Power Demand in MENA Region: Future Trends and Projections

Sep 1, 2026

Electricity poles traverse a golden field in Shamakhi, Azerbaijan under a clear sky. by Fakhri Baghirov via Pexels,

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Power demand in MENA region set to double by 2050, forecasts Rystad Energy

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September 1, 2026

Power Demand in MENA Region: Future Trends and Projections IFM_MENA

Rystad Energy expects installed power capacity across the region to quadruple by 2050 as renewables, data centres and industrial demand accelerate

International Finance Business Desk

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Electricity demand across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is expected to more than double by 2050 as economies diversify beyond oil and gas and new sources of consumption, including data centres, hydrogen and transport, drive the expansion of regional power systems.

Rystad Energy forecasts that MENA’s electricity demand will rise from 1,671 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 to 3,670 TWh by 2050. Installed power capacity is projected to increase even more sharply, quadrupling from 580 gigawatts (GW) to 2,328 GW over the same period.

The outlook highlights the scale of investment required in generation, transmission, distribution, storage and energy efficiency as governments and businesses prepare for rapidly rising electricity consumption.

Demand growth is expected to come from traditional residential and industrial users as well as emerging sectors. Data centres, hydrogen production, transport, commercial activity and public services are all expected to add to the region’s electricity requirements.

Carlos Torres Diaz, head of power at Rystad Energy, said the Middle East was entering a period of significant expansion in its power system, with renewable energy playing an increasingly important role.

He said nuclear power would remain a viable source of supply, while gas would continue to form part of the regional energy mix alongside renewables.

The UAE is expected to be at the forefront of the transition. Electricity’s share of the country’s final energy demand is forecast to rise from 17% in 2025 to 42% by 2050.

Solar power is also expected to expand rapidly. Its share of UAE electricity generation is projected to increase from 11% currently to 50% by 2050, while regional solar manufacturing is forecast to grow sevenfold by 2030.

The expansion is expected to be accompanied by greater investment in battery storage, helping power systems manage the intermittency of renewable generation and accommodate changing patterns of electricity consumption.

Aditya Saraswat, head of upstream research for MENA and the Caspian at Rystad Energy, said the UAE was developing supply alternatives across both conventional and renewable energy while seeking to maintain flexibility on the demand side.

The region’s energy transition is also creating opportunities for digital technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation are expected to play a growing role in improving energy resilience and managing increasingly complex power systems.

The scale of the expected expansion is putting infrastructure and capital at the centre of the region’s energy outlook. Mark Ring, group director at Middle East Energy, said the growing participation of the investment community reflected the increasing capital required to develop and modernise power infrastructure.

The trends will be a major focus at Middle East Energy 2026, which takes place at Dubai World Trade Centre from September 1 to 3. The event’s 50th edition is expected to attract more than 35,000 energy professionals from nearly 120 countries and more than 1,500 exhibitors.

The event will cover power generation, transmission and distribution, storage and energy efficiency, with more than 210 speakers across five stages discussing AI, digitalisation, grid infrastructure, renewables and investment.

The expansion of MENA’s power sector points to a broader transformation of the region’s energy economy. While oil and gas will remain important, rising electricity demand and the rapid deployment of solar, storage and other low-carbon technologies are creating a substantially larger and more diversified power market by 2050.

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ALSO READ | Abu Dhabi power demand set to double by 2050 as AI and economy expand

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Pathways for Urban Resilience in the MENA Region

Aug 31, 2026

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By Leigh Mante, Ed.

Editor’s Note

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is rapidly urbanising. It faces compounding vulnerabilities including extreme heat, water scarcity, geopolitical instability, and infrastructural and demographic pressures. Cities remain at the forefront of these converging challenges, tasked with conceptualising systems that ensure that infrastructure design, public services, and governance remain modern and locally rooted, to enforce circularity, resilience, and liveability for years to come.

Forging Pathways for Urban Resilience in the MENA Region convenes diverse perspectives from scholars, practitioners, and city leaders to unpack the structural, technological, and institutional mechanisms required to navigate this transition. Across 11 essays, the authors present compelling frameworks on how to leverage human-centred planning approaches, large-scale infrastructure pursuits, nature-based solutions, circular water systems, and clean transport networks alongside coordinated governance to safeguard sustainable urban transformation.

