Building Green - Masdar City, exploring the future

[Music] to build a city from scratch in the middle of the desert the city that can house 50,000 people in a completely sustainable way a city that recycles all of its waste and that runs totally on renewable energy [Music] it's a gigantic experiment for this dream to come true the world's top scientists have been recruited the alternative to provide the power need from no leeway by burning diesel I think pleases you much better solution we've reduced the temperature that the body experiences by twenty degrees it's staggering what you can do [Music] no water a scorching Sun fearsome sandstorms if we can live ecologically in such an austere environment we can do it anywhere in the world the name of this unique project masked our [Music] Abu Dhabi the largest of the seven United Arab Emirates bordered by the Persian Gulf to the north and the rub al-khali desert to the south a country whose economy relies on oil where energy is not a problem with a need to save it doesn't enter the equation natural gas is available in abundance making it possible for example to produce water and use it lavishly or to air-conditioned buildings around the clock back in the 1960s Abu Dhabi looked like this and then oil exploration revealed vast reserves an ocean of crude oil when we think about Buddha B today we think of this [Music] oil income has funded the most outlandish architectural projects yet it is in this country ruled by black gold that the idea of a city powered exclusively by renewable energy has seen the light of day in the first decade of the 21st century the price of oil remained high but the Emirates saw into the future they knew that the oil would someday run out and indeed the world's production of black gold has now beeped because it is a non-renewable energy source they had to think to the future so Abu Dhabi set itself an incredible challenge invest its petrol dollars in a wild project build an entirely ecological City a futuristic city housing 50,000 people in an area of 2.3 square miles powered by renewable energy have a zero carbon footprint and be finished by 2025 something purely sustainable five times the size of London City in less than 15 years an almost impossible task the venue selected for Masdar is some ten miles from the capital of Abu Dhabi the builders had to start from scratch in the middle of a burning desert because land on the coast was already taken [Music] Masdar in arabic means spring or source and above all a source of knowledge a student town with a university the campus businesses parks and housing February 2008 the work starts London architects Foster and partners are in charge of designing the city [Music] as soon as work begins the first problem appears building on sand the Foundation's could ship dangerously weakening the building the answer to sink concrete pillars to anchor the city but construction is delayed by a first discovery digging down some three feet the engineers find that the desert is riddled with layers of underground saltwater a veritable Swiss cheese it's high pass a line which means there's a lot of it's a lot of salt in there and that actually has a very negative effect on the concrete it'll break it down so not only as Mazdas water not usable but how could they ensure that the foundations wouldn't be eaten away different types of concrete were tested the only one that stood the test was a mix of recycled metal waste rendering the concrete less porous so less likely to corrode so as well as having a positive environmental impact it's also having a positive effect on the technical performance of the concrete's as well very deep drilling was called for to a depth of 65 feet then the anti corrosive concrete was injected to create pillars and fix the city's foundations [Music] for the city to be truly ecological everything has to be recycled the concrete and its components a timber and metal - Nick Brown is in charge of ensuring that each procedure on the worksite obeys rules of sustainable development wherein the materials recycle center or the MRC that we call it and one of the main objectives of Mazda is to make sure that all the materials that we use we make sure that they don't they don't go or as little as possible will go to will go to landfill how do you interest people in the environment in a country where the law of market is all-powerful Mazda is backing economic ecology which means preserving natural resources while still turning a profit right we actually have a lot of wood waste that we are that we've accumulated in in the construction phase why do we not basically put these two together and say let us use this wood waste that we that we've generated and create mulch mulch from it there's a business case for that as well where you can then use this waste product to sell you know to sell to golf courses or you know anybody any sort of landscaped area municipality for example this large machine crushes the timber into mulch these are the big shavings that are spread at the base of plants so as to reduce water evaporation when materials cannot be transformed directly they can be reused as such like the steel and metal used on the site [Music] traditionally you know throughout the world there is a very very strong steel or metal scrap market and that is basically go to the steel recycle market and basically find the highest