Last year, Jordan ranked first in the Arab world with the installed capacity of renewable energy sources, amounting to 27 percent of the electrical energy generated in the Kingdom, also ranked third, after Egypt and Morocco, in the amount of energy produced.
According to official data, the renewable energy sector in Jordan witnessed a quantum leap, with the contribution of renewable energy increasing by 27 percent of the electrical energy generated in the Kingdom until the end of 2022, compared to 1 percent in 2014.
The amount of electrical energy generated from renewable energy projects in Jordan amounted to about 6.2 terawatt hours, while Jordan is looking forward to producing about 50 percent of the electrical energy generated in 2030 and pushing for Jordan to become a regional center for green energy production, taking advantage of the abundance of renewable energy sources and the central location of Jordan in the region Middle East and Africa.
In an ambitious direction, Jordan is active in implementing an electrical interconnection project between the countries of the Middle East and North Africa with European countries, to provide Europe with green energy.
This proposition was the focus of a number of Jordanian-European meetings led by the Jordanian Ministry of Energy to cooperate with the European side by supporting the project, amid Jordanian assurances that it achieves integration between the associated countries by providing them with energy generated from renewable energy sources at relatively low costs, and that it supplies the northern Mediterranean countries with green hydrogen produced.
Renewable energy sources contributes to achieving the commitments of these countries to reduce carbon emissions in order to preserve the environment and reduce the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change.
In preparation for this step, Jordan is seeking to transform the national electricity grid into a smart grid and to find storage solutions to absorb the qualitative leap that has been achieved in the field of renewable energy.
Speaking to KUNA, Director of Renewable Energy at the Jordanian Ministry of Energy, Eng. Yacoub Marar said that Jordan has benefited from its geographical location to enhance its local sources of clean energy within the framework of a national strategy that keeps pace with the global trend towards green energy as the energy of the future.
Jordan, as part of its efforts to enhance its chances of becoming a regional center for the production of green energy, is preparing for this purpose a national strategy to study the possibilities of working on hydrogen energy, and prepared a road map in this regard, he added.
International companies invest in projects to produce electricity from renewable energy in Jordan, especially solar energy, while the Jordanian government provides its citizens with subsidies amounting to 30 percent of the cost of electricity generation systems intended for homes and provides deprived families with these systems for free.
The government is also implementing a program according to which it provided 160 government schools and 600 buildings with solar power generation systems.
Jordan, which is disadvantaged in energy resources, is striving to enhance its sources to reduce the burden of the oil bill, which for the first ten months of 2022 amounted to about USD 4.2 billion, according to data from the Department of Statistics.
Source: Kuwait News Agency