Another crucial aspect is the provision of adequate opportunities for training and education at various levels. This should start from vocational training for industry operators, targeting the fossil fuels industry too, and extend to formal education that supports scientific advances in energy studies. The EU should focus on these through Erasmus+
The production of green hydrogen also demands huge quantities of water. GCC countries rely heavily on desalination for their water needs, including for renewable energy production. Desalination plants are usually energy-intensive and often powered by fossil fuels. In most cases, a by-product of desalination is brine, which increases the salinity of
However, as discussed, the share of CO2 captured in the GCC countries is still critically insufficient. The GCC’s three carbon capture and storage facilities in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE sequester just 3.7m tonnes per annum. The three other GCC fossil fuel producers – Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait – lag even farther behind. In the Internat
Indeed, there is a global shortage of dedicated climate finance frameworks, including in the GCC monarchies. Some promising initial projects include the 2021 Sustainable Finance Framework in the UAE, which has pushed dozens of financial institutions to lend and invest in environmentally sound activities; a 2019 scheme from Oman’s Bank Muscat to e
Climate change has a significant impact on GCC countries, but hydrocarbon revenues contribute between 60 per cent (UAE) and 90 per cent (Kuwait and Qatar) of government budgets. GCC governments previously viewed climate policies as a bigger threat than climate change, as these policies posed a direct threat to their economic wellbeing.[2] In this s