Transcription
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Welcome to Dum Now, the podcast that brings you updates and insights on the latest developments from the Special Economic Zone at Dum. I am Muhammad Ali, and in this episode, we will be exploring Renewables, Oman's green transition, and the opportunities that this brings to SMEs. Joining us today are three distinguished guests: Dr. K H Al-Harthy, Senior Advisor at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals; Dr. Faris Al-Abdan, Director General of Renewable Energy and Hydrogen at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals; and Engineer Musab Al-Shukaili, CEO of Nef Renewable Energy. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
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Maybe what I can do is to give you a high-level overview about the motivations of why a country such as Oman would go into renewables, and then we'll open the space to both from a technical, economic perspective, and, uh, renewable energy participant in the market. So, renewable energy is really used for one of two reasons typically. Either because it makes economic sense, and recently, the other factor that has really been coming into play is, uh, decarbonization, which earlier was not really a, uh, a major factor. But with multiple countries, over, you know, 170 countries signing up to the Paris Agreement, um, some pulling out of it unfortunately, uh, we have this momentum towards decarbonization, and the different levers. One of the main levers is electrification and the penetration of renewable energy into it. Um, to give my colleagues some space, I'll just mention one thing and then pass it on. Oman had always been looking at renewables. We're quite blessed with renewable energy resources, particularly when it comes to solar and wind. Uh, in each of these separately, we're in the top 30 countries around the world. But in some areas in Oman, when you combine the profiles of both wind and solar, such as Duqm, Al-Jazir, parts of Sharqiyah and Wusta, the profile brings Oman to be one of the top 10 spots in the world when it comes to energy, renewable energy potential.
Since you mentioned, uh, wind and solar, what is the typical demand in Oman, and how much of it is driven by the, you know, the power coming from from the origin of fossil fuel, and then what percentage of it is wind and solar?
Sure. So, um, demand centers, until a carbon price comes in, or the end clients, or their own philosophy, demand separation of the source, they don't really care. What they care about is the percent, the availability of the electricity, and then the cost of electricity. So, Oman's grid is, we have multiple grids. We have the MIS, the main interconnected system, which covers the north. We had Duqm, which was separate, but now with the north-south interconnection having reached Duqm, now Duqm has become part of MIS. We have the Salalah grid, we have the Musandam grid. There are a few small clusters of mini-grids in rural areas, a few of them, and these have been connected to the main grid. So, really, we say by the end of 2028, all of Oman should be interconnected in one grid, except for Musandam, which will continue to be separate. The demand of Oman, to answer your question, is around 10 gigawatts. The percentage of renewable energy, uh, from an energy consumption perspective, so not capacity, but energy actually consumed, was around 4.5% last year. 2024, we expect to hit above 9% this year. 2025, inshallah.
Right. And, and just to recall the, the blessing of renewable energies, we did an interesting exercise about two years ago where we modeled it. It's a modeling exercise, so on a software, uh, we look at the land available and the resources available, and then we projected a demand growth. Said, this is how the economy is supposed to grow, and with the economy growth, there is a growth in requirement for energy. And it was a hypothetical sort of exercise saying, if we go on a high trajectory of growth in this country, we require more energy. Do we have sufficient resources to feed that growth? And we were surprised that on a conservative, even basis, on just the usable part of the land, not all the land, just the ones that were allocated for renewable energy, there's potentially five times what we would need as a country in 2050, even if we are. So, going there's a lot of, there's a lot of wind and solar. Yeah, yeah. Even if we grow very high, there's high demand, and we, we just want to use wind and solar. There's a lot of wind and solar.
Num man, so you love that, right? I think you're happy with that.
Just, just to give you, we have a very good number on, I mean, the, the resources of, uh, solar and wind are abundant in Oman, and they are amazing. You are talking about almost 2,200 kilowatt hours per square meter of potential production from solar energy. That's why we see large projects already making very good sense. We already commissioned every 2,500 megawatts, an ambitious number. Now, on the way to commissioning, Duqm, which is 1 gigawatt. Another wind projects are coming, almost 1 gigawatt, I believe, of wind, wind capacity. So, these are very ambitious numbers, and still, with these numbers, we, we are, we have a long way to reach our targets by 2030 and by 2050, which is the Net Zero, uh, target. This is, and this is already downstream. It's, it's downstream, and it will grow with the growth of the demand from the industry, from the residential, from the unique industries that we are expecting, like green hydrogen production. That's talking about the utility scale sector. We talk about the commercial industrial scale sector, which is also, uh, promising lots of opportunities. Lots of industries are moving into Oman, factories that would require their footprint or carbon footprint to be reduced. So, they would need somehow this decentralized solutions of renewable energy solutions, let alone on the, uh, residential sector. Now, with the subsidies being a little bit removed from the residential part, or gradually, I would say, removed from from the residential, we are seeing good demand from the residential sector, contributing to, to basically our, our targets by 2030.
