Qatar plans 1,000MW of solar power

doha — Qatar plans to build around 1,000 megawatts of solar power generating capacity to diversify its energy mix away from hydrocarbons, the general manager of the state utility said on Sunday.

Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC) said in late December it would hold 60 per cent of a new solar power joint venture with Qatar Petroleum.

The two shareholders will provide $500 million of start-up capital, Fahd Al Mohannadi told reporters on the sidelines of QEWC’s annual shareholder meeting.

International companies will be invited to back 40 per cent of each project through a competitive tender process, Al Mohannadi said.

“We decided to do it based on the fact that producing power from solar is cheaper than buying gas from the international market,” Al Mohannadi said. Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

He did not say when it would reach 1,000 MW of generating capacity. Abdulsattar Al Rasheed, business development director at QEWC, said setting up the joint venture should be completed around the end of this year or early in 2017.

There is little commercial generation of solar power in the Gulf, but oil-exporting countries around the region are starting to develop it, citing environmental reasons as well as a desire to conserve oil and gas reserves for export in the future.

Al Mohannadi said solar would be a key part of Qatar’s future energy mix, since both coal and wind power had been ruled out and Qatar’s land mass was too small to consider nuclear power.