The report also highlights how, despite increasing global emphasis on adopting technological innovation, inclusive and integrated governance remains necessary. The contributors underline the importance of simultaneously retaining traditional knowledge systems, encouraging enhanced vertical and horizontal coordination, and enforcing South–South learning exchanges to scale actionable solutions across the region.

Sukaina Abdul Ilah Al-Nasrawi sets the stage, underscoring how cities represent microcosms of humanity. Building liveable cities requires paying close attention to the preservation of human dignity and social equity. She argues for the development of a new urban planning paradigm that encompasses integrated planning, human-centred digital approaches, and economic resilience, all of which address the region’s rapid urbanisation, high youth unemployment, displacement, and fragile infrastructure.

As countries within the region increasingly pursue mega-development, Mannat Jaspal and Leigh Mante interrogate the risks associated with such ambitious endeavours. Evaluating both the rationale and realities of mega-projects, they call for national-subnational governance coordination and financial and environmental guardrails to prevent cost overruns and socio-environmental damage. Victoria Lee offers a complementary perspective on mega-events, demonstrating how context-driven planning can transform temporary event infrastructure into long-term community benefits.

As extreme heat engulfs the MENA region, Basit Khan, Olivier Pauluis, and Francesco Paparella emphasise the severity of the issue, pointing to the resulting exacerbation of health, occupational, and economic risks. They also present layered strategies to temper the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect intensification through a combination of passive cooling, district cooling expansion, and transit-oriented development.

Building circular systems by developing infrastructure that integrates key resources helps improve efficiency, reduce climate vulnerabilities, and foster sustainable economic growth. Heiko Seitz explores the largely unharnessed potential of synchronising electric vehicle charging infrastructure with solar power and battery storage across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to decarbonise transportation and enhance grid resilience. Maha Al-Zu’bi advocates for the expansion of wastewater reuse to diversify water supply and reduce over-reliance on desalination, which poses long-term environmental and energy challenges. Dikshu C. Kukreja offers lessons from India to minimise waste loss, leverage low-carbon materials, and develop circular value chains and climate-responsive design. By applying lessons from other countries, GCC cities can scale nascent technologies to build resource-efficient and resilient urban centres.

Beyond the proposed technological solutions, the remaining chapters offer case studies from MENA cities to highlight the importance of engaging the youth and vulnerable populations through integrated governance frameworks. Oumaima El Idrissi demonstrates how youth participation serves as a strategic lever to implement climate projects, acting as a trust-building network between institutions and communities in Casablanca. Leigh Mante and Reem Sagahyroon showcase how formalising a clear framework for internal climate migration would minimise negative health impacts and facilitate safe and inclusive migratory movements in Iraq. Montaser Hiyari doubles down on how resilience is fundamentally a governance challenge, requiring stable institutions and synergised policies to safeguard urban cities, using Jordan as a case study. Nour-Dine Salimi and Idar Hidi emphasise how traditional oasis models and local knowledge systems in Ouarzazate remain core pillars of sustainability that should not be disregarded as technology evolves.

As cities in the MENA region rapidly urbanise and digitise, this compendium offers balanced and practical perspectives to help city leaders pursue integrated pathways towards urban resilience. Through context-specific case studies, it aims to inform policymakers, urban planners, private actors, and grassroot and academic organisations on ways to conceptualise smart, regenerative, and locally relevant city solutions.

Read the monograph here.

Leigh Mante is Junior Fellow, Climate and Energy, ORF Middle East.

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Statetron Unveils 10-Hectare Andromean Class in Qatar

Aug 30, 2026

A Qatar Airways Boeing 777 jet featuring Oneworld livery flying through a clear sky. by Go Journal via Pexels

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Statetron Unveils 10-Hectare Andromean Class Industrial Facility Concept in Qatar

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August 28, 2026

By Mohammad S

In Saudi Gulf Projects

More on AI and Data Center, Manufacturing

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Statetron has unveiled its Andromean Class™, a new industrial architecture designed to integrate artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, autonomous logistics, energy storage and digital intelligence within a single advanced manufacturing ecosystem.

