Middle East and North Africa

Primary energy consumption (EJ/yr)

MENA remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels, at roughly 95% of primary energy supply in 2026. Their share is projected to decline to around 58% by 2060 as primary energy supply grows by 35%, driven initially by natural gas – which continues growing to 2035 before flattening – and increasingly by solar and wind from the 2030s.

Final energy demand (EJ/yr)

Final energy demand rises by around 40%, from 41 EJ/yr in 2026 to 58 EJ/yr by 2060 – a somewhat more moderate trajectory than primary energy supply growth, reflecting increasing electrification. Electricity's share of final energy demand grows from 18% today to 32% by 2060.

Electricity generation, including off-grid and BTM (PWh/yr)

Electricity generation, including off-grid and behind-the-meter (BTM), grows from around 2.4 PWh in 2026 to around 8.5 PWh by 2060. Fossil fuels supply roughly 82% of generation in 2026, falling to around 5% by 2060 as solar (reaching about 50% of generation) and wind (roughly 37%) come to dominate the mix.

CO₂ emissions by sector (GtCO₂/yr)

Energy- and process-related CO₂ emissions – after CCS, before direct air capture (DAC) – stand at 3.6 Gt in 2026, around a sixth (16%) more than in 2020, and are projected to decline to 2.9 Gt by 2060, about a fifth (22%) less than in 2026. The sectoral picture shifts substantially: the power sector, the largest single emitter in 2026 at a third (33%) of the total, sees the steepest decline of any sector (down three-quarters (75%) by 2060) as renewables take over generation, falling to just a tenth (11%) of emissions. Transport becomes the largest single-sector emitter by 2060 at around 29% of the total, even as its own emissions decline by 7%. The share of emissions from all other sectors grows slightly between now and 2060.

Fossil fuels will still dominate MENA’s energy supply in 2060

Despite recent progress in green initiatives, MENA is still projected to hold the largest share of global oil and gas production and consumption in 2060. Primary energy supply grows from 59 EJ/yr in 2026 to 79 EJ/yr by 2060 (Figure 1), with most of that growth occurring before 2035 as natural gas use rises from 34 to 39 EJ/yr. Growth slows thereafter, as electrification expands and non-fossil sources – which convert more efficiently to useful energy – make up a growing share of the mix.

Natural gas remains the largest primary energy source throughout our forecast, at 59% in 2026 and 38% in 2060, despite a declining share. Oil remains the second-largest source with its share falling from 32% in 2026 to 19% in 2060. By 2060, fossil fuels account for around 58% of MENA's energy mix, down from around 95% today (Figure 5). Solar and wind’s shares in primary energy supply grow from less than 1% now to around 19% (15 EJ) and 14% (11 EJ), respectively, by 2060. Nuclear’s share also grows, from under 1% to around 5% (just over 4 EJ).

Renewables reach just 37% of primary energy by 2060, the second-lowest share globally after North East Eurasia (15%), reflecting a relatively slow energy transition constrained by the availability of cheap hydrocarbons. Still, geographic and economic diversity across MENA means transition pathways will vary considerably from country to country.  

Space cooling and road transport are the two largest drivers of that growth, followed by buildings, manufacturing, and emerging sources of demand, such as data centres. Natural gas, meanwhile, holds a broadly stable share of about 40% of final demand throughout our forecast, even as its role in primary energy supply and power generation declines. Increasing electrification redirects gas use from power generation toward direct industrial and manufacturing use. Oil's share of final energy demand falls from above a third (36%) to below a quarter (23%).  

Grid readiness varies across MENA, and the Gulf states hold a genuine advantage: their electricity systems were built out largely toward the end of the 20th century, giving the region a comparatively modern, robust grid. Unlike almost all other world regions, renewable growth in the Gulf is unlikely to be hampered by the kind of grid constraints already limiting deployment elsewhere in the short term – but that advantage has a shelf life. Like most grids worldwide, the Gulf's was designed to move power from large gas plants to cities and industrial zones, not to handle variable renewable generation, distributed generation, or storage, all of which will play a growing role in the region's power system. From 2035 onwards, the grid could become a bottleneck if expansion and upgrades do not keep pace with renewable capacity growth. 

Transmission and distribution lines have grown by 30% over the past decade – in line with the global average – but we expect that pace to double over the next decade, delivering a further 50% growth. Regional interconnectors, already long in use, are seeing rising utilization as variable renewable generation grows (Figure 13). Plans are underway to extend that network further, including new links to Europe via Greece and Spain, and earlier-stage proposals to connect to the Indian subcontinent. Alongside these physical links, the Pan-Arab Electricity Market initiative to establish a common regional electricity market aims to enable cross-border power trade and add further flexibility to the system. 

