Gulf energy use likely to rise 2.5% a year

Thursday, Sep 08, 2011

Gulf News

Abu Dhabi Electricity consumption in the GCC region is expected to increase at an annual rate of 2.5 per cent between now and 2035, according to a white paper by Deloitte on energy and resources in the Middle East.

The Energy on Demand: The Future of GCC Energy Efficiency report looked at electricity consumption since 2007. “We really wanted to choose a base point,” said Kenneth McKellar, partner and Energy and Resources leader at Deloitte in the Middle East. “Choosing 2007 is to try and see what the growth was before the global financial crisis and what it would look like after the financial crisis, so we’re using it as a reference year.”

The white paper attributes the increase to the growth of the region’s population with a significant 47 per cent of energy consumption diverted into residential use. “On the residential market, more and more people are going to be coming to the region to fill jobs and get involved in new sectors of the economy,” McKellar told Gulf News. While the rate looks quite formidable, McKellar said it would stay at that level until energy efficiency measures kicked in.

“While the raw increase is 2.5 per cent theoretically, in reality what’s going to happen is that the demand is going to get steep and prices will invariably increase with demand to a point that the governments and users will seriously look at electricity efficiency measures,” he said. “We will see a bottom-up approach where users will start approaching ways that are available to them like putting solar panels on the rooftops of their homes for example.”

McKellar said GCC residents used more electricity domestically today than their counterparts in the United States.

Cheap energy

“The carbon footprint is very high compared to many countries in the world because we’ve got cheap energy compared to other parts of the world,” he said, adding that will inevitably change. “The UAE is particularly taking the lead in renewable energy and I think people in government are realising what is going to happen and are starting to take action.”

According to the paper, since GCC countries are not as industrialised or service-based as other economies, their residential use of electric power will form a greater proportion of overall consumption.

By Samia Badih?Staff Reporter

Gulf News 2011. All rights reserved.