Damascus must be the most solarised city in the Middle East. Panels adorn almost every apartment building, villa and hotel, with workers hammering away to install more. From calamity has come opportunity, and an alternative path to the region’s solar future.
Syria’s high level of solar panels reflects the combination of a broken-down grid during its long civil war, and the sudden rush of cheap China-made panels and batteries. The national network provides at best about four hours of electricity per day. Local diesel generators are widely used, but fuel is still scarce and expensive for most people.
Electricity generation, which reached about 45 terawatt-hours in 2010, tumbled to under 20TWh by 2015 and did not recover. Now, the new post-Assad government is hurrying to restore gas supplies and repair dams and power stations, but this is a lengthy job. Solar power is crucial to filling the gap. It could do even more.
The change is remarkable. The Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency began reporting Syria’s off-grid solar capacity in 2022, standing at 249 megawatts. It reached 931MW in 2023, 1,500MW in 2024, and 2,060MW last year. Renewable power by then made up a third of national generating capacity, outstripped in the region only by Lebanon and Jordan. A quarter of Syrian households have some kind of solar power. In war-battered Aleppo, too, panels are everywhere.
Traditional large-scale on-grid installations, of the type made famous by sites such as the Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park in Dubai, reached just 189MW in Syria by 2025. Agreements have been signed for large projects with Saudi and Qatari-led consortia but could take years to implement. Syria’s sunrise is a story not of government leading, but of people taking their energy needs into their own hands.
The solar panels installed so far can run lights and appliances, and water pumps for farms. Batteries provide electricity during the night. They would be inadequate for electrical heating in winter, and struggle with large air-conditioning demand in summer.
The systems can be easily installed by a local engineer. A basic household set-up of 1.5 to 3 kilowatts costs from $2,500 to $4,500. This is still expensive in a country with per-person income estimated at about $800. Yet people have managed to find the money.
Rooftop revolution
The Syrian story is notable. It reminds us of other regional countries who, suffering from severe blackouts because of economic and political crises, have also rushed to rooftop solar power. These include notably Lebanon, Yemen and Pakistan.
However, Libya and Iraq, which similarly struggle with serious power shortages, are only haltingly beginning to put panels on their buildings. Fuel and electricity there are heavily subsidised, but their people should be much more able to afford solar systems than Syrians. Those subsidies should be directed at solarisation instead.
Some cities elsewhere in the world have extensive rooftop photovoltaic installations for more positive reasons: sunny climates, high energy bills, government incentives, and/or a strong solar industry. Such places include Honolulu in Hawaii, San Diego in California, Adelaide in South Australia, and Dezhou in Shandong, China, a centre of the country’s solar manufacturing. In these cases, the grid stands ready to complement the solar output, or soak up excess generation.
For those without access to a roof, not owning their own home, or not wanting to go through lengthy approval processes, “balcony” solar has become popular – small solar kits that can be bought from a hardware shop and plugged directly into a wall outlet. For tall apartment buildings, where the roof on its own would not meet the needs of all the residents, the facade can have panels fitted.
Syria’s solar installations will help as it rebuilds its conventional power system. It will save fuel, ease the burden on the grid, and reduce the need for reinforcement to meet peak demand. People’s health will benefit by cutting out the noisy, polluting diesel generators which plague the streets of Lebanon and Iraq. As construction picks up, refugees return, and industry and tourism revive, electricity consumption will rise sharply.
Lessons for Gulf nations
For the Gulf countries, with their reliable and generally quite cheap mainstream grids, residential solar has not been adopted much. Rooftop solar has mainly been confined to larger users, such as factories, malls and hotels, which have higher bills, available money, and plenty of roof space.
As of June 2025, Dubai had 725MW of distributed solar under its Shams scheme. Abu Dhabi launched the second phase of its solar self-supply policy in March, and Oman was estimated to have reached 130MW of small and medium installations by the end of last year.
Large-scale solar plants such as the 2 gigawatt Al Dhafra in Abu Dhabi are their favoured approach. These generate more cheaply than rooftop installations.
But distributed solar still has its place. Teamed with batteries, it reduces the grid capacity required, particularly beneficial in dense urban environments. It spreads out the variability of solar power over larger areas and can improve the resilience of power supply.
They also help in supplying remote or mobile sites, such as islands, mining and drilling operations, military bases, and construction sites. They save on land, which is a concern in densely-populated areas such as Bahrain. And they have sparked a diverse local ecosystem of smaller solar developers and installers, who now turn their skills to markets throughout the Middle East and Africa.
Nevertheless, the key application for distributed solar today is clearly in countries stricken by conflict and crisis. It can speed their rebuilding process and unlock capital. They give power back to people who were for too long denied by incompetent, brutal and uncaring governments.
