Sustainable City | Fully Charged

hello and welcome to fully charged my name is Robert the well in this is a series about the future of energy and transport electric cars all kinds of cool stuff like this and today I've just come along to see this normal town just another town in Dubai Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and I don't know it's very nice it's very quiet as you can tell not a lot of traffic track none in fact it's amazing this is the sustainable city first of all thank you for coming I mean this is a it's a delight to show you all of this so this is the sustainable city and we we regard it as our goal is to have a net zero energy development so everything you see first of all the principle design elements is to reduce the energy intensity of the city and so if you notice as we drive through those streets the orientation of the villas you know these villas they benefit from the shade we decided to design and to orient all the villas towards the north so all these villas are north orienting which means they get a lot of shade and we avoid the Sun and that is so important in this part of the world because otherwise your air conditioning cost is going to go up through the roof and that's not good for carbon and carbon emission yeah we also have UV reflective paint which means you deflect a lot of sunlight and you reduce the thermal heat gain right the windows also have tremendous thermal value and the roof is well just it's such it's such an attractive place to live I mean we're now going to have the beautiful pond yeah these are these are the water features this is actually great water and this comes out of our wash basin this is water from the shower right and the the washing machine and we actually treated we we separate the water which enters the city into two streams so we have lock water and gray walls right so wait what you just saw is the grey water that is treated when we treat it here in site or on-site in the community and you will see that in a bit and then we pump it up through that stream and we have these storage ponds and all along this farm we're now driving through the farm which runs the length of the city we tap into the gray water system to irrigate the landscape and we also use the grey water to keep these pads if you can see the trailer right oh sweet marks you know those pads we keep the moist with treated gray water and those are pads that we utilize to cool the bottom right so they actually provide fresh air into the biomes then we can enter one of those and see what's inside and then this is the thing that I first saw when I arrived is that all the carpark yes shaded with solar panels so she's so sensible yeah was it walked into point first of all all the cars are assembled so we wanted to keep the cars away from the clusters which means when we drove through a cluster it is completely car free right that's amazing for kids a training ground exactly this is their space the entire source is their space so we have all the cars in one location and under a roof panel and so we have in the city we actually have 10 mega watt peak installed let me put that into perspective that's 40,000 panels PV panels we're so far we've installed 26,000 and of those 10 megawatt three megawatts come from the parking areas wow that's a lot of electricity yes so we can produce 10 megawatt hour of electrical energy solar energy per day Rock and this leads into the grid yeah this feeds into the grid because we are grid connected and then we tap from the grid view no we take it back and to supply energy in different sections of the city right all the services the cooling pads the farm the streetlights the water features all of that is actually utilizing electricity from the car park right yeah so there is one community pool and this has always been a contentious point about sustainability but right you know we've designed in such a way first of all this is a closed system so the water is filtered yeah and we just pump it up replenish it because of the evaporation during the summer and we have a very environmentally friendly treatment system as well installed it's also extremely very popular don't editorial figure you know living in Dubai without a pool at least one pool is difficult it's become expected if it's such beautiful weather here today in January you know so I have been in this area before the midsummer I know that it is extremely hot collecting yet yeah exactly so now the weather is beautiful we're at 25 degrees Celsius if you come back in 4 months it's going to be 45 yeah so then the story is different so the water that you see here the sports are streaming down this is this is gray water right treated and we have a little bit of slope so we utilize the slope to have that movement of it offer a ninja is it clean does it oh it's treated it is first of all it is treated and then we can we improve the treatment if you notice needs these these grass yeah this is papyrus right that's what they had in Egypt right to make paper for example and those are called bio fizzes so we planted those and they are actually soaked they're soaked down in the water and they buy a filter the water runs because they there's a lot of nutrient uptake yeah so they improve the water quality even more the trees that you see now the landscape here is only two years old so what you see is only two years old so we've tried to balance between the amenity and the utility value of a landscape we don't just want beautiful trees the landscape or shrub we also want to have trees that are going to bring something back to us so the date palm needs we pollinate in the spring and then we're going to harvest we harvest the dates in August and then the trees scattered along the farm we have avocado papaya pomegranates mulberry fig trees so those are spreads and they will benefit from the shade of the palm trees and all of that is actually irrigated with treated to adjuster one so these pipes that you're going to see everywhere right this is actually treated sewage actually and so right here on our left now why are you going to see other buggies is the gray water treatment us so it's under ground and you know it just makes to the villa yeah people are not offended by you know odor is whatsoever that's the water that we very lovely plants right now that's the water that we treat and then we store it in the lake and then we pump it up and then it trickles down again and we tap from the lake for irrigation purpose and I we have recycling stations right throughout the city so we have a ratio we actually have nine of these for every 90 minutes so this is the farming that we try to have for the cooler climate for about six months of the year we can grow food outside and this is actually managed by the community by resident right now some of that furniture that you see scatter these benches the picnic tables in this giant back table or a chair this is made of construction waste this is all construction waste from phase one wood pallets and around the clock and plus exactly other senses this area is really at the entrance of the city and as part of the master plan this is the mixed use area which is open to the public and so here we have 15,000 square meters of space of rental space and this is only for rent and the idea behind it is that this is going