Green Middle East and the largest offshore wind farm in the world

Countries in the Middle East are no longer blocking climate action, but  actively participating in it  – adopting renewable technologies, diversifying their economies in the face of a future decline in demand for fossil fuels and expanding renewable energy sources. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have announced further reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, while Saudi Arabia – the world’s largest oil exporter – and Bahrain have set net-zero targets by 2060. Qatar has announced plans to reduce emissions by 25% by 2030, while Israel and Turkey have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by the mid-2050s. Investment in renewable energy sources in the Middle East, mostly among major fossil fuel producers, increased from US$960 million in 2011 to US$6.9 billion in 2021.

China’s Chaozhou in Guangdong province has announced a five-year plan to build the  world’s largest offshore wind farm  with a capacity of 43.3 gigawatts (GW). The more than 10km-long facility will be built in the Taiwan Strait, where the wind is expected to be strong enough to drive the turbines 43-49% of the time. The farm will be capable of powering more than 13 million homes, which is expected to meet Norway’s entire electricity demand. Researchers at the Federal Polytechnic University of Lausanne, meanwhile, have achieved a   record for the efficiency of dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) . Their transparency makes them suitable for use in windows, greenhouses, glass facades and in the screens of portable electronic devices. DSSCs are also flexible, relatively inexpensive and can be made using conventional roll printing techniques.