Challenges towards renewable energy : an exploratory study from the Arabian Gulf region

Considering the importance of energy for social and economic development, access to clean, affordable and reliable energy has been adopted as one of the United Nations sustainable development goals that all countries aim to achieve by 2030. However, much of the world's energy is still produced from fossil fuels and thus the progress towards clean and renewable energy is slow. This paper explores the key challenges towards renewable energy in Gulf Cooperation Council countries blessed with plenty of oil and gas reserves. The key challenges identified through literature review were ranked using a quantitative approach through the data collected from a selective sample across the six countries. These challenges in order of importance were found to be policies and regulations, manpower experience and competencies, renewable energy education, public awareness, costs and incentives for renewable energy and government commitment. The findings could be helpful to decision makers and government organisations in the region to develop strategies to overcome these identified challenges

Strategic deliberation on development of low-carbon energy system in China

In recent years, there have been considerable developments in energy provision with the growing improvements in energy supply security and support systems in China. However, China's energy system continues to retain a high-carbon feature where coal dominates energy production and consumption, which has led to the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions and associated serious environmental pollution. It has therefore become an important task for China to consider how to promote the low-carbon development of energy system. This paper summarized the basic trends and challenges for development of low-carbon energy system in China and studied the primary energy consumption and carbon emissions in different scenarios at 10-year intervals between 2010 and 2050. The analysis showed that controlling coal consumption will have an important influence on the control of total carbon emissions and of carbon emission peaking; promotion of non-fossil fuel energies will offer a growing contribution to a low-carbon transition in the medium and long term; the development of carbon capture, utilization, and storage will play a key role in realizing a deep decarbonization pathway, particularly after 2030; and the establishment of a low-carbon power system is crucial for the achievement of low-carbon energy transition. Finally, the strategic considerations and policy suggestions on the development of low-carbon energy systems in China are explored