
Commenting, Michael Kutschenreuter, General Manager of Heliocentris’ Dubai based Middle East operations said: “Everyone knows that with natural resources being cheap and freely available in the UAE, it is the obvious fuel of choice both domestically and industrially. However, it’s only when you drill into these figures that you realise what a staggering amount of energy is involved and, more importantly, by how much it could be reduced.
“It is therefore important to implement energy saving solutions, based primarily on sustainable energy, such as solar and photovoltaic systems. Gradually we are seeing more and more customers switching to our technology, with the know-how that it can save them more than 50 per cent of their diesel consumption, especially in the telecoms sector.”
“We have seen a steadily growing interest from some of the leading telecom operators to combine different sources of sustainable energy, including fuel cells. We definitely have the right approach and technology to meet the high requirements in terms of security and availability for Tetra Networks where we are able to provide completely clean energy solutions for this increasing demand in the market,” Kutschenreuter added.
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