Qatari Diar Vinci Construction (QDVC) has launched the first phase of an algae carbon sequestration project in Qatar as part of its commitment towards sustainable development.
“We are collaborating with French company Creocean in this regard,” Sheikha Athba al-Thani, chief support services and sustainable development manager of QDVC, said yesterday.
It was in 2009 that QDVC started calculating its car fleet’s CO2 production. Over the past three years around 8,000 tonnes of CO2 have been produced by QDVC’s car fleet.
The company has been waiting for an opportunity to finance a carbon sequestration project in Qatar.
In November this year, with the technical expertise of Creocean, QDVC decided to initiate its own algae carbon sequestration project.
The project will start with the evaluation of the resources in brown algae belonging to the species Hormophysa cuneiformis in the Northwest of Qatar.
The objective of this initiative is to understand and evaluate the specific algae that have the capability to capture CO2.
This is the first step to set up the algae carbon sequestration project in Qatar. The project started this week will last 10 weeks.
Signing the contract, Edouard Horlin, regional manager of Creocean, said the initiative will possibly play a role in decreasing the CO2 emissions from various projects in Qatar.
Sheikha Athba al-Thani expressed the hope that the QDVC project will attract more companies to come forward.
QDVC’s Sustainable Development department is actively engaged in waste management, green procurement, optimisation of the car fleet, promoting clean technologies, control and monitor critical resources like water, to reduce the company’s environmental impacts.