Qatar Unveils National Renewable Energy Strategy

The Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) has unveiled Qatar’s National Energy Strategy, under which the country targets 18% of renewable energy in the power mix by 2030 (from the current 5%). The new energy strategy targets the addition of 4 GW of new large-scale renewable energy capacity by 2030, with a focus on solar PV.

The strategy also aims to add up to around 200 MW of distributed solar generation by 2030 to enable more localized power generation and reduce strain on centralized grid infrastructure. In addition, under the strategy, the share of CCGT thermal generation is planned to decrease from the current 80% to about 72%. The remaining 10% would come from interconnection capacity, small-scale conventional and small-scale renewables.

As of end-2022, Qatar had about 805 MW of installed solar capacity but had not yet started to produce electricity from solar, as the entirety of the country’s power generation still originated from gas-fired power plants. The country has over 800 MW of solar projects under development.