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Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — The construction industry is one of the biggest contributors to global warming and one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize.
According to the World Green Building Council, the construction, manufacturing and transportation of materials are responsible for about 11% of total global carbon emissions.
Now Abu Dhabi-based Desert Board believes it has found a way to reduce these emissions by using palm waste.
The United Arab Emirates has an estimated 40 million palm trees and is considered the fifth largest date producer in the world.
But palm fronds pose a problem when cutting, according to Kamal Farah, director of the Desert Board.
“If disposed of, it takes decades to decompose, takes up a lot of land and releases methane into the atmosphere,” Farah explained. “If it is not disposed of, it will be burned, releasing carbon dioxide.”
Desert Board uses palm tree waste left over from pruning to make a building material called Palm Strand Board, or PSB, which can replace plywood in the manufacture of furniture, floors, walls, doors and shelves.
Desert Board’s panels can be used for walls, floors, doors and furniture.
“This means taking natural waste and transforming it into a product that has value and can be used,” Farah emphasized.
Farah pointed out that PSB boards are recyclable and as durable as regular boards, adding that they are “resistant to fire, termites and moisture.”
Unlike many plywood panels, these panels do not contain formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.
Desert Board manufactured its first boards two years ago and now sells them in the United Arab Emirates and other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and India.
Farah stated that the company produces enough of these panels to cover two and a half football fields per day.
Because they are made from palm trees that have sequestered carbon dioxide over their lifetime, this means that every tonne of PSB used is equivalent to sequestering 400 kilograms of carbon.
Diversification
Farah said his company is the only one in the world to utilize palm waste in this way, adding that by making Abu Dhabi less dependent on imported materials, the Desert Board is in line with the emirate’s broader industrial strategy.
Abu Dhabi has the world’s sixth-largest oil reserves, at about 100 billion barrels, and its economy has long relied on fossil fuels.
However, the emirate is seeking to diversify away from oil, and in 2022 Abu Dhabi 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 boosting non-oil industries. Exports will increase by almost 150%.
UAE Undersecretary of Industry and Advanced Technology Omar Ahmed Al Suwaidi says an important part of the strategy is to “develop local supply chains that create more value in our industries” and be sustainable.
Al-Suwaidi assured CNN: “It won’t be easy. It will be an opportunity… and a challenge,” he added: “We have a lot of experience in heavy industries such as metal, chemicals and petrochemicals and one of them. Our main interest is to make these industries more environmentally friendly.”
Paul Hampton, head of the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom, said panels made from palm waste “are a deliberate step towards harnessing and integrating environmentally friendly principles through the use of sustainable materials that can be reused.” ”
However, reaching a broader market requires “additional knowledge of scalability, applicability and interoperability with existing products,” explains Hampton.
Entering the European market may require local certification of fire safety “and how the durability of the product responds to more changing weather.”
Although the use of panels in the broader housing market requires assurances about the product’s suitability, Hampton noted that there is “meaningful scope within certain applications.”
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