Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, better known as Taqa, is closely monitoring the global tariff situation as it keeps the option of buying international assets on the table, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
Nearly half of the company's capacity is based in Abu Dhabi, and it is “not seeing any direct impact from the tariffs so far”, Jasim Thabet told The National on the sidelines of the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi.
“But we are keeping a close eye on the flow of trades … if there are any tariffs happening [and] if there are opportunities for us to look at new markets to acquire new companies or to invest in other projects,” he said.
Mr Thabet said Taqa is focusing on boosting its renewables portfolio and is expected to increase investment to keep pace with the power needs of the booming data centre industry.
The company, which in April announced an artificial intelligence-focused initiative expected to drive Dh36 billion ($9.8 billion) of investments, will “continue to monitor the market for trends”, he said.
That programme – “a very big component” of which focuses on renewables – is being implemented in co-operation with Emirates Water and Electricity Company and clean energy firm Masdar, in which Taqa is the biggest shareholder.
“There's a combination of a lot of things – populations are growing, there's a need for additional and efficient power,” Mr Thabet said. “We're very well placed when it comes to investments.”
Taqa aims to deliver more renewable forms of energy, and is addressing one of its biggest challenges – ensuring an efficient transmission network for their distribution.
The company owns and operates transmission lines from its power and water plants to roads and homes, and requires operational efficiency to guarantee uninterrupted supply to users.
“There's a big deployment of renewables, so there are lots of opportunities for investment in renewables and also in networks,” he said. “One of the biggest bottlenecks is rolling out all the transmission networks that will require [those investments].”
Data centres consume a significant amount of energy to handle massive amounts of data. Some are using sustainable sources such as solar and water to cut consumption and costs.
Power demand from data centres worldwide is predicted to more than double to about 945TWh by 2030. This is slightly more than Japan's entire electricity consumption, data from the International Energy Agency shows.
In general, the bigger the data centres, the bigger their energy need. On a monthly basis, small, medium and large-size data centres are estimated to consume as much as 36,000kWh, 2,000MW and 10MW, respectively, according to industry tracker Data Centre World.
The global data centre market is expected to pass $1 trillion by 2034, surging more than 160 per cent from a projected $386.7 billion in 2025, according to Precedence Research.
“Renewables play a very important component of having a balanced supply of energy in the grid,” Mr Thabet said.
Separately, Taqa and Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign investor, have completed the acquisition of a gas-fired power generation plant at the Talimarjan Power Complex in Uzbekistan, the two companies said on Thursday.
The companies will each hold a 40 per cent stake in the 875MW Talimarjan Power Plant 1 (TTP1) combined-cycle gas-fired plant and operation and maintenance company established to operate the plant, they said.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The Birkin bag is made by Hermès.
It is named after actress and singer Jane Birkin
Noone from Hermès will go on record to say how much a new Birkin costs, how long one would have to wait to get one, and how many bags are actually made each year.
Brief scores:
Day 2
England: 277 & 19-0
West Indies: 154
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
Third Test
Day 3, stumps
India 443-7 (d) & 54-5 (27 ov)
Australia 151
India lead by 346 runs with 5 wickets remaining
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Despacito's dominance in numbers
Released: 2017
Peak chart position: No.1 in more than 47 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Lebanon
Views: 5.3 billion on YouTube
Sales: With 10 million downloads in the US, Despacito became the first Latin single to receive Diamond sales certification
Streams: 1.3 billion combined audio and video by the end of 2017, making it the biggest digital hit of the year.
Awards: 17, including Record of the Year at last year’s prestigious Latin Grammy Awards, as well as five Billboard Music Awards
A list of the animal rescue organisations in the UAE
Brief scores:
Liverpool 3
Mane 24', Shaqiri 73', 80'
Manchester United 1
Lingard 33'
Man of the Match: Fabinho (Liverpool)
