DNV: MENA to add 860GW new solar PV by 2040

In its report, Rise of Renewables in the Gulf Region, DNV highlighted that despite the growth in solar PV and wind generation, it would not displace gas-fired power until 2040, due to electricity demand growth exceeding the installed renewable energy capacity. DNV forecasts that electricity demand in the MENA region will triple by 2060.

If in the coming decade this demand growth will primarily come from buildings and desalination, from 2040 to 2060 the demand growth will be driven by the switch to electric vehicles, an increase in AI data centres and green hydrogen production.

“The Gulf is moving from discussion to deployment,” said Jan Zschommler, Market Area Manager for Middle East & Africa, Energy Systems at DNV.

“Utility-scale solar, wind, and storage projects are now being built at a pace that changes the regional power mix. Our modelling shows that renewables growth will exceed demand growth after 2040. That is when the transition in the region’s power mix starts to accelerate,” added Zschommler.

Moreover, solar PV continues to be the leading renewable technology in the region, with installed capacity forecast to increase from 76GW in 2024 to 340GW in 2029.

A further 2.2TW of additional solar PV and wind would be installed between 2040 and 2060. Energy storage is also forecast to grow rapidly in the coming decades. Currently, the MENA region has 36GWh of energy storage capacity installed, which DNV expects will grow 10-fold by 2030, 100-fold by 2045 and reach 9.5TWh by 2060. This would mean that the MENA region would have 12% of the global energy storage capacity installed in 2060, up from the 1.4% currently.

“The rapid rise of renewables in the Gulf, and MENA more broadly, is not replacing hydrocarbons overnight, but it is reshaping the power system,” said Ditlev Engel, Energy Systems CEO at DNV.

Engel added: “GCC countries are building some of the world’s largest solar and storage projects while still supplying global oil and gas markets. This development is driven mainly by economics. Renewables now provide low-cost electricity, and clean power is becoming necessary for competitive industry and future hydrogen production.”

Co-located energy storage to lead the way

In terms of energy storage technologies, lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery energy storage systems (BESS) co-located with solar PV will overtake pumped hydro as the most installed capacity. By the end of this year, Li-ion is forecast to represent 70% of all storage capacity installed. In the coming decades, the share of Li-ion will drop as long-duration storage capacity comes online and standalone Li-ion and vehicle-to-grid storage increase, reaching a combined 45% of storage by 2060.

The co-location of solar PV with energy storage has been on the rise in the region in the past few years, with several gigawatt-scale projects announced recently. Interest in solar-plus-storage is expected to increase as developers seek round-the-clock supply and greater system flexibility, wrote DNV.

This week alone, PV Tech covered a new development from one of many gigawatt-scale solar-plus-storage projects. Norwegian independent power producer (IPP) Scatec signed a power purchase agreement for 1.95GW solar PV and 3.9GWh BESS in Egypt. This is one of several solar-plus-storage projects the IPP is currently developing in the country, including the 1.1GW/200MWh Obelisk project.

Other countries in the region also have seen their fair share of large-scale solar-plus-storage projects, such is the case in Saudi Arabia, where local developer ACWA Power recently signed a joint development agreement with Bahraini state-owned energy company Bapco Energies to build a 2.8GW solar PV plant co-located with BESS.

Grid ready for renewables expansion and demand growth

Unlike nearly all other regions, MENA has been less impacted by grid bottlenecks, both in terms of grid expansion and in project connection, according to the DNV report. DNV forecasts that by 2035, installed solar PV capacity will not be affected by grid bottlenecks, whereas compared with Europe, this will result in a 16% reduction in solar capacity. DNV does warn that by 2035 grid could become a bottleneck if expansions and upgrades do not match the growth of renewables.

“The near-absence of bottlenecks in MENA is mainly because renewables expansion is still at a relatively early stage, but as the region lacks domestic production for key components it still faces some supply chain delays,” wrote DNV.

DNV added that the grid system in the Middle East is relatively modern in most areas, due to electricity systems being established towards the end of the 20th century in the Gulf region.