Corporate Net Zero Archives

Decarbonising hard-to-abate materials in the MENA region

Oct 27, 2022

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Power Technology elaborates on how decarbonising hard-to-abate materials in the MENA region and beyond is not only a material problem but a lot more…

A material problem: decarbonising hard-to-abate materials in the MENA region and beyond

Lowering emissions is the first step in the energy transition, but reducing CO2 alone is not enough to achieve carbon neutrality, says Professor Emmanouil Kakaras of NEXT Energy Business at MHI and Dr Alexander Fleischanderl of Primetals Technologies.

“Green hydrogen – low-carbon hydrogen – is the most significant pathway to decarbonise the hard-to-abate industries” (Shutterstock 1188936688)

As companies and governments across the world set their course on the path to net zero, the question of what to do about those hard-to-abate industries – namely heavy industry – often threatens to become a stumbling block on that pathway. For some, these big polluters – producing 30% of the world’s carbon emissions – sit uncomfortably within the narrative of transition to net zero. For others, their decarbonisation represents an opportunity.

According to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group, carbon avoidance is a crucial step in the transition, replacing the use of fossil fuels with energy from renewable or other low-carbon sources. But reducing CO2 emissions alone is not enough to achieve carbon neutrality. There will remain some intractable emissions that can neither be reduced any further or absorbed naturally – and these will have to be dealt with by carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS).

A test case is the MENA region, home not just to many of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, but also a number of its hard-to-abate materials manufacturers, the latter relying heavily on the former. This year, the region is host to the COP27 climate conference, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, but for many it still lags behind other regions in terms of policies that support the transition to green energy.

Key challenges

“The key challenge to decarbonising this hard-to-abate sector, particular to this region, is the lack of a consistent and well-thought-out, detailed plan for what will happen to the CO2,” says Professor Dr Emmanouil Kakaras, executive vice president, NEXT Energy Business at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries EMEA.

“As I have said on many occasions, decarbonising the hard-to-abate sectors is not a technological problem: we have in our portfolio the key technology to achieve that. However, because of the magnitude of the amount of CO2 emissions we are dealing with – maybe if we count everything in the region we are talking at least 100 million tonnes per year to be managed and permanently stored and so on – we need to have a coherent strategy to deal with [that]. And that has prerequisites, both for regulation and the infrastructure creation.”

Dr Alexander Fleischanderl, Head of Green Steel at Primetals Technologies, a joint venture of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and partners, agrees on the need for more policy action. Talking specifically about the development of green steel markets in the region, he says: “What it requires in the MENA region to set the right playing field to be competitive, and especially to accelerate renewable energy production, [is] more political support from the governments. So if we compare it to Europe or the US, where there’s been strong support from the government, like in Europe with the Emissions Trading System or the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or the US with the 45Q programme [of tax credits for carbon sequestration], or now the Inflation Reduction Act, I believe strongly that the MENA region, especially the Middle East, should set up a similar taxonomy to accelerate the transition.”

But despite these supporting mechanisms, the energy crisis Europe is currently experiencing means it is unlikely to be able to offer green metallics at competitive prices on a global level, says Fleischanderl. “So going back again to MENA, the price of renewables will be on a very different level compared to Europe, at least over the next decade,” he says.

“In the MENA region today, green hydrogen can already be produced at a price level of $3 to $4 per kilogram, compared with the European price level, which is for sure above $7 or $8. It’s simply a great opportunity for the MENA region to invest and expand quickly into renewable energy, green hydrogen, and also in green metallics as soon as possible.”

Investment in renewables to replace the fossil fuels used in materials production is a key step towards the decarbonisation of these sectors. But they are, says Kakaras, energy-intensive sectors which, by definition, are difficult to abate. The energy requirements are massive, and will demand the realisation of the region’s huge untapped potential in renewables development.

Green hydrogen in the spotlight

“Green hydrogen – low-carbon hydrogen – is the most significant pathway to decarbonise the hard-to-abate industries,” says Fleischanderl. “If we talk about the steel sector, there are not many opportunities to leave carbon and fossil fuels behind. One pathway is replacing the fossil fuels with green hydrogen.

“The second one is electrification of the processes to run on electric power, and the third one is carbon capture, storage and utilisation. Everyone now is really hunting for the first option, replacing the fossil fuels with green hydrogen. So, what is still missing to decarbonise the hard-to-abate sector is the massive amount of green hydrogen that is required for that journey.”