the highest bidder what we are giving is actually a hundred percent recycled steel steel is ecologically interesting because it can be recycled forever without losing its quality in Masdar a hundred percent of the steel employed has already been used elsewhere whereas most other work sites in the world only use forty percent recycled steel but clever money-saving reuse [Music] the actual definition of sustainability is you know the what we call the three the three P's so that's people planet profit and so yes you can make sure that your materials are a hundred percent recycled if they're not financially you know cost-effective if they're if if they are way too expensive then that in itself isn't sustainable with people you're looking at the social side of things and so there has to be this balance where you say in between the three so you know people planet profit mazdoor is proud of recycling or reallocating 96% of the waste generated by the construction the sorting and recycling plant has been built 300 feet from the worksite thus reducing movement less movement equals less diesel fuel used equals lower co2 emissions equals more ecological construction [Music] early 2009 the work on the city's foundations has been underway for a year Masdar science and technology institute was the first district to arise from the earth time was short and deadlines were tight there was only one year left before the university's doors were to open in 2010 this 650 by 330 foot area will be a specialized training and research center for renewable energy practices the rest of the city will be built around this intellectual core Austin R Elton is one of the architects sent into the field to think up the city we've tried to develop an architectural language that is specific to our bird Abbey that couldn't be anywhere else and we've also tried to obviously Masdar city is a carbon carbon neutral zero way city so obviously our kin-kee dr the main obstacles to reaching this goal were heat and wind 130 degrees fahrenheit in midsummer the air is stifling they had to fight the Shamal a northwesterly wind that blows at 50 miles per hour and makes working conditions difficult to unbearable [Music] to fight the heat the architects came up with the idea of looking to the past rather than to modern Abu Dhabi if you go into downtown Abu Dhabi today you'll see very generic international sky skyscrapers that just use air conditioning as kind of a default position we started by trying to investigate how traditional Arabic settlements dealt with this quite harsh and harsh climate [Music] first lesson use the climate rather than fight it masters designers placed the city across the path of the Shama so the air flowing from the north cools the city streets to further accentuate the breeze affect the buildings are placed on an open 23 foot high platform that allows the air to circulate [Music] another lesson taken from traditional cities place the buildings close together to create shade which is why mass star streets are barely 20 feet wide even down to 13 feet four lanes [Music] the heat also affects the speed of construction even more so when ramadan falls in the month of august most of the labor is our Muslim and abide by an ironclad discipline neither eating nor drinking a drop of water from sunup to sundown 130 degrees Fahrenheit exhausting work 12 hours a day after the foundations were laid the University walls rose but the project fell behind schedule [Music] [Music] to avoid the hottest times of day and make up for the delay a second crew continued to work at night September 2009 finally arrived and brought a bit of coolness work could resume flat out the priority then became the campus residences there was only a year left before the first students were to arrive and the university was still a vast work site the engineers had to find a material for the facades that would effectively insulate against the heat but most of all this material had to be found locally to limit environmental impact what existed near Masdar sand we wanted to try and develop a local material so that the contractor will take the sand from all around us and he would fabricate these panels which is a GRC RVC as in reinforced vitrified concrete a blend of fiberglass and concrete mostly composed of the sand that is plentiful in the Emirates [Music] another advantage of this material in contrast to glass buildings it doesn't get dirty easily no need to clean it with lashings of water the job was even more critical for the laboratories and study halls where there would be several million dollars worth of equipment in the labs and such cutting-edge tools demand stable temperatures but air-conditioning and electric lighting guzzle energy and have to be avoided as much as possible the solution was found not through insulation but by layering with these round chips in the walls it's a plastic sheet with a layer of air and reflectors underneath when the Sun passes through the first two layers it bounces off the reflectors keeping the heat from entering the building when reflecting back out through the chip dotted plastic the sunlight is diffused so that the light reaches the street but the heat doesn't although the Sun is a terrible constraint for masters designers it is also a powerful source of energy a vital bonus in making the city work how can enough electricity be produced to enable 50,000 