The company is proposing its first Andromean Class facility in Qatar, with an initial development concept spanning approximately 10 hectares and an architecture designed to support expansion toward multi-gigawatt-scale energy storage manufacturing capacity.

Unlike a conventional battery assembly facility, the proposed development is conceived as an intelligent, energy-integrated industrial platform in which manufacturing, logistics, energy, data and maintenance systems operate as a coordinated ecosystem.

Project Scope

The proposed Qatar facility will integrate AI-driven production, robotic assembly, autonomous material movement, digital-twin technology, automated quality control and intelligent energy management.

At the core of the manufacturing platform will be Statetron’s modular 5 MW Power Block architecture, designed for large-scale energy-storage applications serving utility, industrial, renewable-energy and grid-infrastructure markets.

The manufacturing platform is intended to support configurable energy-storage durations and progressively increase production capacity in line with market demand.

The facility’s architecture will also allow production, automation, logistics and energy infrastructure to be expanded progressively, with the long-term objective of reaching multi-gigawatt-scale manufacturing.

Factory Designed as an Energy System

The Andromean Class concept extends beyond battery manufacturing by integrating renewable energy generation, energy storage and intelligent power management into the facility itself.

Under the concept, energy systems will power the manufacturing operation while the factory produces energy-storage infrastructure, with digital intelligence connecting and optimizing the overall system.

Statetron said Qatar provides a compelling environment for the development, citing the country’s focus on advanced manufacturing, AI, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics and clean technologies.

The proposed facility is also intended to benefit from Qatar’s strategic industrial and logistics infrastructure, including the Umm Alhoul Free Zone, which is positioned for heavy manufacturing, logistics and emerging technologies and is located adjacent to Hamad Port.

Statetron’s Andromean Class Vision

Statetron said the Andromean Class represents a new approach to industrialisation in which the factory itself becomes an intelligent and energy-integrated system.

The company aims to replace fragmented manufacturing processes with a continuously connected industrial environment where production, logistics, energy, data and maintenance are optimized together.

Lars Carlstrom, CEO of Statetron, said: “The first industrial revolution mechanised production. The digital revolution connected it. The next era will make industry intelligent, autonomous and energy-native.”

He added: “We don’t want to build another battery factory. We want to build the blueprint for how industry itself will operate in the next decade.”

The proposed Qatar development represents Statetron’s first application of the Andromean Class architecture and is intended to establish a scalable platform for the future manufacturing of large-scale energy-storage systems.

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Iraq’s Housing Boom: Opportunities and Challenges

Aug 28, 2026

Silhouette of skyscrapers and cranes at sunset in Baghdad, Iraq. by Muhammad Nabeel via Pexels best illustrates how Iraq’s housing boom is presently made of opportunities but also of challenges.

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Iraq’s housing boom is leaving its aspirational class behind

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AMWAJ – 27 August 2026

Iraq/Economy

Lyna Ouandjeli

By Lyna Ouandjeli

In Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, a young professional said she considers herself fortunate by earning some two million IQD (1,500 USD) a month, but that buying an apartment remains a distant prospect. A modest 65 m² (700 sq ft) unit she had her eyes on cost approximately 52.8M IQD (40,000 USD). The down payment alone, she told Amwaj.media, would require saving two-thirds of her monthly wage for two years.

This dilemma is common in Iraq these days. The country urgently needs more housing for its rising population, yet a growing number of Iraqis with relatively stable incomes cannot afford much of what is being built. Despite a construction boom in recent years, the nationwide housing deficit remains substantial, and new real estate alone cannot resolve the problem. Rather, the more important question is whether authorities in Baghdad and Erbil can produce enough affordable housing for those who need it.

Bismayah’s unfinished promise

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) estimates that Iraq faces a cumulative housing deficit of 2.5M to 3.5M units. A wave of new initiatives promises to close that gap. Egypt’s Talaat Moustafa Group won a 2026 license for a 43,000-unit smart city near Baghdad while Dubai’s DAMAC has launched luxury towers of its own. Iraq’s Ministry of Construction and Housing is also planning several satellite cities around the capital.