This will require similarly large amounts of investment. Kakaras points to a couple of recent initiatives in Europe: the IPCEI Hy2Use project, only just approved by the European Commission, will provide up to €5.2bn in public funding to support the use of hydrogen in the industrial sector. This is expected to unlock an additional €7bn in private investment.

There is also the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), designed to avoid carbon leakage and to encourage partner countries to establish carbon pricing policies. This, says Kakaras, “in essence is a good idea, but it has to be implemented in a very transparent and objective way in order not to create any market distortion”.

European policymakers, he explains, need to “balance the effort to maintain some industrial activity in Europe and to maintain the competitiveness of such production [with] on the other hand measurable carbon reductions where it makes sense.” And striking this balance is not easy.

When it comes to nudging producers in the right direction, he prefers a carrot rather than a stick method. “I generally would like to see from the policymakers more of an active investment promotion in green technologies to increase the yield of green, carbon-free products, rather than penalising existing businesses, which will not bring the transformation needed to achieve carbon neutrality.”

Visionary approaches

Bringing the focus back to MENA, Kakaras cites the partnership with Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) as evidence of MHI’s decarbonisation work in the region. Earlier this year, MHI and Alba announced a feasibility study looking at applying carbon capture technology on Alba’s operation – the world’s largest aluminium smelter outside of China. The group’s power solutions brand, Mitsubishi Power and other partners, were contracted to design, engineer, procure, construct and commission a 680.9 megawatt (MW) combined cycle gas turbine power block, which will be able to run on clean hydrogen in the future.

“This particular industry [aluminium] is electricity intensive and it features very high indirect and direct CO2 emissions,” Kakaras says. There are efforts to reduce the indirect carbon footprint through the use of high-efficiency combined cycle plants for power production, and post-combustion CO2 capture installation.

“What is more important, however – and it is really what we call hard to abate – is the direct emissions from the smelting process,” he continues, explaining that what makes it so difficult is that “the concentration of the CO2 in the flue gas from the smelter, what is at the end emitted into the atmosphere, is very low: something like 1%. And that’s the most, I would say, challenging exercise that we are jointly undertaking with Alba, where we, for the first time worldwide, are trying to capture CO2 at such a low concentration.”

He is confident that MHI and Alba can rise to the challenge, though, praising “the visionary approach” of Alba. “If we want to move to what we call green aluminium, we have to tackle the direct emissions. We are working together to develop customised technology based on scrubbing technology that could tackle this particular emission measure.”

But the region’s materials sector still has a long way to go in terms of applying CCUS technology, without which the transition to net zero won’t be possible, says Fleischanderl. “It’s forecasted for 2050 that one third of global steel production will be produced utilising coal. So the only way out for these assets is to apply CCS, or CCUS more particularly. And going back to the MENA region, there’s only one carbon-capturing plant in the steel sector today, and that’s with Emirates Steel, which has applied carbon capture on an industrial scale for one of its direct reduction plants [the Al Reyadah project in Abu Dhabi].”

The conversation has moved on from whether CCUS is necessary, or indeed possible, says Kakaras. “We cannot achieve decarbonisation without CCUS; that is now commonly accepted. Some 15 years ago, the issue of carbon capture was met with scepticism because, of course, it comes at an additional cost. Now, we have the technology and we can prove that with a foreseeable carbon pricing structure, we can deliver the technologies and practically capture CO2 at, I would say, a range that it is well below $100 per tonne.”

He adds that the region’s governments are launching initiatives for storing carbon not just offshore, as is the case in some parts of the world, but underground as well, “thus bringing the costs of CO2 capture and storage significantly down”.

Of course, climate change is a global issue, not a regional one, and both Kakaras and Fleischanderl acknowledge that greening the hard-to-abate materials sectors will require a global solution. Which has implications for the way in which energy is traded across the world.

“The trade of green energy will become the major game changer to the transition of the hard-to-abate industry,” says Fleischanderl. “It will likely be the transport of green ammonia that will support this transition in other regions of the world. So again, talking about Europe, Europe will strongly rely on the input of renewable energy, likely in the form of green ammonia or green hydrogen, for application to the hard-to-abate sector.

