Abu Dhabi
CNN
—
The construction industry is one of the biggest contributors to global warming and one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise.
Building construction and materials manufacturing and transportation account for about 11% of all global carbon emissions, according to World Green Building Council. Now, Abu Dhabi-based company Desert Board says it has found a way to reduce those emissions by using palm waste.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been assessed 40 million date palmsand is of the world fifth largest producer of dates. But when the palm leaves are cut they become a problem, according to Kamal Farah, director of the Desert Board.
“When you throw them away, they take decades to decompose, taking up huge amounts of land and releasing methane into the atmosphere. If they’re not disposed of, they burn, which releases CO2 (carbon dioxide),” he told CNN.
Desert Board uses palm waste left over from pruning to create a building material called Palm Strand Board (PSB), which can replace plywood in furniture, flooring, walls, doors and shelving.
“This is taking nature-based waste and turning it into a product with value and use,” Farah said.
Farah says PSB is recyclable and just as durable as regular board, adding that it is “fire, termite and moisture resistant” and unlike many plywoods, it does not contain formaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen.
Desert Board manufactured its first PSB two years ago and now sells it in the UAE and countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and India. Farah says the company produces enough PSB to cover two and a half football fields a day, and because it’s made from palm trees, which captured carbon dioxide while they were alive, each tonne of PSB used is equivalent to capturing 400kg of carbon.
CNN
Palm Strand Board can be used for walls, floors, doors and furniture.
Farah says his company is the only one in the world to use palm waste in this way, and that by making Abu Dhabi less dependent on imported materials, Desert Board aligns with the emirate’s wider industrial strategy.
Abu Dhabi has the world sixth largest oil reserves, at around 100 billion barrels, and its economy has long depended on fossil fuels. This week’s COP 28 climate summit put the spotlight on the sector, with the conference chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, who is the UAE’s climate envoy and head of the renewable energy company, runs the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Earlier this week, Al Jaber had to do just that clarification of comments did for the future of fossil fuels.
But the emirate says it is trying to diversify away from oil and in 2022, Abu Dhabi has announced an ambitious industrial strategy to boost its economy by doubling the size of its manufacturing sector by 2031, creating more than 13,000 jobs and increasing non-oil exports by almost 150%.
Omar Ahmed Al Suwaidi, undersecretary of the UAE Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, says an important part of the strategy includes developing “local supply chains and creating more value from our industries”, as well as sustainability.
“It won’t be easy. It will be an opportunity… a challenge,” Suwadi told CNN. “We have a lot of experience in heavy industries such as metals, chemicals, petrochemicals, and one of our main goals is to try to [make] these industries greener.”
Paul Hampton, head of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK, says the palm waste table is “an important step towards using and incorporating eco-friendly principles, using reusable sustainable materials”.
But reaching a wider market would require “additional understanding around scalability, implementation and functionality with existing products,” he said. Entry into the European market may require local certification regarding fire safety, “and how the durability of the product would react in a more interchangeable climate.”
Hampton adds that while its use in the wider residential market would need assurances about the product’s suitability, “there is significant scope in some applications”.