In parallel, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi has introduced its flagship “One Million Residential Plots.” The platform is intended to boost construction across the country and is set to launch in Sept. 2026.

Those efforts have made little dent in the housing shortfall so far. Iraq’s own department of statistics reports that private construction permits, a rough proxy for building activity, have actually fallen in recent years—from 37,442 in 2022 to 25,934 in 2025. These numbers are far short of the roughly 250,000 units a year the government says are needed just to keep pace with new demand.

The case of the Bismayah New City development, located 10 km (6.2 miles) southeast of Baghdad, illustrates these challenges. Launched in 2012 as a key component of Iraq’s 2010 National Housing Program, the sprawling 18.3 km² (7.1 sq mi) project was designed to provide around 100,000 housing units for 600,000 people under a subsidized homeownership scheme.

A 100 m² unit in Bismayah costs a fixed 83.16M IQD (63,000 USD)—a fraction of the equivalent in Baghdad’s broader private market. Comparable apartments in the capital range from 900,000–9.24M IQD (680-7,000 USD) per m² (10.76 sq ft) depending on the neighborhood. That gap helps explain both the pressure on Bismayah’s waiting list and why so much of the capital’s private housing stock remains out of reach for ordinary buyers.

However, the South Korean firm tapped for the project, Hanwha Engineering & Construction, halted construction in 2020 after Baghdad fell behind on payments. The company only completed around 30,000 homes before work resumed in late 2024 under a revised contract that covers an additional 70,000 units. By Dec. 2024, Iraq’s National Investment Commission said around 21,480 of the completed units had been handed over and were already occupied by residents.

Last year, the investment commission tightened conditions for reopening applications, and claimed that around 70,000 people had registered to be allocated unbuilt units at the flagship housing complex via the government’s ‘Ur’ platform.

Bismayah’s fortunes reflect how building housing and ensuring access are different problems. Initially, the project’s terms for prospective buyers required a 25% down payment, but this was later reduced to 10%, with the balance to be repaid over 15 years. The 2024 contract for the project’s remaining units extended that repayment window to up to 25 years. That repeated loosening of terms suggests the state has had to keep adapting financing conditions because unit costs and household purchasing power do not naturally align.

Similar housing struggles have played out in Iraqi Kurdistan, although in a different kind of market. Over the past decade, the semi-autonomous region’s capital has seen a remarkable expansion of apartment developments, gated communities and large residential compounds. Yet, despite this uneven boom, affordability has deteriorated for many middle-income households.

One study covering 2024 housing prices in Erbil found that a 100 m² (1,076 sq ft) low-income reference apartment cost approximately 91.08M IQD (69,000 USD). That represented a price-to-income ratio of 23.1 years for those who earned the median household income in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2023, approximately 328,680 IQD (250 USD) a month. For buyers already active in the market and with higher incomes, the ratio was 4.4 years.

Unaffordability in Iraqi Kurdistan, as in other parts of Iraq, has been exacerbated by limited access to mortgages, high property prices as well as dependence on savings and informal financing. Erbil’s urban landscape can therefore have thousands of apartments for sale while those earning the median income cannot realistically buy one. Even higher earners face a multi-year climb to ownership.

Iraq’s wider housing problem should not be understood exclusively through the language of poverty. A teacher, engineer, doctor or civil servant can have a stable income and still be unable to accumulate the capital to buy a home. This does not mean that Iraq’s traditionally high rates of homeownership have suddenly collapsed.

Rather, it points to a generational divide. Older Iraqis may already own their homes, while those entering the market now increasingly face having to rent a property, borrowing heavily or relying on family wealth. Formal mortgage financing in Iraq remains weak, particularly in Iraqi Kurdistan. This leaves prospective buyers dependent on savings, family assistance, remittances and developer installment plans, meaning that income does not necessarily translate into asset ownership.

A middle-class crisis

Homeownership in Iraq has long meant wealth and security beyond mere shelter. If younger generations are priced out of the property market, housing risks reproducing existing wealth disparities across generations. This is a trend visible in the Kurdistan region, where the number of home and apartment renters increased by 16.6% between 2018 and 2024, from 228,679 to 266,600.

