Sunset ,Rig,Flare, originally uploaded by ~VISTA

From The New York Times, Gulf Oil States Seeking a Lead in Clean Energy:

With one of the highest per capita carbon footprints in the world, these oil-rich emirates would seem an unlikely place for a green revolution.
…
They are aggressively pouring billions of dollars made in the oil fields into new green technologies. They are establishing billion-dollar clean-technology investment funds. And they are putting millions of dollars behind research projects at universities from California to Boston to London, and setting up green research parks at home.

More interesting is Masdar located in the United Arab Emirates, designed by Foster + Associates:

For example, initial plans for Masdar excluded both aluminum and conventional concrete because the production of those materials generates high levels of carbon emissions, which warm the planet. Aluminum manufacturers protested and came back with a product that reduced emissions by 90 percent compared with regular aluminum; it is now included in the project.
Proponents say Masdar goes beyond creating new materials and is in fact exploring a new model for urban life. Masdar will use one quarter of the energy of a conventional city its size (about 50,000 people) — an amount that it will produce itself.
“When people think about sustainability, they think about devices,” said Gerard Evenden, a partner at Foster and Partners, the British architectural firm that is designing the site. “But here you’re taking it to a city scale, which has much more of an impact — connecting the devices to the structure to the transportation to the people.”
The city will have no cars; people will move around using driverless electric vehicles that move on a subterranean level. The air-conditioning will be solar powered.

Most vexing is that while I am sure that Masdar will function better than a conventional city, it is still located in the middle of a desert and I’m not wholly convinced that this isn’t greenwashing. In the above phot, you can plainly see a large airport on the top-right side. Is this a new facility, and if so, why was regional rail discarded? Additionally, I don’t know why Personal Rapid Transit passes as sustainable transit – you need vastly greater amount of infrastructure and running stock for PRT versus mass transit. Additionally, the efficiencies of moving large amount of people at the same time using highly efficient vehicles is lost when you have thousands of smaller vehicles making magnitudes more trips.
I applaud the UAE on working toward a carbon neutral society, but the proof will be in the pudding.