Gulf Cooperation Council’s Renewable Energy Targets — Considerable Or Weak?
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Much has been made of renewable energy growth targets recently made by key Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Clearly, when oil-rich nations start pouring money into renewable energy, a global energy transition is ashift. However, it’s worth putting these investments into a bit more perspective.
Masdar recently commissioned a Frost & Sullivan white paper on renewable energy and cleantech within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
From that white paper, you can see the renewable energy targets of some of these countries or their leading states. Have a look:
While it’s nice to see some renewable energy growth planned in this region, 1%–10% targets are hardly ambitious.
While this is not an apples-to-apples comparison (better would be investment per capita or per GDP or per electricity demand), the image below is interesting. Up until 2012, investment in the Middle East & Africa region was much less than investment in other regions of the world. However, in 2012, investment shot up a bit, rising higher than investment in Central & South America. Let’s just hope that jump is followed by further jumps of a similar size or greater in the coming years.
Let’s hope that early success with renewable energy projects — creating jobs, cutting costs, etc. — inspire the countries to increase their renewable energy targets and growth.
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