That head start shows up directly in deployment outcomes. Towards 2035, we expect installed solar capacity in MENA to be largely unaffected by grid bottlenecks. The main reason is timing: renewables expansion in the region is still at a comparatively early stage, giving grid investment more room to keep pace. Even so, the region's lack of domestic manufacturing for key grid components means it remains exposed to supply-chain delays, regardless of how much headroom the grid itself has. 

Thermal power plants currently provide around 90% of short-term flexibility in the power system, but this role will gradually shift to battery storage, which also has a quicker response time. By 2045, batteries (including utility-scale, co-located, and EV vehicle-to-grid) will supply over half of short-term flexibility, a milestone the region reaches two years ahead of the world at large (Figure 15).

Some of the region's fastest-growing demand sources – space cooling, desalination, and EVs – can be used efficiently in demand-response programmes to spread peak demand and take advantage of peak solar supply. Improvements in AC units and buildings’ energy efficiency allow spaces to be cooled with less energy while storing cooler temperatures for longer. Desalination plants can ramp up production during peak supply and store the excess water. EVs can function as batteries via vehicle-to-grid technology if smart charging is implemented.

The region's gas export destinations continue shifting toward Asia (Figure 13): by 2060, India alone accounts for around 61% of MENA's total gas exports, up from 11% in 2026, consistent with the more than five-fold growth we now project in the Indian Subcontinent's own gas import demand. Rising demand sees export to Japan, South Korea and China also increase, before dropping after 2040 in Japan and South Korea and beyond 2050 in China. South East Asia is racing to build import capacity. Regional projects under development would add up to 121.3 Mtpa (167 Bcm) of new regasification capacity if all proceed, with Thailand alone planning to double its own capacity to 30 Mtpa (41 Bcm) by 2030 (Zero Carbon Analytics, 2026). This reallocation toward South and East Asian buyers was already underway before 2026, but the conflict has added further motives: buyers who experienced a month of Qatari force majeure and Hormuz closure are, on current evidence, not walking away from Gulf gas, but they are diversifying supply contracts and storage more aggressively than before (Odoardo, 2026). 

Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Oman continue to have the region's most ambitious hydrogen strategies on paper, though 2026 has made clear how much distance remains between target and delivery. Saudi Arabia's NEOM green hydrogen project is roughly 90% built and targets commissioning in 2026–2027, but with only a fraction of its planned ammonia output under firm offtake contract, its commercial viability remains genuinely uncertain even as construction nears completion (Merani, 2026). The UAE's target of 1.4 MtH2/yr by 2031, scaling to 15 MtH2/yr by 2050 (GH2, 2025), rests partly on Masdar, which has pushed its own 1 Mt/yr green hydrogen goal beyond 2030 with no firm new date, citing persistent cost and demand challenges (Parkes, 2024). Oman's target of 1–1.25 Mt/yr of green hydrogen by 2030, rising to 8.5 Mt/yr by 2050 (Al-Rawahi, 2025), looks unlikely to be met on schedule either, with analysts expecting the programme to consolidate into a narrower set of bilaterally contracted projects rather than reach its original economy-wide scale (Sidhu, 2026). 

The region's overall hydrogen trajectory is smaller than we projected a year ago. The ETO 2026 forecast for global hydrogen demand over the entire outlook period is roughly half of that in ETO 2025, as the surge in announced projects over the past several years has not converted into firm offtake prospects at the pace earlier assumed. MENA's national hydrogen strategies (NEOM, the UAE's targets, Oman's programme) are explicitly export-oriented, even though most current production still serves large, established domestic ammonia and methanol feedstock markets. However, our estimates show that these strategies are unlikely to be fully realized. We expect that by 2060, exports will account for around 20% of total hydrogen and derivatives production. It is precisely this export-oriented capacity that is most exposed to weaker global demand. Global correction – not the conflict, nor anything specific to MENA's own consumption – feeds straight through to a smaller regional build-out, with knock-on effects for CCS. 

MENA is also increasingly exporting these products. The region already exports substantial volumes of traditional ammonia and methanol as feedstock, although the ongoing conflict has reduced exports to around half their previous-year level. As Figure 18 shows, exports of hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol, including both feedstock and energy carriers, grow from around 0.7 MtH₂eq/yr in 2026 to 1.5 MtH₂eq/yr in 2030 and around 7 MtH₂eq/yr by 2060, on a hydrogen-equivalent basis (Figure 19).