The GCC countries RE-readiness: Strengths and gaps for development of renewable energy technologies

This paper aims to foster understanding and development of renewable energy technologies (RETs) in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, to develop a generic framework to assess renewable energy readiness (RE-readiness) of GCC countries as a case study and to calculate a country's RE-readiness score and discuss the associated gaps and strengths. Towards achieving these objectives, this study essentially serves as a "benchmark" to assess each country's RE-readiness, identifying gaps and providing recommendations to overcome the main barriers to integrate renewable energy projects for power generation. The RE-readiness assessment framework has been developed by identifying the dominant barriers and supporting mechanisms for the deployment of RETs and then creating quantitative factors to rate their intensity. It organizes the factors according to the pillars of infrastructure, institutions, and human capital. Each factor is assigned a weight and a score between 1 and 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest readiness. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) receives the highest score of 4.75 out of 7 while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) gets a slightly lower 4.60. The RE-readiness index shows that compared to the other countries, the UAE and the KSA are more ready to integrate RETs for power generation.