Panel Discussion: Clean Energy in the MENA region: Challenges and Opportunities
The CEBC Clean Energy Annual Summit is our flagship event of the year where experts and industry leaders from across the globe come together to discuss the clean energy trends, challenges, opportunities and outlook. The summit focuses on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market.
Key takeaways from the panel:
– A successful transition leaves no one behind. Energy security can bring considerable hope.
– According to IRENA’s world energy transition outlook, looking at a 1.5° scenario, our efforts should focus on conservation, efficiency, green hydrogen, electrification.
– The share of electricity in the mix must increase from 21% to 51%, with 90% of electricity coming from renewables. This requires total investment of $4 trillion per year til 2050 in solutions like renewables, electrification and carbon removal.
– The end of the pandemic brings the promise of global green recovery. It is an unprecedented opportunity, our mandate has never been more relevant.
– Masdar started looking at hydrogen in 2008 and the time is now right to accelerate investment in the hydrogen sector. For green hydrogen to make sense commercially, we need to accelerate growth. The industry can create half a million jobs globally.
– The pandemic has not slowed the advancement of renewable projects, it has emphasized the need for the energy transition to a decarbonized asset fleet.
– A large part of the customer base is starting, or not yet starting to implement net zero targets. They require assistance to create a roadmap. This is a wake-up call for corporations in the region.
– We don’t have an ecosystem of regulation in place which are forcing companies to disclose or come up with a plan, but it is coming fast, especially for customers who are accessing financing from an international market. Local banks also access the international market, so their portfolios come under scrutiny. The world is interconnected, so these things will pick up very fast.
– This region has the largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world, but has still seen a successful deployment of renewables. A lot has stemmed from policy, since states have committed to ambitious targets, and additionally committed to programs off the back of these targets.
– For oil exporting nations there is a need to diversify the economy and free up hydrocarbon resources for other uses. For energy importing countries, there is a need to reduce imports of energy and strengthen energy security. The support of institutional financing for the development of projects has been vital.
This summit is organized by the Clean Energy Business Council (CEBC). The CEBC is a non profit organization dedicated to promoting clean energy including renewables, energy efficiency, smart grid, energy storage and clean energy technology and solutions for the environmental sector. CEBC provides a platform to further dialogue between the public and private sectors to develop much needed policy and regulation to help drive the implementation of clean energy across the MENA region. Thank you to the summit Gold sponsors Pinsent Masons, Standard Chartered, GreenParking, CATEC Mobility, CITA, ESB International and Enova and Bronze sponsors Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), SCAME, Hager Group and Lockton.