people to live comfortably 50,000 people needing transportation lighting air-conditioning and hot water on such a scale the challenge is immense [Music] every roof of the Masdar Institute is covered with solar panels but that's only enough to meet 1/3 of the demands in electricity a much greater scale have to be found to supply the entire University a 54 acre photovoltaic power station that can produce up to 10 megawatts of electricity at full bore [Music] professor F Sheena Shari head of the Masdar Energy Department supervises the work is specialty being to increase the effectiveness of renewable energy sources in this region we have about six sometimes seven hours per day of full Sun energy this is about 50% in average more than what you would have in Europe for instance whatever extra electricity is produced is sent to the grid to the Abu Dhabi grid we are exporting at some periods of time as it has one of the world's greatest number of sunny days per year the Sun provides Abu Dhabi with a clean and infinitely renewable energy source but a problem remains an element that impedes the proper functioning of solar panels sand well the panelists have to be washed anyway about once every two weeks in this case but of course when there is a sandstorm you have an immediate impact because you have an immediate drop in the output and then afterwards you have to clean yes removing the sand with brushes isn't enough the only option would be to wash them with water but it is work intensive and not very ecological Masdar researchers will be faced with one of their greatest challenges in the coming years they will need to turn to nanotechnologies to find new nonstick materials to prevent sand buildup the first Masdar neighborhood is supplied by this huge solar farm but with the city expanding another gigantic sustainable power station is being developed a few miles away out in the desert winter 2009 the façades have been erected the buildings insulation works now the next challenge has to be met how can the courtyards and streets be cooled naturally the city has to be pedestrian friendly even in summer environmental solutions are often local here again the master architects turned to a concept that has always been used in the Arabian Peninsula wind towers close to a hundred and fifty feet high a recycled steel skeleton one of the tallest wind towers ever built the wind tower is a very very common common design feature in traditional Arabic structures maybe not used on this level typically used to ventilate a courtyard in a domestic dwelling assembled in six months the tower became the university's highest point masters landmark the wind tower is a triangle on plan we've got a weather station at the top so the weather station tells us where the winds coming from is it warm isn't humid how how strong is it is it full of dust or all of this information that that then determines which side of the louvers that that's hot will open so basically one side opens the air comes in as two others are closed is pushed down the sock in the middle and the wind comes out the bottom it's really really simple as well as blowing air into the city center a clever cooling system was also installed at the top we've got a ring of misters so we can we can miss cool air in there to get evaporative cooling which in traditional wind towers the Arabic ladies used to hang their wet washing at the top of the wind tower so we've done the same thing again [Music] by both spraying and fanning the wind tower casts humid air over the town center as they evaporate the tiny water droplets absorb the airs caloric energy and cool it off [Music] Masdar was supposed to build its own sustainable water conversion plant but the world economic crisis hit the Emirates in early 2010 and dealt the green city in nasty blow the construction budget for the city was reduced by 15% lowering it to eighteen billion dollars because of this the plans to produce water had to be shelved office buildings housing retail outlets the building of other neighborhoods was postponed so all efforts were focused on the university September 2010 the big day arrives over 72,000 square feet some 100 apartments for laboratories and a library the buildings were ready on time the first 250 students arrived only 20% of Masdar students were born in the United Arab Emirates the others come from the world over 37 different countries Jolla is from Lebanon and is majoring in sustainable technology communication she admits to having been a little disorientated at first you feel like you're being guinea pig for trial because everything is not really the system is not really there yet you know let's still try it and errors so what happens is we report the difficulties we live in every why so that they can you know refit it to save energy natural lighting is used in the laboratories the trick is to bring daylight into rooms without letting in the heat so if we turn around and we look at the lab facade here we were talking about keeping the sunlight off the glass first of all we've limited the amount of glass one of the rules of the master plan is you can't have more than 30% of any facade glazed so with the glass is strategically positioned within here so the kind of double bay you see at the bottom here is where the scientists would sit down and stand up so when they look out they see they see outside and and the bay at