Fatihah's Published Research on Renewable Energy

Most of us read articles without thinking much about who wrote them. Fatihah, one of our Year 13 students, had a different thought: “I read a lot of them, I felt like I wanted to write one too.”

So she did. Her research has now been published in Australian ABDC journals and has appeared in Fortune India, Midday and BW Education.

Where economics meets sustainability

Fatihah started out with an interest in economics. Along the way, she bridged it with sustainability, and found a topic that sat right between the two: how Saudi Arabia and the UAE invest in renewable energy in other countries.

It wasn’t the first idea she tried. She explored other topics, including finance and a study on Kenya, before settling on renewable energy. What drew her to it was that fewer people had explored it than the others. Most of her information came from official websites and older articles, which meant she had to dig for it.

What she found

“I learned a lot about how involved these countries are in renewable energy in general,” Fatihah says. She was struck by how many well-known companies invest heavily in solar and wind power, helping not just their own countries but others too.

She also worked with two mentors, one a Stanford graduate and the other an Oxford graduate, as she shaped her research into something ready to publish.

What this says about our school

At NAS Abu Dhabi, we want every child to be Compassionate, Curious, Critical, Creative, Committed and Collaborative. You can see a lot of them in Fatihah’s story. She was Curious enough to ask why not her, and Creative in bringing two fields together. She was Committed enough to try several topics and see one through to publication, and Collaborative in learning from her mentors.

It’s also a reminder of why we encourage students to follow their interests beyond the classroom. Sustainability matters to our students, and to the country they’re growing up in. When young people take it seriously and want to understand it, we want to support them.

What’s next

Fatihah plans to study business management at university in the UAE, with ambitions in management and business. She hopes to keep writing along the way.

“I hope more people can educate themselves on renewable energy and learn about it,” she says. She also hopes her work encourages other students to try writing their own articles or research papers.

Congratulations, Fatihah. We’re proud of the effort behind this, and we can’t wait to see where it takes you.