output by 2030. Saudi-based firm ACWA Power is building the world’s largest utility-scale, commercially based hydrogen facility powered entirely by renewable energy at NEOM. By 2025, this will produce up to 650 tonnes per day of green hydrogen and 1.2 megatonnes of green ammonia for export. ACWA Power announced this year a plan to build two more

Hydrogen has emerged as a shared interest between European countries and the Gulf monarchies. European policymakers believe that hydrogen could be a solution to decarbonise hard-to-electrify sectors, including heavy industries, shipping, and aviation; or for long-term energy storage for electricity production. The booming availability of cheap rene

have incentivised CO2-based synthetic fuels, in particular through the recast Renewable Energy Directive to 2030. Although the EU should still phase out emissions-producing cars and vans by 2035, it should also continue to support e-fuels – especially to help decarbonise aviation. Some European companies have committed to net-zero flights by 2050

All the other monarchies have launched similar, albeit smaller, tree-planting campaigns. However, environmental experts cast doubt on the feasibility of planting so many trees in such a water-stressed region. They point instead to other promising nature-based solutions such as “mineralisation” – a process that permanently captures (that is, m

The GCC states could now encourage the replacement of other cheap and energy-inefficient “Made in China” appliances, that have flooded the local markets. Energy subsidies have for decades been at the core of the government-society ruling contract in the monarchies. It would therefore be easier for them politically to promote more efficient alte