Yeah. So, picking, picking from the point of, you know, opportunities, and we're talking about opportunities here for business development. I would like to ask Dr. Faris, on the upstream side of things. I mean, Oman has picked up the downstream already because things are been coming and flowing from the outside world as technology is readily made and can be readily marketable. Is there something we can do also on the upstream to open up a new, uh, chapter of business development that requires innovation, industrialization, and so on? Maybe we can hear that from your side.
Sure. So, I'm not clear on what you mean by downstream, upstream.
The production side, you know, how you produce the technology itself, and how you, how you generate electricity. You generate the technology that will generate electricity, and then, uh, there is the middle part of it when you go into the development of of these prototypes and ideas and innovation. And then downstream is when you start using it and, and, uh, buying the product and install it in in industries or in domestic. So, the upstream, man, is how you, you originate it from ideas to a product that can go to the market.
Sure. So, I'll answer it slightly differently. First, I'd like to touch on the topic of targets that, uh, Musab mentioned, and then I'll come to your question. So, the targets, which are important, because that really sets the pace and the market expectations. So, if you look at it, originally, when we had Vision 2040, and then early on, in the early days of Vision 2040, we had targets which were set of 20% of renewable energy by 2030, with 36 to 39% by 20, uh, 40. This has been updated. When His Majesty announced that Oman is going towards Net Zero, there was a study that was conducted to see how Oman could best reach, uh, Net Zero by 2050. This was, uh, led by the Ministry of Energy and Minerals in coordination and, uh, collaboration with APICORP and the Nama Holding Group, with different stakeholders across. So, we did targets for 2030, 2040, 2050. And the new updated targets are 30 to 40% by 2030. So, we have upped it up from 20%. And for 2040, the target is now 60 to 70%. And by 2050, we have a 90 to 100% target. So, we expect to reach, uh, a net zero or a net neutral grid by 2050, which of course adheres with the overall Net Zero.
When we come to the, uh, generation and the technologies, the way I think about them is that you have generation and demand, rather than thinking about upstream, downstream. So, I'll answer it the way I understand it, and then I'll try to see if I can address yours. Upstream, we look at multiple sources of electricity, and now we factor in Net Zero and carbon intensity into it. Oman has been 95% dependent on gas for its electricity, with 4 and a half percent, as I mentioned, on renewable energy, with half a percent going for diesel in some of these remote areas. Now, one could say, what are the technologies that are available? Um, we looked at geothermal, we looked at tidal, we looked at wind, we looked at multiple technologies. Small modular nuclear reactors is something we also keep track of. But ultimately, what we realize is that you harness what is most abundantly available, what gives you the lowest cost of electricity, which also has a significant social impact, that can employ a lot of people, and has the potential of onshoring the supply chain. So, can we bring some of these industries to actually create, uh, the upstream supply chain where you have factories generating the, not just assembling the solar panels themselves, but actually building the blocks from the polysilicon all the way to wafers, cells, and then the PV module? Same thing with the, uh, wind turbines. Can we have the, uh, masts themselves manufactured here? The wind blades? So, all of these things have been assessed, looking at it socioeconomically, as well as, um, from a Net Zero compliance perspective. So, we're doubling down on wind and solar specifically, and we keep on tracking the other technologies. Now, what is really important, and again, I'll stop here to give space to my colleagues, is that when we come to renewable energy, it's very important that as we hit the 20% threshold, or even before that, to start including renewable, uh, sorry, battery energy storage and other forms of energy, uh, storage systems. And I'll pause here. There's quite a bit we can discuss about storage and the cost of the system, but I'd like to give my colleagues an opportunity to chip in.
Yeah, I think maybe you can also talk about the innovation because there is Dr. Faris is hitting on right? Yeah, innovations and, yeah.
Then, then I will also, uh, supplement the, the how do we see the innovation happening in in a more structured way. When it comes to the technology and innovation, as I mentioned, uh, with the abundant resources of solar here in Oman, it makes it easier and makes it, uh, really competitive to have, uh, both large-scale, uh, projects and also commercial and industrial scale projects. When it comes to technology, what we have seen in in the past, and with the allocated areas for solar production, the best technology is to use bifacial PV modules, so that we can produce electricity from the upper face of the PV modules and the lower face as well, which is the bifacial module. It's an innovative, basically, product. In addition to that, we, the technology of tracking the sunlight. This is something that's already approved and proven. When it comes to projects already, projects in Duqm, I mean, project 120 megawatts, every 200 megawatts, and Duqm, they are all based on tracking technology and and this bifacial. You put it vertically, you put it horizontally. So, so it's tracking the sun, basically, the sun from the east to to the west, from the, uh, sunrise to the sunset, right? So, that's actually amplifies your production. It gives better production throughout the year. It gives better sense for the developers to come and put their plants, to come with their capital, basically, or foreign capital to put their plants, and then sell cheap electricity, making it competitive for for this technology. What I want to mention here is that these ambitious targets that Dr. Faris mentioned, they are carefully studied. What I want to say is that in some countries, there are, uh, ambitious targets, but they were not, uh, applied in in a careful manner. Let's say, if you push yourself and you push the penetration of of renewable energy into the grid in a fast manner and unnatural push, you, you want to do it very fast, then that would give slight of of an impact on your infrastructure, on how it can handle this amount of renewables. In Oman, I believe the team here studied this and studied the experiences from other countries, and these targets are built gradually with the growth and with the improvement of the infrastructure, the available infrastructure of the transmission network, as well as the distribution network, so that it can absorb these continuous penetrations and growing penetrations of renewable energy.
