The EU should intensify its diplomatic efforts to promote energy efficiency in the GCC. It should focus specifically on: decarbonising transport networks; encouraging the introduction of enforceable norms in green buildings, especially on insulation and cooling; and sensitising consumers to the importance of energy efficiency. Here, the EU-GCC Coop
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
use of “district cooling”, which improves efficiency by consolidating supplies of cold air to distribute across densely populated areas. But governments need to do more to encourage this through specific regulatory frameworks and urban planning. At the same time, GCC markets are still overflowing with cheap and energy-inefficient air conditioni
CCS technologies at a commercial scale, in part thanks to strategic cooperation with European energy industry operators. But the percentage of CO2 the GCC states capture is still critically insufficient. As of August 2022, there were only three large and active carbon capture plants in the GCC region, capturing 3.7m tonnes a year of CO2 – which i
and challenges linked to market development and financing. The later sections of this paper cover how they can begin to do so. Yet, the greatest barrier to realising the potential of energy relations between European and GCC states is not technical, but political. This becomes most apparent at the EU level. In the months after the publication of my