The Middle East and Africa (MEA) will see 10.7GW of wind power installed over the next five years, up from a total capacity of 6GW today, according to a new forecast from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC)
The expected surge in installations from 2020-24 is due to be led by South Africa, with 3.3GW, followed by Egypt (1.8GW), Morocco (1.2GW) and Saudi Arabia (1.2GW).
Wind installations are, however, expected to be dwarfed by a solar boom in the MEA region, with SolarPower Europe predicting 22.2-27.3GW to be installed from 2020-23.
For instance, Saudi Arabia aims to install 16GW of wind by 2030, but with 40GW of PV and 2.7GW of concentrating solar power.
The GWEC report also showed that 894MW of wind was installed across the MEA last year, a 7% decrease on the 2018 figure of 962MW. Egypt led with 262MW of new capacity in 2019, followed by Morocco (216MW), Jordan (190MW) and Ethiopia (120MW).
By contrast, 3GW of solar was installed across the Middle East and North Africa last year, the Middle East Solar Industry Association recently told Recharge.
