Delicious Irony

Have you heard? Foster and Associates (the geniuses who gave us this brilliant work of art. ) are in the process of building the world's first carbon neutral city, to be called Masdar City.

Wanna guess where Masdar City will be located?

Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy initiative, Masdar, has laid the cornerstone of its carbon-neutral, waste-free city, saying it will invest $22bn in the hope that the project becomes a blueprint for sustainable development around the world.

Oil-rich Abu Dhabi said it was committing $15bn (€10.3bn, £7.7bn) into a broad range of alternative energy projects beyond Masdar City, such as solar and hydrogen power plants and solar panel manufacturing sites.

Foster & Partners architects will design the car-free city, housing 50,000 residents by 2016. Masdar’s research institute, founded in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be located in the 6.5 sq km development that aims to turn into an alternative energy cluster for 1,500 ­businesses.{...}

Yes, you read that correctly. This environmentally forward and car-free project will be built in Abu Dhabi.

And, of course, it will be funded with the proceeds from the sale of all that glorious Texas Tea.

Think that's good? Just wait. It gets better.

{...}To maximise energy efficiency, the city’s narrow thoroughfares will draw on the traditional architecture of the old walled towns of the Middle East. Carbon emissions saved by these techniques will then be monetised through carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism.

{my emphasis}

That's just freakin' genius. Would that we could all be so canny.

Posted by Kathy at February 11, 2008 10:02 AM | TrackBack