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Working towards a common energy-transition goal

28 November 2022

Published in partnership with

In the end, it went right to the wire. Just as it looked like the UN’s 27th Conference of the Parties (Cop27) would conclude without an accord, the weary delegates announced that they had reached a landmark agreement on setting up a fund to help compensate poorer nations for the economic and social destruction caused by climate change. 

The statement, two days after the Sharm el-Sheikh summit’s original 18 November end date, was a culmination of some 30 years of negotiations between developed economies and developing nations. The latter had long argued that the damage they have experienced from global warming should be paid for by richer countries responsible for the crisis in the first place.

Although far from perfect, the global ‘loss and damage’ fund was hailed as an important and symbolic step towards hitting the agreed target of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2030. It also marked the continuing engagement and collaboration by governments across the globe.

“We rose to the occasion,” said Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and president of Cop27 Sameh Shoukry. 

“We worked around the clock, day and night, but united in working for one gain, one higher purpose, one common goal. In the end, we delivered. We listened to the calls of anguish and despair.”

Private sector involvement

While Cop27 has been and will continue to be a policy-setting mechanism negotiated at the highest level, companies played a critical role during the conference. 

Firms representing a broad range of sectors, including Vodafone, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group and Bloomberg, partnered with the event, and many more participated in the main conference and exhibition areas. 

Ultimately, governments understand that the private sector will lead the drive towards net zero. Without corporates worldwide investing in clean energy projects and technology, there is little hope that targets will be reached.

Five consistency points

A key supporter of Cop27 was Siemens Energy. Sharing its expertise through panels covering subjects as varied as the Mediterranean’s North-South Energy Partnership, improving power access in Africa by unlocking its green hydrogen potential, and overcoming the challenges of decarbonisation, the energy technology company played a pivotal role in discussions and thought leadership.

It also participated in the world leader’s summit at a roundtable discussing green hydrogen, reinforcing its positioning of energy transition at the heart of its strategy. 

Before the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, Siemens Energy president and CEO Christian Bruch outlined five points of consistency that his company considers to be unifying elements in the decarbonisation drive.

The first is the acceleration of renewables. Replacing conventional power generation systems with solar, wind, hydro and other forms of renewable energy is essential to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Despite a considerable increase in the overall share of renewables in the past three years on the back of ever-lowering costs and more efficient technology, more must still be done.

For example, the US needs to triple its share of renewable energy as a proportion of the energy mix by 2050 for the energy transition to succeed. The Asia-Pacific region, meanwhile, will have to increase this figure fourfold. 

Regional targets

In the Middle East, every country has now set ambitious targets to increase renewable energy. The likes of Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the UAE are aiming for renewables to account for up to 50 per cent of total production by 2030. To reach these objectives, almost all new power generation projects come in the form of renewables.

However, the impact of greener electricity production could be somewhat offset by continuing demand growth caused by an increasing global population and economic growth. 

In this context, the second point is the requirement for improved energy conservation measures, such as policies to incentivise the electrification of industry and transport. 

Regionally, the industrial electrification of energy-intensive industries is an optimal opportunity to reduce harmful emissions by harnessing electric boilers and/or electricity-based fuels. Future large-scale blue and green hydrogen production will also have a role to play in industrial processes.

Siemens Energy’s third point of consistency is improving electrical efficiency. The increase in renewable energy capacity and the growth in power capacity, in general, require significant investment in transmission and distribution networks. 

This is particularly important in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, where almost 25 per cent of the population has little to no access to electricity. 

The fourth point covers the requirement to use existing conventional power infrastructure to help bridge the gap between the fossil-fuelled economies of today and the net zero of tomorrow. 

Progress cannot be made in one step alone and requires a gradual transition. In the meantime, existing thermal plants can employ measures such as combined-cycle technology and carbon capture to make them as efficient and environmentally friendly as possible.

The energy transition is the biggest investment programme since the dawn of industrialisation. If governments, business and society work together, energy transition is a massive opportunity

Christian Bruch, Siemens Energy president and CEO

Mineral production

Finally, to achieve all of this, it is necessary to improve supply chains and increase the production of necessary minerals and rare earth metals required in net-zero technologies, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and chromium. 

