UAE, US sign mega strategic partnership deal in clean energy projects

ABU DHABI - The United Arab Emirates and the United States signed a strategic partnership agreement to invest $100 billion in clean energy projects with a production capacity of 100 gigawatts by 2035, state news agency WAM reported on Tuesday. 

The partnership deal aims to expand investment in practical initiatives and promising technologies by focusing on four main pillars, including innovation in clean energy, financing, dissemination of solutions and technologies, and strengthening supply chains; managing carbon and methane emissions; advanced nuclear energy technologies such as small modular reactors and reducing emissions from the industrial and transportation sectors.

US Envoy for Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein said that “the close strategic alliance between the UAE and the US will contribute to supporting the transition process in the global energy sector and building a more sustainable future.”

UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba to the US said that the UAE-US partnership in the energy sector “is an important stage in the bilateral relations between the two countries, which is based on decades of close cooperation in the fields of security, economic development and energy.”

The UAE has three of the largest and least expensive solar energy projects in the world. Its peaceful nuclear program is a practical proof of its strategy to diversify the energy mix, as this program includes the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plants, three of which have been operated so far, and when fully operational, they will contribute to providing up to 25% of the UAE's electricity needs without carbon emissions.