Last week the American University of Sharjah, Archcorp, Crowne Plaza Abu Dhabi, Service City and Tecom were celebrated as the nation’s first five Verified Corporate Heroes at a ceremony attended by H.E. Dr. Rashid Ahmad Bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, and H.E. Razan Khalifa al Mubarak, Secretary General of Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi. The Corporate Heroes were recognised for their achievements in reducing energy and water consumption by up to 55% and 89% respectively while documenting their results, which were verified by Ernst & Young. These organisations have clearly demonstrated that the private sector has tremendous potential to reduce the UAE’s high ecological footprint, and we hope to see more organisations pledging to be greener in the future.

Learn how they achieved these results

We signed an agreement with the Regulation and Supervision Bureau - Abu Dhabi who will be supporting the second phase of our work on the UAE Ecological Footprint Initiative. This phase will develop an energy efficiency standard for residential lighting and carry out socio-economic assessments of different policies for the electricity and water sector in the UAE. We are grateful for the support from RSB Abu Dhabi and look forward to working closely together.

Read more about this partnership

Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week gathered more than 30,000 international experts and visitors to discuss issues related to water and renewable energy. Accompanied by our colleagues from WWF International, we organized two side-events discussing how countries can shift towards clean energy: the first on energy efficiency in the UAE and the second (in partnership with IRENA) to discuss renewable energy in the GCC. WWF along with First Solar also presented the first solar PV Atlas, revealing that contrary to popular belief, generating 100% renewable energy requires only a small amount of land.

Learn more about the WWF report, Solar PV Atlas