Bruch gives the example of a typical electric car, which requires six times more mineral inputs than one powered by an internal combustion engine. He also cites onshore wind plants, which need nine times more than a gas-fired power plant. 

If mineral production is not increased and geographically diversified, there is a risk of future supply bottlenecks.

In the Middle East, a good illustration of this is the potential future supply gap for electrolyser systems, and the anodes and cathodes typically made from metals such as zinc, nickel and lithium. 

MEED estimates that about 75GW of electrolyser production capacity will be required by 2030 to meet the demand for the raft of planned green hydrogen plants in the region alone, compared with a total global output capacity of just 8GW today.

Industrial decarbonisation alliance

All five consistency points make salient arguments. However, they can only be achieved with close cooperation between the private and public sectors. While the former can spearhead and implement the decarbonisation drive, the latter can provide the regulations and incentives to encourage these initiatives. 

The newly formed Alliance for Industry Decarbonization initiated by Siemens Energy and coordinated and facilitated by the Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is an example of greater collaboration between the public and private sectors. 

The 28-member alliance – which encompasses a range of global energy, renewable, consulting and manufacturing companies – met for the first time during Cop27 to outline its joint vision and implementation plan. Its strategy focuses on six pillars and enablers that tie into the points of consistency: renewables, green hydrogen, bioenergy with carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), heat process optimisation, human capital and finance.

Only through this kind of stakeholder dialogue can the immense and existential challenges posed by global warming be overcome. Governments or companies acting in isolation will only achieve so much on their own. The points of consistency must be considered as a whole and in unison if the world’s climate objectives are to succeed.

As Bruch says: “The energy transition is the biggest investment programme since the dawn of industrialisation. If governments, business and society work together, energy transition is a massive opportunity. There is no excuse for waiting any longer.”

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    10 February 2026

     

    Egypt’s policy efforts over the past 12 months reflect a recalibration of the state’s survival strategy amid chronic economic headwinds, security challenges on its borders and a geopolitical landscape of shifting regional alliances and an irresolute US position.

    In response, Cairo is pursuing an increasingly diversified approach to its foreign policy, geared expressly towards economic survival and only minimal geopolitical triage.

    The unifying logic is resilience: preserving economic stability, state authority and external relevance in the face of an increasingly constrained environment of regional instability, negative economic multipliers and shifting global power structures.

    Diplomatic overtures

    At the regional level, Cairo has reinserted itself as a diplomatic actor of consequence, but this activism is best understood as a reaction rather than an expression of regional leadership.

    Cairo’s mediation role in Gaza, particularly following the January 2025 ceasefire, has become the symbolic centrepiece of its foreign policy identity, but its efforts in this area ultimately stem from the conflict’s direct strategic relevance to Egypt.

    By convening an extraordinary Arab summit in March 2025 and advancing its own reconstruction framework, Cairo sought to position itself as a key custodian of Gaza’s next chapter and – more cynically – a potential beneficiary of the post-war process.

    Yet Egypt’s role remains structurally bounded, with Cairo operating less as an agenda-setter than as a facilitator within frameworks principally shaped by US priorities, Israeli security imperatives and Gulf financing.

    In this context, Cairo’s efforts reflect a bid to maintain diplomatic relevance and remain indispensable in a situation where it ultimately lacks decisive influence.

    A similar pragmatic logic shapes Egypt’s posture in the Horn of Africa.

    Faced with the unresolved Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) dispute, Cairo has shifted away from diplomatic and legal confrontation towards alliance-building with Somalia and Eritrea, seeking leverage through regional networks.

    In Sudan, Cairo’s posture reflects a harder security logic. It supports the Sudanese Armed Forces out of a fear – arguably justified – of the outcomes that any further weakening of the central government in Khartoum could bring to Egypt’s borders.

    A fragmented Sudan would threaten not only Egypt’s southern flank, but also its Red Sea trade and Nile water security, compounding its concerns related to the GERD.

    Across the board, the pattern is that Egypt’s engagement is reactive and shaped more by vulnerability and risk aversion than by strategic assertiveness.

