The potential employment impacts of green and renewable energy in the Middle East and North Africa are multifaceted and promising. As this column explains, embracing renewable energy technologies presents an opportunity for the region to diversify its economy, mitigate the possible negative impacts of digitalization on existing jobs, reduce its carbon footprint and create significant levels of employment across a variety of sectors.
The green energy transition: employment pathways for MENA
Economic Research Forum
Africa is at the heart of the green energy transition, as reserves of many of the critical minerals required to power the clean energy transition are located on the continent. This gives Africa a key opportunity to leverage the global demand for those minerals while reducing the funding gap and helping the continent meet its development objectives.
New Mechanism for Mitigating Currency Risk to Support Africas Energy Transition
African Development Bank Group
How can countries in the Middle East and North Africa capitalise on the transition to renewable energy to foster a sustainable, productive and inclusive economy? This column, which draws on the development strategy advice of Oxford economist Paul Collier, calls for a nexus approach to skill development, finance, research and education
MENAs transition to renewable energy: a new development strategy
Economic Research Forum
The Maghreb has high potential for solar and wind energy production, which could position the region as a key player in renewable energy, yet countries in the region are not pursuing a significant rollout of such safe and zero-emission electricity sources. While aware of the economic and climate potential of renewables, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and even Libya are instead demonstrating a growing interest in nuclear facilities.
Regimes in the Maghreb take a hard look at nuclear energy
Geopolitical Intelligence Services
Many fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS) face significant challenges related to energy access, which exacerbates instability and hinders development. Reliance on fossil fuel supply chains - frequently controlled by conflict parties - can also undermine the peacebuilding and peacekeeping efforts of UN missions often operating in these contexts.
Why renewable energy matters in the context of peace and stability
Clingendael
This report marks the first in a series of annual tracking publications commissioned by the COP28 Presidency to assess progress towards two key goals of the outcome of the First Global Stocktake: the tripling of renewable energy and the doubling of energy efficiency by 2030.
Delivering on the UAE Consensus: Tracking progress toward tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030
International Renewable Energy Agency
Relentless urbanisation often has a heavy environmental cost, arising from activities such as the consumption of fossil resources to fuel industrialisation and infrastructure development. The resulting surge in greenhouse gas emissions is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, which leads to frequent extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves. Such events pose an existential threat to human life, infrastructure, and economic stability.
The Promise of Bioeconomy as a Solution for Sustainability
The Observer Research Foundation
This report explores trends in renewable energy investment, finance and policy in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a view to unlocking the potential of renewable energy as an important lever of socio-economic development in the region.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies and finance for renewable energy deployment
International Renewable Energy Agency
The ‘Accelerating Private Sector Investments in Green Mini-Grids’ report, as a key takeaway from the ARE Energy Access Investment Forum 2023, presents an overview of the Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) mini-grids sector in Africa, highlighting its potential to meet the continent’s electricity access challenge.
Accelerating private sector investments in green mini-grids
African Development Bank Group
Together, the Arab Gulf states - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - have become a global power. Led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and to some extent Qatar, they have a major influence on the world’s energy, financial, political, and, consequently, environmental affairs. This gives rise to the question: How big a role do the Arab Gulf states play in steering the global climate change agenda?
The Arab Gulf Helps Fuel the Global Economy. What It Means for the Energy Transition
Baker Institute for Public Policy
This report reviews and examines the use of risk mitigation and transfer (RMT) instruments in private utility-scale renewable energy investment. The trillions of dollars needed to achieve global climate goals are more than an abstract number. They need to be channeled through viable projects that result in desirable outcomes, such as renewable energy infrastructure in developing countries.
Risk mitigation and transfer for renewable energy investments: a conceptual review
Stockholm Environment Institute
Morocco made a surprising announcement last year, on July 5, 2022. The Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline, which had up until November 2021 transported billions of cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas every year from Algeria to Spain via Morocco, would be reversed. Instead, natural gas imported from North America via Spain would be sold to Morocco. For the first time since the inauguration of Mediterranean pipelines, natural gas would now flow south across the Mediterranean, from Europe to the Maghreb.
In Reverse: Natural Gas and Politics in the Maghreb and Europe
Foreign Policy Research Institute
The cost of capital (CoC) for renewable power generation technologies is a major determinant of the total price to purchasers of renewable electricity. Both reliable data, and a deep understanding of the composition of the CoC and its drivers, are therefore critical information. Crucially, even small differences in the CoC that are not properly accounted for can result in misleading cost calculations and lead to poor policy making.
The cost of financing for renewable power
International Renewable Energy Agencia
As the world reboots its economies from the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, it is important to adopt an economic development model that lessens environmental, climate and disaster risks and one where social and economic benefits are inclusive. At the core of the recovery and in line with commitments under the Paris Agreement, is the clean energy transition to drive economies. This involves uptake of technologies that reduce emissions such as wind and solar energy and less of fossil fuel-based technologies. Whilst clean energy and decarbonizing international investment and finance seem to be dominating the development discourse, what is less talked about is the minerals, including rare earth minerals, metals and construction materials needed for this to happen.
Strengthening Africas Role in the Battery and Electric Vehicle Value Chain
Africa Development Bank Group