to generate rental revenue and a portion of the rental revenue is going to pay all the service fees and making seeds in the city so we have promised all the residents in the community that they will pay zero service fees and zero maintenance fees Wow hang on let me get my head round you move into the city yeah whether you're a tenant or a homeowner of an owner so you can't you can buy one of you can buy yeah this is called freehold invite oh you can you can buy property or you can rent you out right in both both options in both cases you will not incur service fees or maintenance fees it's zero so when you look at a concierge service or sweeping the street for sweeping the panels we actually dryclean the panel's of solar panels all the landscaping the water features the gray water treatments the security outside the mosque etc all of that is provided for free running for free meaning it is offset by revenues that come from this Plaza and this this you know this is related to ensuring that there is also economic sustainability and social sustainability it is not only about the energy features that are also features the economic dimension also has to make sense and I mean has the general sort of public response to what you've done here been tremendous I mean it's been tremendous some people were there was a lot of skepticism right if we go back four or five years when the timing started most people kind of just brushed us aside right even even you know bankers and I mean there was little interest we did we did draw attention but I don't think many people believed in this concept and the design that was both financial crisis global financial analysis things have really picked up and now when you demonstrate with what we've done so far in phase one I think it's becoming more and more obvious that this is doable and it is not more expensive you know Apple right apple or orange in general for this is a Miss and you know when you design sustainably from the start yeah from the start it's not an afterthought yeah and after solid expenses but when you plan it right from the beginning and you also capture the latest technology or the latest you know features from the market then it's not more expensive right and we've demonstrated that all the way down to social sustainability and economic sustainability we've brought down just talk about carbon on average in the world each one of us from UK to Dubai to Lebanon to Australia we emit on average seven metric tons of carbon dioxide per person per year here we've we did our estimates because we're doing a greenhouse gas inventory of the city we are at approximately three three point one metric tons per person per year time that applies for residents living in the city Wow including commute outside the city Wow so I'm not sure and you're talking people who've got you know a lot of people have quite substantially large vehicles in Devon fortunately or not we're not all in supérieur so this is this is something we have we have our own targets as well to transform the mobility not only inside the sea because that's you know we've achieved that already with electric vehicles and buggies and and bicycle tracks and jogging track cetera so we've provided that but more importantly we want people to begin to switch to electric vehicles and so we've done two things so far we've provided charging stations seconds and that's really unique as a developer we are actually providing an incentive a cash subsidy to Villa owners who wish to purchase an electric vehicle right and we live in the city so if you live in a city and you are a villa owner you will receive up to ten thousand euros or forty thousand at home towards your first IDI for our so that's the idea so that is that's part of your sales contract and also whether you you make use of it or not that that's your choice [Music] [Music] this is amazing yeah so we have 11 of those right and this is our you know sm2 to grow food we started with her we now have we spent both of last year 2016 experimenting with different herbs and different temperatures so we've now selected 40 herb what you see here in this photo we have we have leak we have Farsi we have mints we have bubbles chicory spinach Volusia coriander cherry tomatoes lettuce and it's much cooler again outside but then the facts are the fans are blowing air so they are alive this is the beauty of having a low-tech solution this is a desert technology right this has existed for more than 40 years in farms all across the Arabian desert right and the system is very simple we actually have we call it fans and pods like land and thugs so we have four fans blowing air out then you have a negative pressure inside so possibly air is going to come the wing trees I'm going to throw it right now is just blowing air out yeah here's a cold path it's like cardboard corrugated cardboard and then we wet them we moist them all the time was treated gray water so if you see them you have these peaks of water and just need some drips coming back here and your sign in front of it it's like an air conditioned fire so the temperature is going to drop on 45 so about 30 so the other thing is if you were doing this 10 years ago you would be you know burning some form of fossil fuels in order to run the motors that drive the fan but all that electricity is all coming from the solar so this is coming from the car parks that we saw yeah that's what we call the solar farm and these are just motors so I take a lot of how a temple or area so quite hot that's loaders loaders so there's no air conditioning tonight I [Music] think that's my argument really for the British property development sector if I want to watch this is pull your finger out guys because you because there's a huge amount of this technology could be used in the UK it's not it's not all everywhere I mean every country has it has an opportunity I mean there are things you can do in the UK that we cannot do in Dubai and vice-versa for but it is about you know being future ready that's what we say we want to be future ready meaning the climate is changing things are getting more difficult and we all have the responsibility to bring down our footprint and so we try to personalize the problems and the solution here you know by getting everybody involved and then presumably like in them even in summer at night I think what it is quite get colder I get a new perspective now yeah you could eat that you could have a meal up here me oh yeah evening when it wasn't wasn't quite well we can use this space you can use this space for about eight months well then you have four months you don't want to be L not interested yeah that would be mid-june through mid-september right it's it's you know upper mid 40s lower to mid 40s and then it's humid as well towards the end of the summer but otherwise you know eight months and so if you notice a feature we have here is that now we tend to associate panels solar panels lid on you know put it over the garage I don't want to create it smells it's unsightly but we've actually incorporated it it's part of the architecture because when you look over there you wouldn't think Oh all those roofs that solar panel yeah because you know you're expecting to see something like that ah [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: fullychargedshow

