ABU DHABI, 12th November, 2026 (WAM) -- Masdar City, Abu Dhabi’s pioneering sustainable urban community and business and investment hub, has released its 2025 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report, highlighting measurable progress in environmental performance, business growth and social development. The report reinforces Masdar City’s role in advancing Abu Dhabi’s Falcon Economy vision through sustainable urban development and innovation, while supporting the UAE’s Net Zero 2050 agenda.
Ahmed Baghoum, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar City, said: “Sustainability must be measured not only by the ambitions we set, but by the results we deliver. At Masdar City, we are translating that ambition into action across our built environment, operations and business ecosystem, demonstrating how resource efficiency, innovation and economic competitiveness can reinforce one another.
Our ESG progress reflects our commitment to building a community that creates lasting value for businesses, residents and Abu Dhabi’s wider economy.”
In 2025, Masdar City's streets, parks and buildings became a living showcase of what sustainable urban development looks like in practice. Masdar City Mosque, Abu Dhabi's First Net Zero Energy Mosque, generates 100% of the energy it consumes on site from renewable sources.
Connect Park offers residents a place to rest, play and reconnect with nature, Falaj Plaza brings Emirati heritage together with low-carbon design, and the city’s agrivoltaics project pairs solar power generation with food production on the same land. Together, these projects show that sustainability is not an add-on but the foundation of the city's urban development portfolio, from renewable energy and biodiversity to resource efficiency and community well-being.
Key environmental performance indicators in 2025 included:
• 10,797 MWh of renewable energy generated, including 9,906 MWh exported to the grid.
• 42% reduction in energy use intensity (EUI) against the ASHRAE 90.1-2007 baseline
• 2,517 tCO₂e of emissions avoided through exported renewable electricity, equivalent to removing 584 gasoline-powered vehicles from the road for one year.
• 93.6% of operational waste and 93.5% of construction waste diverted from landfill.
• 295,089 m² of parks and open spaces.
The Masdar City Free Zone is helping translate Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification ambitions into a growing ecosystem of businesses, talent and innovation. In 2025, the Free Zone reached 1,991 registered companies, recorded a 33% increase in jobs created and opened its first international representative office in China, extending its reach into new markets. Recognition through nine industry awards further underscored its progress during the year.
Beyond this growth, the Free Zone brings together businesses, entrepreneurs and research institutions working across artificial intelligence, life sciences, smart mobility, agritech, energy and space technology. This concentration of expertise creates opportunities for collaboration and supports the development of emerging industries. Initiatives such as The Catalyst, the region’s first cleantech investment and accelerator platform, help advance this ambition by supporting clean technology innovation.
The report also highlights organizations within the Free Zone ecosystem that are contributing to its growth, including the UAE Space Agency, Unikie, MBZUAI, Insilico Medicine, Halia Therapeutics, GenBio AI, CycloTech and AKT Health.
People remain at the heart of Masdar City's growth. In 2025, UAE nationals made up 52% of the workforce and women 27%, while leadership, resilience and digital skills programs ran throughout the year. Every employee completed the annual performance review. Beyond the workplace, Masdar City brought its community together through its festival and a community run, activated Connect Park as a destination for well-being and recreation, and delivered tree planting initiatives that support biodiversity.
Transparency and accountability sit at the core of how Masdar City operates, and in 2025 that commitment became part of its daily operations. The city introduced a fully integrated, in-house eProcurement platform that replaces five legacy systems with a single digital environment.
The shift matters beyond the city's own teams. In 2025, 97.3% of the products and services Masdar City bought came from local suppliers, and a clearer, more transparent buying process helps those suppliers compete on fair terms. For the businesses in the Free Zone, that kind of trust is part of what makes Masdar City a place to build, and the city's enterprise risk management framework supports the same goal by giving it a structured way to identify and address the risks that matter most.
As the city evolves, Masdar City is committed to accelerating the transition to a resilient, future-ready economy, building the businesses and communities that will drive it, and leaving a lasting legacy for future generations. Environmental, social and governance considerations are built into how the city plans, operates and grows, and its green print, a model for how cities can be part of the climate solution, is designed to be shared. In doing so, it aims to help Abu Dhabi and the UAE lead the world in sustainability.