A carbon neutral city?

Here at Pangaea we deal a lot in carbon credits, in fact a good portion of our day is used discussing them. So this morning on NPR when I heard that a carbon neutral city is in the works, my ears perked up. That is until where I heard this city will be located in Abu Dhabi, then I almost crashed my car. Just kidding, but in all truth I was REALLY, REALLY surprised. For all of you non-geography people, Abu Dhabi is in the United Arab Emirates boarding Saudi Arabia and Oman and across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

I would not exactly pair the biggest oil producing region in the world with anything pertaining to environmental standards...but turns out I was wrong. The proposed city would be called Masdar City and will burn no gas or oil, so its contribution to greenhouse gases will be minimal. The entire city would be built towards the Northeast which will optimize the amount of solar energy that can be gathered in a day. Cars would also be banned within the city and instead something called a personalized transit system (PTS) would be used to get from place to place. Designers envision the PRS (which is very similar to a 6 person car) to run off solar and battery power.

The country has made this project city a priority to try and better position themselves financially when their oil runs out. I find this idea absolutely ingenious and really quite surprising at the same time. It is a very ambitious project which skeptics have claimed is impossible. What do you think about a city completely eliminating its carbon footprint?
For the NPR version click here.