Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) on Tuesday announced signing an agreement with National Bonds to set up a 2.4 billion UAE dirham ($653.4  million) green fund at the World Green Economy Summit (WGES) that opened in Dubai today.
 
“The fund will also be the first major green fund that will have a dedicated arm for Sharia-compliant investments,” Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, chairman of WGES and the CEO and managing director of DEWA told the audience at the summit.

National Bonds is a Sharia-compliant savings scheme and 100 percent owned by Dubai’s sovereign wealth fund, the Investment Corporation of Dubai.
 
This investment forms the first major investment into the 100 billion UAE dirham ‘Dubai Green Fund’ run by DEWA to finance investments in green energy that was announced as part of the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which was launched two years ago.

About 50 billion UAE dirhams worth of investment is being made into solar projects in Dubai by 2030, part of a strategy aiming to see 75 percent of the emirate’s total power output generated from clean energy sources by 2050.
 
Al Tayer also announced the first international participants in the World Green Economy Organisation (WGEO) – a body set up by the United Arab Emirates through a global partnership with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
 
The foundation stages of WGEO were completed with six platforms launched in a 12-month period, Al Tayer said, and the seventh platform had now been created through this international participation.
 
“This new platform officially sees light today as three countries have joined it so far that are the UAE, Republic of Korea and Republic of Italy,” Al Tayer said.
 
“This is only the beginning; we aspire to have more countries joining Countries Platform from all over the world to intensify collective efforts to tackle climate change,” he added.

© ZAWYA 2017