Numerous Arab nations have created ambitious plans to manufacture and export green hydrogen in response to the natural potential of the Middle East and North Africa area.
This is in line with the consensus among most nations on the planet that hydrogen is the fuel of the future, with predictions that it will account for around 12% of the world’s energy market by 2050.
According to what was tracked by the specialist energy platform, the Arab area is racing to get a piece of the new energy market that is being transformed in response to forecasts that the share of oil and gas would diminish in the years to come.
A number of Arab nations have declared massive programs to promote the future of renewable energy, and many of them are present at the beginning of a new phase and pioneering plans for projects to manufacture green hydrogen and export it across continents.
The resurgence of renewable energy coincides with ambitious goals to attain 80 gigawatts of renewable energy projects by 2030, which helps efforts to manufacture and export green hydrogen at a time when Arab nations are viewed as a significant supply of oil.
The Middle East and North Africa region has enormous potential to establish massive green hydrogen projects from wind and solar energy due to their favorable climate and sunny conditions for the majority of the year, according to the Global Energy Monitor report (a non-profit research organization concerned with energy projects around the world).
Storage and export possibilities for hydrogen
The Arab nations intend to develop enormous solar and wind energy projects. For instance, the region’s predicted average solar power plant phases are expected to be four times larger than their global equivalents, while the average wind power plant phase is one and a half times larger. Everywhere in the world, the time is the same length.
The Specialized Energy Platform examined the Energy Monitor report, which looked at a variety of objectives that led Arab nations to declare the development of massive renewable energy projects, including the following:
The region’s nations want to optimize their investments while boosting the demand for energy equities worldwide.
Due to the pressing need for European nations to discover gas substitutes, the countries of the area want to play a significant role in this industry by acting as a bridge for the export of renewable energy between continents.
The area was poised to gain countless benefits from constructing renewable energy installations due to its good climatic circumstances.
As an illustration, each of the nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) is capable of producing between 500 and 600 watts per square kilometer of its land each year, which is equal to 1.5 million barrels of crude oil.
competing Arab nations
According to the research, which the Specialized Energy Platform examined, four nations in the area are vying to build and export green hydrogen or green ammonia storage plants.
According to the Energy Monitor study, Egypt leads the Arab nations in the use of renewable energy when green hydrogen is included.
For instance, the Sovereign Fund of Egypt is working with the Norwegian business ” Scatec ” and others to run the Ain Sukhna plant, the country’s first facility for the generation of green hydrogen, which has a 100-megawatt capacity.
The facility is anticipated to start up in November 2022, just before the COP 27 climate meeting.
Morocco and Saudi Arabia
According to the research, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and the Sultanate of Oman are building facilities to store solar and wind energy.
The massive “NEOM” project, with a production capacity of 4 gigawatts and a cost of $900 million, is being implemented in Saudi Arabia by the Riyadh-based ACWA Power and is scheduled to be operational in 2026.
The French business Total Irene is building a green hydrogen and ammonia storage station in Morocco called “Total Irene-Guelmim-Oued Noun” at a cost of 9.4 billion euros ($9.89 billion). It will have a 10-gigawatt capacity.
the biggest hydrogen station in the world
The Sultanate of Oman is aiming to finish building the 25-gigawatt Al-Wusta plant project, which will have the greatest storage capacity in the world when it is operational in 2038.
The research stressed that all of these massive green hydrogen projects are being developed with the intention of exporting hydrogen and renewable energy, whether they are in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, or Algeria.
The study from Energy Monitor, which the specialist energy platform evaluated, emphasized that building green hydrogen and ammonia production facilities in the area is not just for export.
For instance, the Xlinks wind and solar power plant project in Morocco are being built specifically to supply the British electricity grid with electricity produced from renewable energy through the construction of an undersea electric cable to reach the following British cities: Alfred Scott, Devon, Pembroke, and Wales. This project is expected to have a production capacity of 10.5 GW.
As the project is anticipated to generate roughly 2,000 employment in Morocco, Octopus Energy, one of the leading European investment firms operating in the sector of renewable energy, has committed to financially assist the project without specifying the amount of support.
