Renewable energies can preserve GCC oil

Regional governments should view alternative energy as a viable export, a new study recommends.

Solar panels outside a home in Ras Al Khaimah. Alternative sources of energy should be looked at as a viable export possibility, according to a new survey.

ABU DHABI // Regional governments should view alternative sources of energy like solar power as a viable export possibility, rather than a threat to their oil and gas revenues, a new study published yesterday recommends. Gulf nations face surging domestic needs for power, which have absorbed some of their oil and gas resources that would otherwise have been exported. Many states are considering nuclear power as one option to meet domestic electricity demand, and in Abu Dhabi the Masdar Institute has focused on making other alternative technologies a commercial reality.

Eckart Woertz, an economist at the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai and author of Alternative Energy Trends and Implications for GCC Countries, said Masdar was a good first step, but other countries could do more to promote renewable energy such as wind and solar power. "Renewable energies can stretch the lifeline of the GCC's oil and gas exports, and in some decades from now they even have the potential to develop into a major pillar of the economy," Mr Woertz said in the report.

A group called the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Co-operation has been working to create vast solar power plants in the Gulf and North Africa, producing power that would be exported into Europe via electrical cables. The main proposal is Desertec, which aims to produce up to a quarter of Europe's power needs by 2050. Under the plan, hi-tech plants in North Africa using mirrors to concentrate solar rays would send electricity via high-voltage lines under the Mediterranean. The project has received the initial backing of the German Ministry of the Environment. Mr Woertz said this project underscored the potential of the region to generate new sources of energy.

"The Gulf region should not regard renewables as unwelcome competition to their own energy projects," he said. "They should rather embrace them as a welcome addition to tight global energy markets." The German Aerospace Centre has conducted satellite-based studies showing it would take just 0.3 per cent of the desert zones of the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) for solar thermal power plants to generate electricity and water desalination for Mena and Europe.

Already, the Mena region has become a hotspot for work in concentrating solar power plants. Seven of the 17 nations developing this technology are located in the region. The work could help solar power become one of the key "stabilisation wedges" needed to reduce carbon emissions and avert a potential climate change catastrophe later in the century. Solar power could be used together with other so-called "wedges" such as nuclear power and energy conservation, as outlined by Prof Robert Socolow at Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative. However, the technological challenges facing the monumental Desertec project are considerable. Malcolm Wicks, the British minister for trade and industry, has raised concerns over the ability to transmit huge amounts of power over long distances.

"The economics, in particular the amounts of energy required, to justify the investment in the high-voltage direct-current link required needs more work," he said during parliamentary debate. "There would need to be a massive source of surplus electricity to make this a worthwhile and considerable investment." The proposal, which was first conceived in the early 2000s, will also need a great deal of political co-operation between European and North African nations.

The concept, which could take 30 years to build and cost US$400 billion (Dh1.47 trillion), is still awaiting the full backing of the EU. Last month, 25 parliamentarians wrote to the president of the European Commission for support, in the hope of garnering new impetus for the project. @Email:[e-mail]