    Cairo is therefore an actor that is at once diplomatically present and vocal on regional crises, yet rarely instrumental in shaping events; its diplomacy is structurally constrained by informal allegiances and external dependencies.

    Strategic breadth

    Aside from its broadly cautious posture, Egypt’s foreign policy and domestic economic policy also exhibit deliberate diversification and geopolitical hedging.

    In recent years, Cairo’s fragile position – amid the stymying of Suez Canal revenue flows – has intensified its outreach to diverse political and financial backers, including countries with which it has previously been at odds.

    Although the IMF remains a constant presence in Egypt’s fiscal landscape, the past few years have seen Cairo leverage its relationships with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye to attract billions of dollars in foreign direct investment and financial support.

    The recourse to support from Qatar and Turkiye is particularly notable given Egypt’s diplomatic decoupling from both in 2013 following the ousting of president Mohamed Morsi, whom both countries supported.

    Diplomatic ties with Turkiye were formally severed in 2013, and the relationship worsened in 2014 over Ankara’s support for a rival faction in the Libyan civil war. Cairo then cut ties with Doha in 2017 following the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

    Diplomatic ties with Turkey were formally severed in 2013 and the relationship further worsened in 2014 over Ankara’s support for a rival faction in the Libyan civil war. Cairo then formally cut ties with Doha in 2017 following the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

    These tensions were gradually eased from 2021: the Al-Ula Declaration rehabilitated relations with Qatar, while back-channel engagement with Turkiye led to the restoration of diplomatic relations in 2023.

    In this light, while the UAE’s $35bn in foreign direct investment and the $5bn in support from Saudi Arabia in 2024 align with past politics, the $7.5bn in support from Qatar in 2025 and the $350m defence deal with Turkey in 2026 represent the new.

    Cairo is also rapidly expanding its trade ties with China. By May 2025, 2,800 Chinese companies had invested $8bn in Egypt, according to Egypt’s General Authority for Investment and Free Zones. Total Chinese investments, including state-backed loans and development projects, amount to tens of billions of dollars and have consistently placed China as Egypt’s top trade partner over the past decade.

    Egypt’s accession to Brics in 2024 is a natural corollary of its growing ties with China.

    This contrasts with the $1.3bn in annual US military financing, which is conditional on Egypt purchasing and maintaining US-origin defence equipment and – implicitly – on remaining deferential to US and Israeli security concerns regarding Palestine.

    In late 2025, Egypt also secured a €4bn package from the European Union, in addition to a planned $2.3bn disbursement from its $8bn IMF Extended Fund Facility.

    Turning the corner

    The widening breadth of Cairo’s fiscal and financial backers is making it less reliant on any single source of support. While the IMF’s loans and reform programme underpin overall fiscal stability, Egypt’s outreach is increasingly enabling it to tackle outstanding liabilities.

    For instance, Egypt’s Ministry of Finance announced that 50% of the proceeds from a recent $3.5bn land sale to Qatar would be used to service domestic and external debt.

    The financially extractive aspect of Cairo’s foreign relations also represents a clear avenue of success for President Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi’s government, in sharp contrast with its limited ability to shape the geopolitical environment.

    And in the immediate term, it may be all that Cairo needs.

    With growth rising and inflation dropping, Egypt appears to be in a position to claw itself back from the fiscal cliff that has loomed over it for the past two years.

    That would be a significant achievement. And with domestic fortunes secured, Cairo could perhaps turn its attention outward again – towards projecting influence across the region.

    Image: Doha, Qatar – September 15, 2025: Egypt’s President Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi delivering his statement at the Emergency Arab-Islamic Summit to address the Israeli attack on Qatar

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  • MEED set to turn 69 years old next month

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    Register for MEED’s 14-day trial access 

    MEED celebrates its 69th birthday early next month – a journey characterised by huge transformations and upheavals in the region, but with one constant that MEED has lived by from day one: the goal of helping the world understand what is happening in the Middle East and how to benefit from it. 

    MEED set out all those years ago to offer the business community and government analysts vital information on economic development and commercial opportunities in the region. While the medium might have changed, morphing from newsletter to newsstand to online, MEED has not deviated from this original, unwavering mission. 

