Abu Dhabi, the largest of seven sheikhdoms in the United Arab Emirates, is swimming in oil revenue - and it's investing some of that money in solar power. That's more than can be said for Exxon Mobil Corp., which rebuffed a Rockefeller initiative at yesterday's annual meeting to nudge the company toward renewable energy. A shareholder resolution sponsored by the company's founding family was easily defeated.

Exxon's stance is an assertion that today's primacy of oil will continue for years to come, and that what the oil giant does best is look for oil and gas, not manufacture solar panels. But Abu Dhabi is doing the sort of forward planning that the Rockefellers wish Exxon would consider for tomorrow. Today Masdar, part of the industrial development arm of the Abu Dhabi government, unveiled plans to invest $2 billion in thin-film photovoltaic solar technology. True, this amounts to about a month of Exxon Mobil's projected capital spending this year. But in the solar world, it's substantial and noteworthy and probably just the sort of thing the Rockefellers would like Exxon to do.

Steven Geiger, director special projects at Masdar, talked with me by phone today. He said that Masdar aims to produce 1 gigawatt of panels by 2013 by adding plants, most likely in the southwest United States and Asia.

The first phase of investment will help bring solar power to Abu Dhabi and other Mideast oil producing countries, many of which still use oil to generate electricity, a practice that is wasteful and costly. In addition, Geiger said, there is a “staggering the growth of power demand” in the UAE.