Gulf Cooperation Council’s Renewable Energy Targets — Considerable Or Weak?

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.