Nasser Al Khater
BERLIN: Qatar is racing to develop efficient solar-powered cooling technology to counter the searing heat of the Middle Eastern summer in its stadiums during the 2022 soccer World Cup, a senior organising committee official said.
Nasser Al Khater, the organising committee’s communications and marketing director, also said the state would construct its stadiums with modular technology so it could downscale them after the tournament, and donate seating to countries with little sports infrastructure.
Al Khater said the state already boasted the world’s first cooled stadium, albeit with traditional energy sources. “We showed (world governing body) FIFA how the cooling technology works, it was warm outside but in stadium was cold and they wanted their jackets,” Al Khater said during a trip to Berlin for a Qatari business and investment conference. “So cooling a stadium is not the issue.”
The issue is that Qatar has promised to hold a carbon-neutral World Cup and so is researching solar-powered cooling technology. It will either create a central solar power farm or have individual ones installed in each of the 12 stadiums it is building, he said.
“When you don’t use it for the stadiums you feed it into the grid,” he said. The state developed a small, solar-powered prototype stadium seating 500 during the bid process but wants to develop more efficient technologies ahead of 2022.
“With solar, the big challenge is how do you deal with solar technology in the desert in terms of withstanding the elements and getting it clean so it is efficient,” Al Khater said. He said he had met several German companies during his trip to Berlin that had interesting proposals. Germany has been a pioneer in solar technology.
Many leading voices in football such as UEFA President Michel Platini have called for the World Cup to be held in December or January rather than in the middle of the year. Al Khater said Qatar would go ahead researching and installing the cooling technology either way as the stadiums would be used in the summer months even after the World Cup. “Whether it is a winter or summer World Cup we will be ready,” he said.
Reuters
