The founder of Future Earth Dubai says he was in the right place at the right time.
With the UAE looking to increase its target for power generation from clean energy to 30 per cent by 2030, Don Anderson saw an opportunity.
A telecommunications professional for 24 years, he travelled the length and breadth of the region, seeing first-hand the rapid pace of change in his industry and beyond. He decided he should be instrumental in some of that change.
The 50-year-old Scot, who has lived in the Arabian Gulf since 1994, is a passionate supporter of environmental responsibility and renewable energy and wanted to do something that made a positive impact on Dubai – the city he now calls home with his wife, Roz, and three boys, Hamish, Finlay and Elliot.
This year he started Future Earth Dubai (future-earth-dubai.com) offering sustainable sources of power utilising hybrid technologies that harness both wind and solar energy combined with traditional vehicles when necessary.
“I realise there is a big push in the country and the region for renewables and I thought the opportunity and potential was too good to miss,” he says.
“I did a lot of research into what was available and found the smallest, most efficient wind turbine in the world – the Anemos – was made by an Italian company called WeCo Hybrid Technology. That is what I am now offering to our customers, on its own or as part of a hybrid system.”
The Anemos is portable, weighing only 42 kilograms, and can be mounted on a mast or a rooftop. Future Earth Dubai’s first contracts have been with government entities across the Gulf, but the company expects private industry to be filling the order book within the next months.
He believes that until governments in the region go beyond rhetoric and offer incentives for the domestic use of green technology that few will be willing to invest when the return on investment will be well beyond most people’s timelines for residency here.
“Electricity is half the price in the UAE than it is in Europe, and it is not the cheapest in the region,” said Mr Anderson.
“With no substantive benefits to changing to solar or wind, why would domestic users even contemplate it? In Europe, there are subsidies from governments, and I believe that without that impetus domestic renewable use will not catch on here,” he added.
“For my business to be viable it has to be through non domestic avenues such as small industry, agriculture, telecoms and off-grid applications. The Anemos is also an excellent source for supplying energy into the grid.”
Mr Anderson is focusing on those industries that are compelled to work off the grid – companies that need power in places that would traditionally use generators.
His task is to get his clients on a path towards using a hybrid mix of energies, fusing the old and the new together. He took a stand at the Solar Middle East exhibition last month in Dubai World Trade Centre and was inundated with enquiries from companies from India, Pakistan, Africa and the Gulf looking for answers to environmentally challenging questions. At about Dh24,000 for each turbine, the business case has to be sound for companies to change tack. But with the costs of diesel and the increasingly loud cry for responsible corporate practices, environmentally friendly options are now more appealing.
“I know talk is cheap, but the amount of interest was incredible,” said Mr Anderson. “The Anemos turbine is perfect for this region’s wind strength. It has a very low cut-in speed and has peak power of 3 kilowatts. Our Italian partner WeCo Hybrid Technology, with its R&D department in the University of Perugia, have agreed to continue to invest in R&D to make the Anemos an even better fit for this region.”
For a novice entrepreneur, Mr Anderson says the process of starting a business in Dubai was remarkably straightforward. The costs have been high, coming in at about Dh600,000 to secure onshore licences, offices, warehousing and inventory.
While the bureaucracy was straightforward it was also relentless, as Mr Anderson found there was always something else to sign, another fee to pay or another office to visit, but it has taken a relatively short time to get set up with an office and warehousing space that can cater to the needs of his various clients.
“I don’t want to be a trader who just moves an object from one place to another,” says Mr Anderson. “I want to be part of something that changes people’s lives and makes it better.
“We only have one environment and the cheaper, cleaner options available now for energy production mean we don’t have to ruin the planet. Obviously solar will be a key technology here, but that takes up a lot of space. I feel that the Anemos turbine combined with solar could be a game changer here, weighing only 42kg and requiring a footprint of only 4 square metres.”
ascott@thenational.ae
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