the top is to let light come in and bounce off the ceiling and illuminate the space provide a general level of light within a space but if you look at the louvers what we've done is we've analyzed every single facade of the building here with quite sophisticated software so we know we know where and when the sunlight hits it and so that's determined the exact spacing size and number of all of these louvers so every facade is different [Music] [Music] on first appearance it looks like it's not finished oh well we've put some louvers on the glass some of the vertical louvers but we've missed an area that area never get direct sunlight we know that's always in the shade so we don't need to use materials [Music] mechanical engineering materials information technology brains are recruited for Masdar starting at the Masters level some teachers like young dr. Matteo chiesa have studied at prestigious schools like MIT in the United States one of the world's top technological Institute's usually use students from between the blackboard but that's they're too busy in there creating science so that's the reason why I have to do these kind of stuff I have a class which is much smaller than a usual process where so it's the same standard you would find at MIT you will find elsewhere matteo and his students are developing their own solar thermal plant located 650 feet from the campus only about 10 exist in the world this particular plant is still experimental in contrast to photovoltaic panels it's energy source is not light but the sun's heat an illness that is a moving mirror helios is a Greek word for the Sun status because it's been fast it's not moving compared to the mirror up there the Sun is always in the same position so I'm moving my mirror on the ground in order to have the Sun always heating to the target of day the sun's rays strike the target reflectors and are then beamed one by one downwards focusing on this white surface is the temperature that you have that is around 500 degrees C so it's nothing big it's a very small plan it's just 100 kilowatts it is barely enough energy to power a dozen houses certainly not enough for a city like pasdar [Music] underneath this white porcelain square there is an oil filled type system the oil stores the sun's heat and it's temperature rises to nine hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit it then heats water which is gradually turned into steamed which in turn serves to drive a turbine which in the end produces electricity the plant's concept is revolutionary in contrast to photovoltaic panels it enables the storage of energy without using polluting batteries the plant can produce electricity even when the Sun is down with this kind of installation the Emirates is getting a jump on the end of oil it said two main reasons one month in the position as an energy provider and the second to increase that education to go from is simply exporter of raw material to a more knowledge-based economy this is how the Emirates is hoping to shed its image as an oil power and turn to ecology a revolution to which the Masdar students want to contribute and the homeless you know they the GCC countries one of the highest emitters of co2 so it's very nice and it's very interesting to see that somebody's actually doing something about it and you want to be a part of that [Music] the campus is growing a year later 100 more students enroll Mohammad comes from Sharjah one of the smallest of the United Arab Emirates he remembers how surprised he was when he arrived in Masdar I thought that I'm not I'll never continue in this Institute it was really difficult you know in this part of the world people are not used to the ideas of recycling living a sustainable life let's say that's why it was a shocking experience at the at the first but today Mohammad has perfectly assimilated the principles of the city's sustainability as demonstrated by a visit to his room [Music] 540 square feet for Muhammed alone or 5 times larger than an average student's room at a European University even the windows they are designed in a way that it captured the the light but not the heat so the light is coming in from this window that's why you can see the windows in different directions as with the laboratories each dorm is different depending upon how much Sun it gets but their point in common is to avoid wasting energy used for air conditioning that has been restricted the a/c controller you cannot control it so they are fixing the temperature to 24 or 23 to 24 [Music] all of that may seem a bit insignificant but such small victories help to raise student awareness a column out in the middle of the courtyard shows the energy consumed by the whole Institute they went I won't show you their water consumption what our efficiency now we are consuming at this hour 11 o'clock 1820 litres of water from let's say 3 p.m. 3 a.m. to 8 p.m. the consumption was too low everyone was sleeping the United Arab Emirates is one of the world's biggest consumers of water with 121 gallons per head per day the average in Britain is 39 gallons Masdar aims to reduce this consumption to 23 gallons per head per day [Music] to reach this goal the entire Institute is monitored each student's usage is analyzed and the energy accounted for water and electricity consumption temperatures breakdowns leaks all this information converges to the campuses