“The operational costs to produce green metallics are around 80% related to the energy cost, so it seems quite logical that there might be relocation of the upstream facilities in iron making to where the energy is cheap, and not transporting the iron ore into Europe any more but adding more value to this iron ore, producing direct reduced iron [DRI], HBI [hot briquetted iron], and shipping these metallics into Europe for further processing.”

The much-hailed but expensive ‘power-to-X’ solutions – converting surplus renewable electricity into heat, hydrogen or synthetic fuels – are also ripe for development, says Kakaras. “Especially in the [MENA] region, the challenge is to have carbon-free electricity which will be in such an oversupply, because of the geographical and conditions of population and so on, that will permit the so-called power-to-X technologies to be implemented in this region. In simple words, if power-to-X will not happen in this region, then where will it happen?”

The road to 2050

Are there any other questions over the future direction of travel? As regards the steel industry, Fleischanderl notes the ambition of national targets. “I would say first of all, the scene is set, so the transition is going to happen. And 90% of the global steel production nations have committed to carbon net zero by 2050 or 2060, so it’s going to happen.

“But what keeps me up at night, if we talk about the major roadblocks, is the fact that the amount of renewable energy and low-carbon hydrogen required for the steel sector is so massive that it’s not about any roadblock of technologies or new pathways; it’s simply that I’m wondering if the timeline to provide this massive amount of renewable energy and low-carbon hydrogen can meet the requirement of the net zero pledges by 2050.”

As the spotlight turns to MENA for COP27, the world will be looking for reassurances that these targets are indeed achievable, and that the region and its most hard-to-abate sectors are making progress towards them.

What is Net-Zero Architecture?

Mar 3, 2022

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What is Net-Zero Architecture? Wondered Dima Stouhi before giving some of her thoughts on the Terms and Design Strategies.

As revolutionary as the construction sector may seem nowadays, it currently accounts for nearly 40% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 11% of which are a result of manufacturing building materials such as steel, cement, and glass. Fast forward a couple of years later, after a life-changing global pandemic and indisputable evidences of climate change, CO2 emissions are still on a rise, reaching a historical maximum in 2020 according to the 2020 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction. Although a lot of progress has been made through technological advancements, design strategies and concepts, and construction processes, there is still a long way to go to reduce carbon emissions to a minimum or almost zero in the development of built environments.

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Responding to the alarming statistics, governments have put in place several action plans to limit carbon emissions and ensure a sustainable environment. In July 2021, the European Commission adopted a package of proposals to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. Earlier this year, the commission launched its second edition of the New European Bauhaus program, an initiative designed to transform the built environment into a more sustainable and socially valuable one.

As the world embarks on a mission towards a net-zero environment, here are some terms that encompass net-zero architecture.

Net-Zero Architecture

By definition, “net-zero”, also known as carbon neutrality, is the act of negating or canceling out the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity, by reducing existing emissions and implementing methods of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Although net-zero buildings represent a fragment of new construction projects, the technology, tools, and knowledge that architects have acquired over the past years have made designing a net-zero building the new norm. To design net-zero buildings, we listed 7 things to take into account to contribute to this global objective. The list includes making use of bioclimatic architecture and passive concepts, provide renewable energy on site whenever possible, using energy efficiency of appliances and lighting, and considering embedded carbon. Beyond architecture, urban planners have also been trying to find strategies to create environmentally friendly communities. In 2018, Architecture for Humans proposed the Zero Emission Neighborhood, an eco-village concept in the city of Pristina, Kosovo that ensures optimum sustainability for the entire community through “zero emission” buildings, passive design strategies, active solar systems, and energy efficient appliances.

Net Zero Village. Image © Architecture for Humans

Net-Zero Energy

Net-Zero Energy is when the building is able to offset, or counterbalance the amount of energy required to build and operate throughout its lifetime in all aspects of the site, source, cost, and emissions. In other words, the building is able to produce enough energy to cancel or “zero-out” the amount of energy it takes to operate daily. Net-zero energy buildings are often designed with these three criteria: “producing energy onsite via equipment like solar panels or wind turbines, accounting for its energy use through clean energy production offsite, and reducing the amount of energy required through design optimization”. Achieving it is not entirely dependent on the building being efficient, but on reducing the energy load, and then employing renewable energy to offset the remaining energy. An example of net-zero energy buildings is the Net Zero Energy House by Lifethings, where the client wanted a house based on common sense in its design, construction, and budget. The 230 sqm house includes photovoltaic panels, solar heat collection tubes, wood burning boiler, four kitchens and four bathrooms, all built with a modest budget.

