Qatar has begun what could be considered as a major concrete step towards reducing its energy supply which is entirely based on fossil fuels. The country has been criticized for its emission rate. In a recent deal, Qatar has bought enough solar technology from Kazakhstan to make it a world leader in renewable energy with the hope that it will be able to reduce its dependence of fossil fuel by 20% in less than a decade. The deal between Qatar Solar Energy (QSE) and Kazatomprom, a state-owned nuclear holding company, will provide the Qatari company with raw materials necessary to produce solar panels until 2014.
The worth of the deal has not been revealed but it is estimated to be worth billions in dollars. Qatar has the financial muscle to utilize its abundant sunlight into energy but authorities have been heavily criticized for limiting their efforts at feasibility studies. The Gulf country wants to have a renewable energy capacity of 1,800 MW by 2020 that will be increased to 2,5GW.
Finlay Colville, Vice-President at market research firm NPD Solarbuzz is pessimistic that Qatar will be able to attain its objectives with aforementioned deadline. “There’s really no evidence that this is going to happen and the time scale it’s going to happen in, but if they were to get 2.5GW of capacity in the next couple of years, it would make them one of the biggest suppliers outside of China,” he queried. Colville went on to criticize Qatar for having enormous solar plans but doing very little to implement them.
The CEO of CSE, Salim Abbassi, said that the deal “provides a powerful foundation” that could turn Qatar into one of the biggest producers of solar power in the world.