The story of renewable energy across the Middle East and North
Africa is usually told from one viewpoint: the sun that beats down relentlessly
on the region’s deserts. Solar is indeed a tremendous source of power and
increasingly made to move electrons. But wind also blows across the Middle
East’s plains, hills, and seas — and megaprojects are harnessing it.
اضافة اعلان
The MENA region actually began using modern wind
power on a commercial scale a decade before solar, with projects in Morocco,
Egypt, Israel, and at Tafileh, Jordan, where turbines languidly turn near the
ancient castle of Karak.
But solar really took off from 2010 as costs fell.
The cheapest electricity in the world is generated from solar energy in the UAE
and Saudi Arabia. World-scale projects such as the largest single-site solar
farm at Al-Dhafra in Abu Dhabi, weighing in at 2 gigawatts and two of the
biggest multi-project locations, the Mohammed bin Rashid solar park in Dubai (5
gigawatts) and Benban in Egypt (1.8 gigawatts), grab the headlines.
Smaller-scale solar panels can also be placed on homes and factories.
Last year, the region generated 20.5 terawatt-hours
of solar electricity, as against 15.6 terawatt-hours of wind, nearly all from
Egypt and Morocco. By comparison, Morocco, one of the region’s smaller
electricity users, consumed 41 terawatt-hours from all sources.
While not as consistent as north-west Europe, there
are excellent wind resources in the MENA region. Southern Morocco, the areas
around the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba in Egypt, Jordan and north-west Saudi
Arabia, southern Egypt, and the south-east coast of Oman are all very windy.
Parts of Libya, southern Tunisia, the Algerian Sahara, inland Iran and Kuwait
also have strong winds. In contrast to much of Europe, the region has wide-open
spaces where wind farms are not blocked by community opposition.
Egypt, host of the COP27 climate change meeting, is
capitalizing most of all. With 1.59 gigawatts currently installed, 0.75
gigawatts under construction and 1.6 gigawatts planned, it signed a swathe of
projects in recent weeks. These include memoranda of understanding with
Norwegian developer Scatec for 5 gigawatts, with the UAE clean energy vehicle
Masdar for 10 gigawatts, and with Saudi power developer Acwa, also for 10
gigawatts.
These would be the second-largest wind farms in the
world: only the 20 gigawatt Gansu in China is bigger. Acwa is already building
a 1.1 gigawatt wind farm at Gebel El-Zeit on the Gulf of Suez, which will be
the region’s biggest when it starts up in late 2026. Egypt’s projected total of
24 gigawatts would be the seventh-largest national capacity in the world on
current figures.
In addition, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco ,and
Mauritania will require huge wind farms to drive their planned green hydrogen
projects, which use renewable electricity to electrolyze water.
MENA solar power achieves a capacity factor — a source’s average output as a proportion of its peak output — of around 20 percent over the course of a year, allowing for night-time and seasons.
Wind power under MENA conditions is likely to be
more expensive than solar, even if Saudi Arabia did secure a very competitive
tariff of 2.13 US cents per kilowatt-hour for its first wind farm at Dumat
Al-Jandal (the lowest solar contract in the region was at 1.03 cents per
kilowatt-hour). Wind power also takes longer to build, and output is not as
predictable beyond a few days.
But wind has several advantages. Most obviously, it
blows at night — often more strongly than during the day. This makes it
complementary to solar power. It is particularly useful on hot early autumn
evenings, when people need air-conditioning even after sunset.
MENA solar power achieves a capacity factor — a
source’s average output as a proportion of its peak output — of around 20
percent over the course of a year, allowing for night-time and seasons.
Egyptian wind power manages 53 percent. Solar and wind in the best locations
can have a combined capacity factor above 70 percent.
This high
capacity factor is particularly important for the economics of green hydrogen,
which depend on maximizing the electrolyzer’s running hours while using the
cheapest possible electricity. This explains why Egypt, Morocco, Oman and Saudi
Arabia have taken the regional lead in renewable hydrogen, as have other windy
coastal desert countries worldwide such as Australia, Chile, and Namibia.
And the higher capacity factors mean that a gigawatt
of wind displaces more gas or oil consumption than solar does. Ambitious
deployment of wind could see Egypt’s requirement for gas to make electricity
dropping in the 2030s, as the country’s own production declines and net-zero
carbon targets draw closer.
A few vital questions remain. First, where will
Egypt in particular put the turbines for its enormous planned projects? The
windy corridors around Sinai are relatively constrained and flanked by
mountains. Areas further south on the Red Sea coast, or well inland with more
difficult logistics, will have to be considered. The latest agreements do not
publicly specify a location or a timeline.
Second, will the region venture offshore, as
north-west Europe has done so successfully? This brings stronger and more
consistent winds, and a much larger area to develop, albeit at higher costs.
Third, do current
wind announcements overlap with green hydrogen projects? If not, the
requirement for wind will be much bigger — and the competition for good sites
and equipment more intense.
Fourth, can the less blustery MENA countries,
particularly the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, make economic use of turbines
optimized for slower wind speeds? And fifth, will the other windy and
power-short countries that have so far made little progress, such as Iraq,
Kuwait, Libya, and Tunisia, start adopting the technology?
If these questions can be answered positively, the
turning turbine as much as the shimmering solar panel will symbolize MENA’s
energy transition.
Robin Mills is CEO of Qamar Energy, and author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis.
Twitter:
@robinenergy. Syndication Bureau.
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