Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar, gave attendees at Cityscape a stern warning about the sustainability of real estate projects in the region in an address at the conference. He believes the region’s infrastructure will not be able to match growth projections unless steps are taken to address the real estate sector’s energy, water, and waste consumption rates.

The real estate sector plan to deliver $500bn worth of developments in the region over the next seven years, he said, but to do so will require an additional two million cubic metres of water per day, 75 million additional megawatt hours of energy per year, all while producing an additional 3.5 million tons of solid waste and 300 million tons of carbon emissions per year. ‘This level of growth is not sustainable,’ he warned.

The figures represent about a 100 per cent increase from current levels. ‘Unless we change the current energy, water and waste consumption rates of developments, we will undoubtedly bottleneck the existing infrastructure, choke the planned capacities of utilities and create damage to the environment,’ he said.

He urged developers to reduce power and water demand by adopting energy efficiency in buildings. He is also a proponent of integrated design planning and carbon credits as a means to partially finance technological enhancements.

His firm is taking the lead in this area by developing the world’s first zero-carbon and zero-waste city, a 6-square km integrated green zone in Abu Dhabi that will implement cutting-edge technologies and design to ensure its sustainability.

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