Views: 1,710,030

Rating: 4.9428754 out of 5

Keywords: Sustainable City, Dubai, UAE, United Arab Emirates, summer, heat, air conditioning, water, water treatement, rivers, ponds, vegetables, swimming pools, Fully Charged, electric car, electric vehicles, renewable energy, sustainable development, wind turbines, battery, Robert Llewellyn, Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, sustainable city planning, green energy comment, sustainable planet news, renewable energy electric vehicles

Id: WCKz8ykyI2E

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Searth]

Was curious about the prices. Around 3 million AED / 800k USD for a 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom villa with a maids room (it's still Dubai). Price is indeed comparable non-eco villas, although those usually have their own private pool as well. Salaries are similar but more unequal/tiered than western countries, residency is by far the largest expenditure. A couple of an engineer and a teacher could just about afford it, you don't need to be in the top 10% richest.

[u/supercoolnes1324]

Very cool. The amount of detail and things they considered that went in to planning all this is incredible.

[u/Burmania]

This is amazing... I wish I could live in a city like this in the states.

[u/[deleted]]

Watching this video, all I could think to myself was, "Damn.. If we (the U.S.) don't get our shit together, the Middle East really will take over the economy"

Why the hell aren't we doing this in the American Southwest at the very least?

[u/AdrianoRoss]

that's pretty good

[u/ce2c61254d48d38617e4]

Very admirable, can only wait to see what further develops.

So power is fully self-sustaining and economy is self-sustaining(provided rental market demand is stable). Water and food still requiring outside resources but otherwise reduced, I guess it would be a huge ask for these to be fully self sustaining.