basement the city's nerve center this is the domain of margin Potter nazdarovya ran alized in this control room we can actually measure down to one kilowatt per hour and we can differentiate between each and every residential apartment on campus so if I have if I put all the information together on a graph I can go and knock on somebody's door if I choose to and say you are the biggest power consumer on campus then you can't deny the figures because we know the figures coming out of the system are accurate facts of fact so it's not so it's not like we're assuming that you've left your lights on we can see if you've left your lines [Music] Martin Potter needs to know everything about the residence habits in order to improve the city's energy efficiency students have saddled him with a nickname the green policeman yeah I'm kind of big brother but at the end of the day we're all here to prove that sustainability does work and that sustainability doesn't have to impose on your daily life it should just become what you do normally it's not been easy sailing and we've had students complaining that their air conditioning doesn't turn down below 22 degrees some of them do resent being watched but we're not we don't impose problems on them we just let them do what they do and then we take the results back and weary educate them and it's up to them if they want to accept the city's designers have found sly ways of warning students when they consume too much energy without having to constantly call them to order the city's landmark the wind tower lights up every evening at dusk when it is blue Masdar essence can go about their business as usual when it turns red the consumption level is too high so showers have to be postponed and useless lights have to be turned off [Music] early 2012 two years after the Masdar Institute opened the Austin rl10 team tried to gauge the architectures impact on the pedestrian environment in real terms to find a model to compare him we went down to downtown urban a BT typical Street 60 metres wide because of the urban design in downtown Abu Dhabi a day when the air temperature is 39 it makes you experience a temperature of 52 so on the same day we then came to Masdar city 39 degrees air temperature again but the radiant temperature now we've managed to lower to 37 so instead of being 50 we've we've reduced the temperature that the body experiences by 20 degrees it's staggering what you can do staggering but still not perfect after two years of operations Masdar is not yet self-sufficient in water production [Music] take these fountains for example they cool off the atmosphere but the constantly flowing water is not recycled [Music] we are not directly addressing for now this water is produced by desalinating sea water the process consuming natural gas and a source of pollution the heat generated by the gas power plant is recycled to boil the sea water the steam produced is condensed producing fresh water the salt and water residue is emptied into the sea as high-density brine the system is ingenious as it produces both energy and drinking water using natural gas however doesn't quite square with the city's ecological ambitions fortunately masters engineers are working on a new technique that will make the operation clean reverse osmosis so that's the future of [Music] it's a combination of panels and reverse osmosis desalination reverse osmosis uses a filtering membrane to extract freshwater from saltwater to do so seawater has to be injected at high pressure into the membrane what is new is that the pump pressurizing the water can be powered by solar energy this technique will have to be adapted on a large scale to enable water production in Masdar without burning gas spring 2012 the project enters a decisive new phase the city is growing the Institute will have to double in size within a year an international energy group is starting to build its 270 thousand square foot headquarters that will house 2,000 new employees by the summer of 2013 and six months later the International Renewable Energy Agency will move in only 300 feet from the University by 2025 the city will cover over 2.3 square miles so the issue of transportation will have to be tackled public transportation unthinkable in a country where private cars reign supreme it is also a touchy subject to have women to even veil share the same passenger compartment as men electric pod cars are being tested on the campus they are practical and ecological but there are too many students and the city has been designed for pedestrians as a priority so a one-of-a-kind transportation system has been designed especially for mass car [Music] the BRT personal Rapid Transit futuristic self-steering pod cars to test them a short section of road was built under the university two stations 1.2 miles apart are being tried out in the future the system could be extended as the city grows [Music] it runs around about 40 KS an hour it is pretty quick yeah the system works automatically it works out distance between cars as you can see it's going to park itself now all the cars left outside the boundary of the city so other than deliveries at the moment which will stop eventually there are no fossil fuel vehicles allowed on the campus the city gates are designed like ecological airlocks polluting cars must be left by their owners in the parking lots where they transfer