Mena countries have some of the highest rates of solar irradiance on the planet. But you wouldn’t know it from their retarded renewables uptake. Mena installed capacity of solar and wind totals just 5.7GW (3.2GW solar, 2.5GW wind), 0.6% of the global figure (MEES, 27 April).
And these headline capacity figures overstate the importance of solar and wind to the power generation mix. Solar and wind by their nature intermittent: the IEA estimates average capacity factors of just 25% for solar and 43% for wind, versus 24/7 thermal capacity. (CONTINUED - 1161 WORDS)
