Nearly 1.8b MWh of energy was consumed by the UAE to achieve a total annual GDP of $377b in 2013, according to Heliocentris, a German market leader in energy saving solutions. This amount of energy could be sufficient to power all of the nation’s households for more than 15 years and around 70 m households for a whole year.
The figures were released ahead of Critical Communication Middle East 2014, a trade specific show dedicated to critical communications technologies in the Middle East.
Heliocentris offers clean energy solutions, training and research in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to help businesses to control, monitor and reduce their energy usage, providing technology to improve both operational and financial performance so as to meet the next generation’s energy demands today.
A research report by World Resources Institute revealed that in 2013, the UAE used 481 tonnes of oil equivalent (“toe”) for every $1m of its GDP. By comparison, a predominantly urban population such as Japan uses 154 toes for every $1m of GDP, more than two thirds less than the UAE. On the basis of a total annual GDP of $377 billion in 2013, the energy used to achieve the total GDP equates to 1.8b MWh.
Commenting, Michael Kutschenreuter, General Manager of Heliocentris’ Dubai based Middle East operations, said, “Everyone knows that with natural resources being cheap and freely available in the UAE, it is the obvious fuel of choice both domestically and industrially. However, it’s only when you drill into these figures that you realise what a staggering amount of energy is involved and, more importantly, by how much it could be reduced. It is therefore important to implement energy saving solutions, based primarily on sustainable energy, such as solar and photovoltaic systems. Gradually we are seeing more and more customers switching to our technology, with the know-how that it can save them more than 50% of their diesel consumption, especially in the telecoms sector.”
Since Heliocentris began operating in the UAE in 2012, their energy efficiency solutions have saved more than 10,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. That is equivalent to planting a forest of 1,000 trees. The Company is clearly the technology partner of choice for leading telecommunications giants, with du deciding to convert all possible off-grid sites to smart hybrid power solutions with the deployment of Heliocentris’ solutions. This is in direct support of the UAE Government’s strategy towards sustainable energy, and the national objective to reduce diesel consumption and CO2 emission by 50%.
In its current roll-out-phase, the company targets primarily base stations of mobile telecom operators in world regions with poor and unreliable grid-coverage such as the Middle East, Africa and South-East-Asia, successfully installing several hundred systems in the field already. The German firm recently acquired FutureE Fuel Cell Solutions, a leading integrator of fuel cell systems for applications in the telecoms sector, and plans to imminently bring the international technology to the Middle East region.
The combination of FutureE and Heliocentris is expected to create a new market leader in Germany for fuel cell based power solutions in stationary applications from 1kW to 20kW. The integration of Heliocentris’ energy management system into the fuel cell technology of FutureE will enable high performance solutions for uninterrupted power supply, which at comparable acquisition cost will allow for significantly lower operating expenditure as conventional solutions based on diesel generators. Moreover, these solutions will be free of CO2-emissions, thus wholly environmentally friendly and perfectly suited to support the UAE Government’s strategy towards sustainable energy.
“We have seen a steadily growing interest from some of the leading telecom operators to combine different sources of sustainable energy, including fuel cells. We definitely have the right approach and technology to meet the high requirements in terms of security and availability for Tetra Networks where we are able to provide completely clean energy solutions for this increasing demand in the market,” Kutschenreuter added.