A study of the challenges and opportunities to adopting renewable energy in Oman

Abstract

Despite its hydrocarbon-wealth, holding nearly 30% of proven world crude oil and around a fifth of global natural gas resources, the members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – are faced by unprecedented challenges including vulnerability to oil price shocks, energy security, and high per capita carbon emissions. Whereas new energy technologies such as solar and wind could represent an opportunity for the region to tackle such challenges, there remain numerous difficulties and barriers that have impeded such development. Nonetheless, there have been few initiatives to develop renewable energy (RE) particularly in Oman. Yet, investors, researchers and government have paid insufficient attention to the investigation and development of RE sources that could be fit for the needs of this country. The current study assesses the degree of success of those few initiatives, and explores the extent to which social, political and economic factors have contributed to such delay in adopting RE.

A closer look at the various levels of interaction between RE initiatives and their surrounding environment has been achieved through the analysis of primary and secondary, quantitative and qualitative data and semi-structured interviews. These data have been discussed and interpreted using strategic niche management, multi-level perspective and rentier state theory approaches. Rentier state theory proved particularly useful to uncover interactions between RE initiatives and their political and economic contexts. An exhaustive analysis of the drivers, barriers and policy related to the uptake of RE in Oman has moreover been obtained by applying grounded theory to the data gathered through semi-structured interviews.

Oman’s political trajectory has been dominated by high hydrocarbons subsidies, a fragmented energy policy, absence of RE regulatory framework, informal institutions and excessively centralised top-down decision-making system with vested interest in hydrocarbons persisted in power. The current study points at the importance of employing multiple approaches to understand previous and current economic and policy trends as well as inform future policy formation and action. Integration of those various levels of analysis shed new light on the technical, social, political and economic factors that influence the uptake of RE in Oman.