Ergos: A New Energy Currency

Foreign Language Translations:Ergos: A New Energy Currency[Keywords: Energy, climate change, the Arabian Gulf, technological imaginaries, urban design, eco-city, value, alternative currencies]Ergos: Uma Nova Moeda Energetica[Palavras-chave: Energia, alteracoes climaticas, Golfo da Arabia, imaginarios tecnologicos, design urbano, eco-cidade, valor, moedas alternativas]...(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)IntroductionIn 2006, the government of Abu Dhabi launched an ambitious plan to produce what it imagined to be "the world's first zero-carbon city": Masdar City. Articles on Masdar City began appearing in the international press soon after the official launching of the project. "Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the fourth largest OPEC oil producer with about ten percent of the known reserves, is seeking to become a center for the development and implementation of clean-energy technology," a New York Times article announced (Fattah 2007). The zero-carbon district would cost $22 billion USD, and eventually house 50,000 people and 1,500 renewable energy and clean technology businesses. The producers of Masdar City claimed that they would implement a personal rapid transport (PRT) network throughout the city, thus completely prohibiting car entry. Moreover, they announced an effort to start a renewable energy focused research institution at the center of the city with support from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology would serve to transform Abu Dhabi in the same way that MIT transformed the Boston area into a start-up haven. Together with other satellite campuses, such as New York University in Abu Dhabi (NYU-AD) or the Sorbonne, Masdar Institute would have a significant role in initiating a knowledge-based economy in Abu Dhabi. While some commentators mocked the project for being located in a country where the carbon footprint per capita is the highest in the world, others appreciated the fact that an oil-rich Emirate was investing in renewable energy resources, thereby acknowledging that the energy portfolio of the future would not only consist of fossil fuels. During the groundbreaking ceremony, Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of Masdar, declared, "[w]e are creating a city where residents and commuters will live the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental footprint. Masdar City will become the world's hub for future energy. By taking sustainable development and living to a new level, it will lead the world in understanding how all future cities should be built."1In addition to implementing the UAE's economic vision, Masdar Institute attempted to engineer an economic vision of its own, specifically by planning a new currency based on energy consumption. Masdar Institute faculty members,2 with whom I worked as a research assistant during my fieldwork in Abu Dhabi between September 2010 and June 2011, imagined that, in the future, inhabitants of Masdar City could be issued a balance of energy credits called "ergos," as a means of defining and regulating their pre-allocated energy budget. Through individual monitoring and regulation, ergos aimed at decreasing energy consumption among the residents of Masdar City. And yet the researchers that I worked with occasionally mentioned that the ergos project had a "Big Brother side" to it, and worried that it could lead to a "technocratic dictatorship."At a time of uncertainty and anxiety regarding the future of energy resources, the ergos experiment would serve to create awareness about consumption behavior among Masdar City residents. Through its dedication to a sophisticated technological infrastructure, the experiment would not only monitor the population within Masdar City as a whole, but also track individual energy use. By replacing dirhams with kilowatts, the Masdar Institute researchers would also redefine the meaning of a currency, and frame it as an information-tracking device with possibly global reach. …