Bahrain says committed to national energy transition plan

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Bahrain has begun implementing its National Energy Transition Plan, which is aimed at increasing the kingdom's renewable energy resources’ share to 5% of its total electricity generation by 2025, until advancing further to 20% by 2035, reported BNA, citing a top official.

Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, President of the Electricity and Water Authority (EWA), said it aims to diversify the kingdom’s energy resources, through its journey to implement National Energy Transition Plan.

"Bahrain is dedicated to its transition to sustainable energy and its commitments in COP26, by investing in renewable energy resources and ultimately reducing carbon emissions to net-zero by 2060," he noted.

The top official said EWA had taken several measures, such as simplifying the applications’ connection-process and setting the procedures to facilitate the process of integrating renewable energy resources to EWA’s electricity network.

He said that EWA has adopted the eligibility criteria for the enrollment of distributed renewable energy resources’ consultants and contractors. Currently, there are 54 contractors and 93 consultants accredited for distributing renewable energy resources in the Kingdom.

Kamal bin Mohammed pointed out that EWA had adopted precise technical standards, to ensure optimum quality of the equipment and components utilized in renewable energy systems, in addition to considering the pertinent technical specifications through their consecutive inclusion to the government’s "Unified Guidebook of Building Permits Regulations".

EWA, he stated, has coordinated with the Information and e-Government Authority (iGA) to digitize all the stages of renewable energy applications through the unified portal "Benayat", an online system for the issuance of building permits in the Kingdom. This ensures further simplifying and accelerating the applications’ process.

According to him, a total of 303 applications have been submitted for the installation of renewable energy from residential, commercial and industrial sectors.

Over 180 applications out of the 303 have been successfully commissioned and connected to EWA’s electricity distribution network, in which the total connected capacity exceeds 38 MW. Additionally, over 150 MW is expected to be installed by 2026, he added.