    In its early days, MEED was the only comprehensive source of information on the Middle East. Now it is the region’s leading subscription-based online business intelligence service, offering – as it has done done for decades – the latest business news, interspersed with political updates, comment and analysis.

    From newsletter to newstand 

    The first issue of Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) was published on 8 March 1957 as a hand-printed newsletter in the wake of the Suez invasion.

    Former editor the late Abdullah Jonathan Wallace – son of MEED’s founder, Elizabeth Collard (pictured, right) – remembers first working at MEED when he was 15 years old. He would come home from school on Thursday evenings to his mother’s Dickensian office in the then highly unfashionable Covent Garden area of London.

    “My job was to fill the 100-or-so envelopes of the subscribers and take them to the post office. Many people would pass by on press day to help collate and staple the newsletter,” he recalled.

    Collard, a feisty champion of Arab causes and the driving force behind MEED for its first two decades, had the foresight to realise the potential the Middle East offered to Western business. 

    A noted economic analyst on the developing world, Collard produced MEED from her one-roomed office on a hand-cranked Ronco printing machine, with the help of two part-time secretaries. 

    It is no coincidence that the first edition coincided with International Women’s Day, a fitting occasion for a remarkable woman who, by the late 1960s, was brought in to advise Prime Minister Harold Wilson on Middle East affairs. 

    Among the friends and relatives who helped staple and stuff envelopes with the 12-page newletter was Essa Saleh al-Gurg, later to become the UAE’s ambassador to the UK, who was then training as a banker in London.

    Lacking any editorial resources, the Middle East Economic Digest was exactly what it said it was: a compilation from newspapers and other reports. Newspapers were flown in weekly from Cairo and Beirut, then translated and condensed. By June 1965, there were still only three staff members.

    “Until the oil boom of the early 1970s, when MEED really took off, we were just about making ends meet,” said Wallace. “We could not afford to hire seasoned journalists or experienced commentators and mostly took British graduates straight from university.

    “This changed a little when oil peaked around the end of 1979 at $37.42 a barrel ($111 at today's prices), but we still preferred to take on graduates and train them on the job due to our high requirement for balanced reporting and tight, accurate writing, which also needed to be finely nuanced to avoid censorship in some countries.

    “In business terms, the economies of Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey dominated the interest of Western exporters in the 1960s, together with the cosmopolitan and stylish Beirut as an entrepot and banking centre.

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    Oil boom

    By the mid-1970s, MEED had become the MEED Group and was in the enviable position of receiving half of its revenue in advance from subscriptions. The other half came from advertising. Rising income streams let to expansion, including the launch of the African Economic Digest and the largest photographic library in the Middle East. A conference division was also started, which broke new ground, holding the Gulf's first banking conference in Bahrain in the late 1970s.

    “Increased revenue meant we could send our reporters to the region on a regular basis, open a bureau in Dubai and then Paris and Washington, and upgrade our typesetting and production equipment to allow us to print on faster, more sophisticated printing machines,” said Wallace.

    Since its launch in 1957, MEED has been tackling news issues head-on with groundbreaking exclusives that shape the Middle East

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    The newsletter of the early days became a weekly magazine, and then, as the face of media changed, transformed into a subscription-based online business intelligence service, which now publishes a monthly magazine, MEED Business Review. The business also includes MEED Projects, a subscription-only service offering in-depth project tracking through its database; and MEED Insight, MEED’s premium research division.

    Today, MEED is owned by GlobalData, a data analytics and consulting company, headquartered in London, UK, that acquired MEED Media from Ascential PLC in December 2017. The business is still growing, with more than 60 members of staff in its Dubai office.

     

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  • Contract award nears for Abha airport expansion PPP

    10 February 2026

     

    Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Holding Company (Matarat) and the National Centre for Privatisation & PPP (NCP) are said to be close to awarding a contract to develop and operate a new passenger terminal building and related facilities at Abha International airport.

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    Additionally, the scope includes support facilities, such as an electrical substation expansion and a new sewage treatment plant. 

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    The project will be developed under a build-transfer-operate (BTO) model and will involve designing, financing, constructing and operating a greenfield terminal.

