The sustainable city, dubbed Masdar, is being designed with help from the environmental group WWF, and all energy used there is intended to be renewable -- principally from solar panels.

"It's extremely ambitious," said Gerard Evenden, senior partner at Norman Foster's architecture practice, where the designs for Masdar are taking shape.

"We were invited to design a zero-carbon city."

"In this harsh place we needed to look back at history and see how ancient settlements had adapted to their environments."

The city will be aligned north-east to south-west to provide the ideal balance of sun and shade.

Homes and offices will be constructed to allow air in but keep the Sun's heat out -- with wind towers using natural convection to provide ventilation.

Buildings will be limited to five storeys, and packed around narrow streets no more than 3 metres wide and 70 metres long -- this is intended to create a micro-climate where the air is constantly moving.

"This will be the global capital of the renewable energy revolution," said Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, head of WWF's One Planet Living initiative.

"It's the first oil producing nation to have taken such a significant step towards sustainable living."

Masdar will boast a hydrogen plant which will create the gas from natural gas using steam, resulting in a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

The CO2 will be sequestered underground or may alternately be used to extract more oil from existing wells, by using it at pressure to force deposits to the surface.

"It's important because it shows that you can generate hydrogen without carbon release from fossil fuels," said Keith Guy, professor of chemical engineering at Bath University.

"When you look at how hydrogen could be made economically, the route that many people have been looking at -- through electrolysis of water -- is incredibly expensive."