to a PRT we've become pretty blasé about it you you hope on a car whenever you need to when you bring visitors there are fantastic how can say something ok yeah it is good we just use it the first route to be built leads to the Campus Center if the city lives up to expectations there will be a station in each mast our neighborhood jabbed Weiser the designer of these unique cars works in the cities and trails at the PRT repair and cleaning Center in the floor ethnic nests every two meters only Nita PT is admitted to roulette the sense of Magnus and he hasn't made out from the whole track also in database with the Magnus and combined with in gyro and the real encode is counting the turning of the views that's how we navigate like everything else electric in the city the PRTs run on solar energy in this room and in every station we have in charge path soon as an PT arrived the challenge path is going up and we have two contacts only need to be 80 and through that we will charge the battery if necessary the PRT batteries provide 5 hours of autonomy but they are partially recharged at every stop at a station enough for the PRT fleet to work continuously safety remains the top priority for jab and his crew we see me or lady already from a longer distance so you can see it's slowing down already and I'm proximately 2 meters it will send still and if I walk away he will follow me like a dog and I stand still again let's go stop again only need the PT just in front of it we find the laser sensor that is the main safety that we using if it fails it never fails and before we hit anything there's also switches in the bumper so soon as this piece it was stopped also PRTs are loaded with ultra-modern sensors a magnetic detector beneath the vehicles identify the magnets in the ground and the front and rear lasers detect obstacles [Music] Masdar needs energy if it is to grow quickly early 2012 a colossal complex emerges from the dunes of rub al-khali 75 miles from Abu Dhabi 250,000 reflecting dishes on 1,100 acres or some 850 football fields shams Swan one of the world's largest solar concentration power plants it is the first time that a city the size of Masdar will use a solar energy production unit of this size the plant will be inaugurated in 2013 and should cover all of the green cities energy needs and even export surplus electricity to Abu Dhabi a new experimental field for Professor Matteo you have a big parabola where you have the Sun in the middle of the sky that moves during the day well it's not the Sun moving but what we know about it the radiation or the solar rays comes to these Paula this big mirror and gets reflected back with the same angle to a certain pipe we're a working fluid in this case oil is heat not shams one is one of a kind a hybrid power plant powered by Sun and gas the gas increases the power plants yield and takes over when there's a lack of Sun inevitably in a country like the Emirates we're on summer nights all of the air conditioners are working full blast reaching maximum consumption we need to get these heating the Woking fluid in the oil into steam so you we have the heat exchanger and this is the stuff that you see inside here these pipes carry the reflector heated oil to the power station the heat boils the water that rises gradually to 750 degrees Fahrenheit and turns to steam to reach the required power the engineers added a booster an enormous gas burner that raises the steam temperature to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit a very hot steam then drives the giant turbine linked to a generator as in the Emirates the power station has to work at full capacity even at night once the Sun is down secondary gas burners kick in to heat the steam inability or whatever would tell you you should just use solar radiation but on the other hand when the alternative for example to meet or provide the power needed from the OL UAE by burning diesel I think this is a much better solution at full capacity shams one will supply 100 megawatts of power enough to supply 10 to 20,000 homes this power plant is a mirror image of Masdar a crucial first step towards sustainable development for a country like the United Arab Emirates with its oil based economy where ecology and sustainability are new ideas the Masdar project is a genuine revolution despite the world economic crisis the government has maintained the initial budget of 18 billion euros but project completion has been pushed back from 2025 to 2030 apartment construction has begun and the first renters curious to take part in the green city experiment will begin moving in in late 2013 Masdar is a test city it offers technological innovations for all countries of the world a visionary endeavor a new way of contemplating the future when we will all have to learn to live without oil [Music] [Applause] [Music] you you

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Views: 54,198

Rating: 4.8539681 out of 5

Keywords: film, documentary, Abu Dhabi, dubai, energy, power supply, gas, technology, petrol, drill, United Arab Emirates, oil

Id: PfOVIhGuI4A

Length: 49min 15sec (2955 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/runningray]

Well it is a first step. This is all the resources of a rich nation going into a smallish sustainable city and even then struggling with it. So to me it only illustrates how difficult this will be on Mars.