Net-Zero Carbon

Net-zero carbon is achieved through reducing construction techniques and building materials that result in high carbon emissions. Put simply, Net Zero Carbon = Total Carbon Emitted – Total Carbon Avoided. Reducing embodied carbon through a concise material selection and construction techniques often results in a decrease in harmful chemical off-gassing, which affects the occupants’ productivity and wellbeing. The Courtyard House by Manoj Patel Design Studio promotes carbon positive and net-zero operations through smart planning of space and material selection, all while ensuring the emotional and physical well-being of its occupants. Clay tiles on the facade are cut and interlocked in a way that explores wall hangings from the sky and compliments the white volume. The structure meets all climatic and aesthetic needs of the space, particularly through the square patterns which parallel the projections of the sun during the day and make room for cool air only to flow in through the pores.

The Courtyard House / Manoj Patel Design Studio. Image © MKG Studio

Carbon Emissions & Fossil Fuels

Carbon emissions, or greenhouse gas emissions, are emissions emerging from the manufacturing of cement and burning of fossil fuels, and are considered the main reason behind climate change. Fossil fuel is another term used to describe non-renewable carbon-based energy sources such as coal, natural and derived gas, crude oil, and petroleum products. Although they originate from plants and animals, fossil fuels can be also made by industrial mixtures of other fossil fuels, such as the transformation of crude oil to motor gasoline. It is estimated that almost 80% of all manmade greenhouse gas emissions originate from fossil fuels combustion, with the construction industry being one of its biggest contributors.

Sustainability

By definition, sustainability is when a subject can be sustained, meaning that it can be maintained at length without being interrupted, disintegrated, or weakened in the long run. In architecture, however, the term “sustainability” has been used in various contexts. Some of which is to indicate being eco-conscious, an environmentalist, or “meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” using natural, social, and economic resources. Looking at all the “sustainable” projects that have been developed and are being proposed, it aims to be a holistic approach that takes into account three pillars: the environment, society, and economy, all mediated together to ensure vitality and durability. Sustainability is not just implemented on an architectural level through recycled materials and construction techniques, but also on an urban scale. The European Commission, for instance, adopted several nationwide proposals that pushed the continent a step further towards implementing the European Green Deal, an action plan that transforms the EU into a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy.

Passive Design

By definition, “passive solar energy is the collection and distribution of energy obtained by the sun using natural, non-mechanical means”, which in architecture, has provided buildings with heat, lighting, mechanical power, and electricity as naturally as possible. The configuration behind passive systems consists of three types: direct gain, indirect gain, and isolated gain, and takes into account design strategies such as: location with respect to the sun, the overall shape and orientation of a project, allocating interior rooms with respect to the sun and wind, window placement, sheltered entrance, choosing materials that absorb heat, glass facades / solar windows where necessary, implementing trombe walls, skylights, water features, and shading elements, to name a few.

Adaptive Reuse

Architects and urban designers have a responsibility of ensuring that the spaces people live in cater to them, the environment, the society as a whole, and maintain its cultural and historic value. However, recent years highlighted numerous socio-cultural predicaments related to the built environment such as housing crises, demolition of historic landmarks, lack of green areas, etc. One way of dealing with these crises was by reusing old structures and complimenting them with new elements or functions instead of opting for complete demolition and reconstruction, which would have inevitably generated a much bigger carbon footprint. Adaptive reuse can be executed in the form of reusing materials, interventions in pre-existing architectures, reclaiming abandoned architecture, or changing the original function of the space.

Convent de Sant Francesc / David Closes. Image © Jordi Surroca

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: The Road to Net Zero Architecture presented by Rander Tegl.

Randers Tegl aims to take responsibility and think sustainable as a part of reaching the goal of Net Zero. Both in terms of how building materials impact the climate and how the materials age, but also with a focus on architecture. That is why Randers Tegl created their sustainable series GREENER, which comes with full documentation in the form of EPD, so it is possible to use the product in technical calculation programs.

Read the original article on ArchDaily.

Geospatial intelligence for infrastructure development to fight climate change

Dec 2, 2021

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How India can use geospatial intelligence for infrastructure development to fight climate change by Madhusudan Anand is a story that should be also common to those countries of the MENA region because there are certainly more similarities in The race to zero emissions, between the MENA region and India than differences.