    This will be the kingdom’s third airport PPP project, following the Hajj terminal at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International airport and the $1.2bn Prince Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz International airport in Medina.

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    Once completed, the airport will handle more than 90,000 flights a year, up from 30,000.

    The new terminal is also expected to feature 20 gates and 41 check-in counters, including seven new self-service check-in kiosks.

    The BTO contract duration is 30 years.

    The existing terminal, which served 4.4 million passengers in 2019, will be closed once the new terminal becomes operational.

    Matarat’s transaction advisory team for the project comprises UK-headquartered Deloitte as financial adviser, ALG as technical adviser and London-based Ashurst as legal adviser.

    ALSO READ: Saudi Arabia seeks Qassim airport PPP interest

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  • Roshn and Agility to develop logistics park in Saudi Arabia

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    Saudi Arabian gigaproject developer Roshn Group has signed an agreement with Kuwait’s Agility Logistics Parks (ALP) to establish a joint venture to develop a Grade A logistics park in the kingdom.

    The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Public Investment Fund Private Sector Forum in Riyadh on 9 February.

    The joint venture will develop the project on an area of about 1 million to 1.5 million square metres (sq m).

    The project’s timeline, budget and exact location were not disclosed.

    In November last year, ALP inaugurated a new Grade A logistics park in Jeddah. 

    The company subsequently said it would add 100,000 sq m of Grade A warehousing to the ALP warehousing complex in Riyadh. The expansion was expected to cost about SR250m ($66m).

    The company also operates a 200,000 sq m logistics park in Dammam and a 871,000 sq m facility in Riyadh.

    Roshn Group’s latest agreement follows its signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with UK-headquartered Cognita Schools to develop a new build-to-suit private school in its Sedra residential community in Riyadh.

    The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the Cityscape Global event held in Riyadh in November last year.

    Cognita operates more than 100 schools across 21 countries, serving over 100,000 students and employing 21,000 staff. It is already present in the region through schools such as Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai, the Repton Family of Schools and King’s College Riyadh.

    READ THE FEBRUARY 2026 MEED BUSINESS REVIEW – click here to view PDF

    Spending on oil and gas production surges; Doha’s efforts support extraordinary growth in 2026; Water sector regains momentum in 2025.

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  • Saudi Arabia seeks Qassim airport PPP interest

    10 February 2026

    Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Holding Company (Matarat), through the National Centre for Privatisation and PPP (NCP), has issued an expression of interest (EoI) for a tender to develop the Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz International airport in the Qassim region.

    The EoI notice was issued on 9 February, and companies have until 23 February to submit responses. 

    The project scope includes the redevelopment of the passenger terminal as well as other associated facilities such as airside infrastructure, including runway, taxiways and aprons.

    The project will be developed on a design, finance, construction, operations, maintenance and transfer basis.

    The latest development follows Matarat Holding and NCP prequalifying five teams to bid for a contract to develop the new Taif international airport project in Mecca province in January.

    According to local media reports, four consortiums and one standalone company have been prequalified to proceed to the next stage of the project.

    The new Taif International airport will be located 21 kilometres southeast of the existing Taif airport, with a capacity to accommodate 2.5 million passengers by 2030.

    The clients opted for a 30-year build-transfer-operate (BTO) contract model, including the construction period.

    Previous tenders

    The Taif, Hail and Qassim airport schemes were previously tendered and awarded as PPP projects using a BTO model.

    Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) awarded the contracts to develop four airport PPP projects to two separate consortiums in 2017.

    A team of Tukey’s TAV Airports and the local Al-Rajhi Holding Group won the 30-year concession agreement to build, transfer and operate airport passenger terminals in Yanbu, Qassim and Hail.

    A second team, comprising Lebanon’s Consolidated Contractors Company, Germany’s Munich Airport International and local firm Asyad Group, won the BTO contract to develop Taif International airport.

    However, these projects stalled following the restructuring of the kingdom’s aviation sector.

    Saudi Arabia has already privatised airports, including the $1.2bn Prince Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz International airport in Medina, which was developed as a PPP and opened in 2015.

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