The President announced on Thursday that the fourth and last module of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant is now functioning.
In a tweet, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, announced that the UAE has reached another important milestone on the path to achieving net zero with the commencement of operations at Unit 4 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant.
Unit 4 increases the national grid’s clean electricity capacity by an additional 1,400 megawatts. The initial multi-unit operational facility in the Arab region is projected to avoid over 22 million tons of carbon emissions annually, which is equal to taking 4.8 million cars off the roads.
The Barakah Plant currently produces 40TWh of electricity annually, which is almost equal to the yearly energy consumption of New Zealand, and supplies around a quarter of the UAE’s electricity needs. This renewable and emissions-free power is sufficient for 16 million electric vehicles every year.
The President stated that we will keep focusing on energy security and sustainability to benefit our nation and our people both now and in the future.
This action is the most significant effort to reduce carbon emissions in the UAE and the region, placing the country ahead of its 2030 climate goals. The Barakah Plant’s prevention of 22.4 million tonnes of annual carbon emissions is like taking 4.6 million cars off the roads yearly and helps fulfill 24% of the country’s 2030 decarbonisation goals.
Institutional knowledge and experience have been gradually utilized to connect each unit to the grid more effectively than the one before. Unit 3 was completed four months ahead of the Unit 2 timeline, and five months ahead of the Unit 1 timeline, showing the substantial advantage of constructing multiple units in a phased schedule.
In November 2023, ENEC, the sole nuclear energy developer in the UAE, introduced ENEC Advance, a program to assess the most recent technologies in advanced small modular reactor and micro-reactor categories.