Here are a few ways geospatial intelligence can be the catalyst for India’s smart status ambitions.

At the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, India promised to reach Net Zero by 2070 — essentially balancing the total carbon dioxide emissions with its elimination from the environment — called carbon neutrality.

However, India is the world’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide after China, the US, and the EU. The latter two have issued a commitment to reach Net Zero by 2050.

Despite the incredible progress made towards sustainability across the country, India seems to be lagging on a global playing field when it comes to mass scale solutions.

Naturally, there’s a lot of expectations and hopes riding on the government’s initiatives, including on the recent PM Gati Shakti Master Plan, which aims to create holistic infrastructure across the country through the incorporation of a centralised geospatial data platform.

The Rs 100 lakh-crore initiative is envisioned to ensure transparency, standardisation, and most importantly, sustainability through efficiency.

The programme will bring together 16 central government agencies, including the Railways, Roads and Highways, Petroleum and Gas, Power, Telecom, Shipping, Aviation, and more.

The overarching idea is that a smart city is sustainable — equipped to mitigate climate change’s effects by harnessing the power of technology.

Geospatial knowledge can provide answers for most everyday problems, especially developing sustainable smart cities. Urban spaces contribute to around 80 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, they are also responsible for 80 percent of a country’s GDP.

With the intersection of artificial intelligence and geospatial data — including census data, satellite imagery, remote sensing, weather data, cell phone data, drawn images, and social media data — urban planning can be highly efficient and contribute to better living conditions both environmentally and financially.

Astoundingly, the market of geospatial analytics is expected to grow at a CAGR of 24 percent between 2020 and 2025.

Here are a few ways geospatial intelligence can be the catalyst for India’s smart status ambitions.

Environmental repair

Consumption of resources, energy, ecosystems, and transport directly impact climate change. Geospatial intelligence can help monitor emission sources through collaborative workflows that harness big data to arrive at efficient solutions.

Detailed maps can help evaluate the productivity of land to arrive at its habitable or agricultural status. GIS also makes it easy for civic authorities to balance nature with humans in urban cities to avoid unnecessary culling of green spaces and wildlife conservation. Moreover, it can monitor and correct pollution and noise levels accordingly.

Critics claim Qatar’s sustainable 2022 stadium is just ‘PR’

Dec 1, 2021

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Critics claim Qatar’s sustainable 2022 stadium is just ‘PR’ by Nikolaus J. Kurmayer of EURACTIV.de would not be a slightly out of control criticism but a serious snapshot of our life of today. This can be summarised in a few words such as: should we build more and more of these sports infrastructure.

30 November 2021

The above image is for illustration and is of EURACTIV.com.

The new modular stadium 974 built for the 2022 Qatar world cup may solve some of the issues associated with world cup venue construction: empty unused stadiums left behind. [dezeen/Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy]

As Football comes under pressure to go carbon neutral, one major source of emissions remains the stadiums that need to be built for every world cup, something Qatar seeks to address. But critics remain unconvinced that supposedly sustainable stadiums are enough to tackle the issue.

A big part of the 3.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas equivalent emissions associated with the 2022 Qatar world cup counted by FIFA stems from what the report describes as “permanent construction of venues”.

Some 639,482 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions would be emitted during the preparatory phase of the world cup during venue construction, FIFA notes.

As a result, Qatar proudly presented stadium 974 to the world on 26 November. Made from recycled shipping containers, the stadium is named after the number of containers used and its Qatari area code.

The design, based on prefabricated modular elements, reduced the waste generated during production and on-site during construction, say the owners.

The use of modular elements also reduced the venue’s construction duration, they added.

Considering the 6,500 deaths of migrant workers in Qatar since the country won its bid to host the world championship in 2010, as reported by the Guardian in February 2021, speeding up construction may be conducive to preventing more deaths.

According to the organiser, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), 34 migrant workers died on World Cup construction sites during the aforementioned period.

The committee says it is transparent about these figures and doubts other “misleading” reports on the number of deaths.

The greenwashing issue

Aside from the human rights concerns and the deaths of primarily Pakistani migrant workers, environmental activists are also concerned that the new stadium may be one big greenwashing exercise.

The stadium, built from recycled materials and will be dismantled at the end of the world cup, boasts a modular design, allowing it to be disassembled and turned into multiple smaller stadiums or scraped easily.