Housing in Iraq is not only viewed as shelter, but a key economic asset. Where investment opportunities remain slim and financial markets underdeveloped, land and real estate can function as stores of wealth, generating investor demand alongside genuine housing need. However, while an investor can wait for a property to appreciate, a family needs somewhere to live. The dramatic dinar devaluation in 2020 appears to have reinforced this dynamic and ushed wealthier dollar-holding Iraqis toward property as a hedge to protect their purchasing power.

Corruption compounds Iraq’s affordability problem, with real estate reportedly becoming a favored vehicle for money laundering. Wealthy individuals and politically connected groups have been accused of funnelling illicit funds into real estate, partly to avoid growing scrutiny of international money transfers. Experts blame this for driving up prices unrelated to genuine housing needs. Against this backdrop, one housing-sector official alleged to Amwaj.media that businessmen have at times acquired and resold subsidized units at a profit, with officials often turning a blind eye.

But the private sector and rampant corruption cannot hold all the blame for Iraq’s housing woes. The authorities have repeatedly intervened by building and subsidizing public housing units directly. Still, Iraqi Kurdistan’s experience shows this too can fail to deliver affordability. Between 2011 and 2013, government-subsidized housing units in the Kurdistan region were estimated to cost between 60–80% more than comparable private-market alternatives, while household incomes rose only marginally.

Researchers have attributed the gap less to graft than to fragmented procurement, where units pass through multiple approval stages and absorb costly revisions once awarded. Access is also largely tied to state employment rather than open-market choice. The real subsidy lies in 25-year, below-market financing rather than a lower price, which makes beneficiaries’ own monthly payments more accessible—but in practice, no cheaper than the private market.

The debate on housing in Iraq focuses mainly on how many units get built, and less on who ultimately captures their value once construction ends. A government that subsidizes property without controlling eligibility, resale and affordability risks underwriting private wealth rather than affordable housing. The country’s real estate market needs conditions for investors to profit from housing that Iraqis can afford; with public land could go to developers only in exchange for binding affordability requirements.

Housing projects like Bismayah show that federal Iraq can build at an extraordinary scale, while Erbil shows how a construction boom can coexist with severe affordability constraints. Together, both point to a national housing system that remains dangerously out of alignment. A generation of aspirational Iraqis who can work but cannot convert their income into assets will remain caught in a crisis of social mobility, not just a housing shortage.

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Lyna Ouandjeli

Lyna Ouandjeli is a researcher and consultant specializing in geopolitics, conflict analysis, migration, governance and international … Full Bio

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Oman Water Services Launches Camelina Project for Sustainability

Aug 24, 2026

Aerial shot of lush date palm plantations surrounding a farmhouse in Oman. by Eslam Mohammed Abdelmaksoud via Pexels

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Nama Water Services launches camelina biofuel project in Oman

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BioFuels International – 24 August 2026

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Nama Water Services has launched a new project to cultivate one of the leading sustainable crops used in biofuel production – camelina.

The initiative, in partnership with Hema Energy, forms part of the company’s commitment to environmental sustainability, supporting green economy goals and expanding the use of reclaimed water supplied under the Manhal Nama programme.

The project reflects Nama Water Services’ strategy to transform reclaimed water into a strategic resource that supports sustainable development through innovative agricultural applications.

It aims to strengthen water and food security, reduce carbon emissions and accelerate the transition to clean energy sources.

Nama Water Services will provide the project site and reclaimed water supplies, while Hema Energy will be responsible for implementing the project, overseeing its technical management and operations, carrying out monitoring and data analysis in line with the highest technical and environmental standards.

Sultan Qaboos University

The project is supported by several national institutions. Sultan Qaboos University will provide research, scientific and technical support, the Environment Authority will oversee environmental compliance, and the Oman Net Zero Centre (ONZC) will ensure alignment with Oman’s net zero targets and carbon sink initiatives.

The pilot project will assess Camelina’s agricultural performance under local climatic conditions, improve irrigation efficiency using treated water, monitor soil and water quality, measure environmental benefits and evaluate its potential for biofuel production and carbon credit generation.

The findings are expected to support decisions on expanding the commercial use of treated water for agriculture and contribute to the development of sustainable value chains for biomass and renewable energy production in the Sultanate of Oman.