“If you look at all the criticism for all of the big stadiums created around the world — and nobody uses them later on — this is, well, it’s useful,” Zeina Khalil Hajj, of 350, a global climate protection NGO, told Deutsche Welle.

Yet, the innovative sea-side stadium, which can forego cooling due to its construction and location, is just one of eight massive stadiums Qatar built for the 2022 world cup.

“It doesn’t mean they are the biggest culprit in the world. It just means that they have a duty,” Hajj told DW. “They have a responsibility as a rich nation. They have to contribute. And that means they have to change their domestic consumption pattern.”

Residents of Qatar have some of the largest per capita carbon footprints due to their oil-based economy in a relatively inhospitable environment necessitating artificial cooling.

Instead of tackling the systemic challenges to their society, “What they’re doing instead is all this ‘PR machine’,” added Haji.

Despite all the smart design the Qatari SC employs to cut emissions and make the world cup as carbon-neutral as possible, critics are worried about their reliance on carbon offsets.

To achieve the SC’s pledge “to measure, mitigate and offset all FIFA World Cup 2022 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions” will ultimately require a massive amount of so-called carbon offsets, as a majority of emissions from air travel and venue construction are challenging to abate.

Offsetting “unavoidable emissions” by planting a million trees, as Qatar has pledged, rather than using solar power or wind energy to cool stadiums is not what Phillip Sommer, of environmental action Germany, would call sustainable, he told DW.

Neither organisers like the SC nor “FIFA should therefore not rely on offsets, but on direct investments in solar or wind power, and tie conditions for venues to the climate footprint of member countries,” Michael Bloss, Greens EU lawmaker, told EURACTIV.

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

MENA region’s GDP to surge by over 3x by 2050

Nov 27, 2021

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MENA region’s GDP to surge by over 3x by 2050 according to Gulf Capital White Paper as reported by SME10X . In effect, the oil and gas trade revenues allow considerable financial power and a strategic position on the international scene for those exporting countries but also a source of vulnerability for their economies, especially in the aftermath of not only this recent COP26 but to also the ensuing COPs Let us nevertheless look at this prediction of this white paper.

MENA region’s GDP to surge by over 3x by 2050

A New report quantifies unprecedented growth opportunities across “Ascending Asia” which is set to drive 40 percent of global consumption by 2040.

Gulf Capital has released a white paper, “Bridging West and East Asia: The Investment Case for Ascending Asia”, that outlines the significant future growth of the Asian economies and the growth in the intra-regional trade and investment flows between West Asia, including the GCC, and East Asia.

The study, jointly published by Gulf Capital and Dr Parag Khanna, Founder and Managing Partner of FutureMap, reveals that the MENA region is expected to increase its GDP by over 3x by 2050, the ASEAN region is expected to grow by 3.7x, and India by 5x. This turbo-charged growth is in sharp contrast to the projected slower growth of the European and US economies at only 1.5x and 1.8x respectively for the same period.

Within greater Asia, the GCC and Southeast Asia are two ascending regions with rising youth populations where demographic and technological shifts will generate a significant expansion of the services sectors. Across these societies, rising affluence and consumption will drive business expansion, corporate profits, and higher valuations. Longer-term reforms including capital account liberalization and accelerated privatization will unlock fresh investment inflows into new Asian listings.

Dr Karim El Solh, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gulf Capital, said: “The unprecedented growth opportunities presented by the emergence of ‘Ascending Asia’ have never been greater. The strong macro-economic fundamentals, a growing middle class and youth population, increasing GDP per capita, rapid adoption of technology, and growing intra-regional trade and investment flows will only strengthen the case for the Asian economies. We are fortunate to be investing and operating across Ascending Asia from the GCC to the Near East and Southeast Asia, where we have acquired a large number of companies in the past.”

Additionally, East and West Asia’s deepening trade and investment networks indicate that capital, companies, and consumers will increasingly traverse the Indian Ocean and strengthen ties along the new Silk Roads, stitching the region into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

El Solh concluded, “Against the backdrop of the evolving megatrends of deepening trade links, sizable FDI flows, greater political cooperation, and the fastest growing consumer sector, Gulf Capital is ideally poised to capitalize on this once in a generation cross-border opportunity. It is our firm belief that if investors want to capture rapid growth over the next three decades, they need significant exposure to the fastest growing industries across Ascending Asia.”

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