So, do, do we have the infrastructure for research and development on this?
Before I answer the question, I think I'm just latching on what, uh, Engineer Musab said. When you start introducing, uh, what energy transition, it normally goes into phases. And typically, there are like four phases. It starts by experimentation. You need to experiment because you have an old system, built, operating. I mean, electricity is there. We're just trying now to, to alter it by introducing a new element into an existing system. So, in Oman, we've passed that stage where we were only doing 100 megawatts or less. Then, once you know that's doable, you go into the upscaling. So, to me, Duqm was the first upscale. And then the moment that you've introduced two other, you, you are already into what we call system integration. So, now you have enough mass or enough addition of the renewables into your existing system. And now, which I believe we are in the stage where you needed to learn how do we manage this integration? Comes the story of, is the grid okay with this intermittency? Not capacity, but also managing the intermittency. We're moving from a system that we're controlling 100% to a system that is a cloud could be controlling at some point, a wind blow or not. So, the, the ability to control the system is, is now challenging. The system becomes more resilient because we have multiple inputs into it. There's gas, there's solar, there's wind. But now you need again to go back to the experimentation and start experimenting with the batteries again, then upscale the batteries and integrate the batteries into the grid. So, it always goes experiment, upscale, challenges. Yeah, experiment, upscale, integrate. Ultimately, you will have a full transition, like the new system will be, will be, will be operating. It keeps on iterating, and it keeps on iterating, and there are multiple elements. We've done the solar, we have done, we have experimented the wind. I think we are, we are already upscaled the solar. We experimented the wind. So, next for us is to upscale the wind. This is about a couple of wind projects coming up. So, that is also a critical moment where we have an upscale with wind and see what happens, and then we need to integrate the wind into the system, and then go back to the batteries, and we keep iterating in these steps, experiment, upscale, integrate, until the whole system is transformed into the new sort of, new energy sort of system eventually.
So, do you see, do you see an easy way of moving from these operational challenges, from pilot to upscaling, to managing the operational challenges into opening a whole new branch of research and development and innovation, which itself is another challenge to to open up, but it will open up with it opportunities? Do you see that coming soon, or we need to wait a little bit before until we build a learning curve?
I think it happens at the same time because, uh, most of the, uh, bring R&D is for us is more of a, um, applied R&D because we have a lot of projects to execute. Yes, right? And then they, they bring their own problems. So, we need, we need something that helps us do the.
Are we, is it happening, or we are still very?
I think it's naturally happening within the developer. So, when they build, everyone, of course, they've learned a lot. They're building to. But if you talk about sort of what I call basic or R&D innovation, like where you go from TRL one, or technology level one, that idea that didn't exist before. I think we, we don't have much capacity in that. We have more capacity into the applied bit, like how do we operate? How do we install? How do we tweak? And the element I would like to add here to what Dr. K H mentioned is that even on those upper parts, if you, if you look at us, Oman, we're not new to the game. We're not leading even on the implementation. There are countries which have much higher renewable energy percentages. There are a lot of learnings we can get. So, I would say even the first steps that when we come to this integration or the iterative cycle of experimentation, scaling up, and integrating are things that some nations are ahead of us by a decade, almost, or at least five years. It's later on when we catch up. So, we have an opportunity of leapfrogging to catch up very quickly based on where they have reached the cutting edge. Once we reach that level, then those operational elements start kicking in where we also need to innovate. I also think it's very much a policy thing. So, do we want to just be consumers of technology and focus on getting the lowest cost of electricity, move along with business as usual? Or do we want it to be, uh, I know, how do you say it, you know, a conscious decision that we want to be on the forefront of R&D? So, this, I would say, depends on policy. And mentioning policy, I would say that just as renewable energy goes through this iterations, their existence into a market requires policy changes. You focus on the R&D. I would like to say also on the electricity sector itself, some of these innovations require a relook at our existing policies and market structure. We really require, uh, policies to exist to help this energy transition. To give you an example, uh, storage does not have a definition, energy storage, in Oman's electricity sector. So, how does that come in? We have ambitions of creating a national champion. We have ambitions of enabling the SMEs to have a greater role. So, all of these require a dedicated policy, which then gets detailed into regulations, which are typically publicly consulted to get the feedback from the different parties. I'll mention a few of the policies, and then we can discuss perhaps how this impacts particularly the SMEs, since we have Musab with us. Some of the things we have been looking at, for example, the transmission, uh, tariff methodology, performing it, because today, if you look at it, really, Oman was a very central system, remains a very central system, where quite a few of the costs that are involved in the system are bundled up to make it simple for the end user. But as you move to more liberalized market, or as you have more players, if you move to a liberalized market, or if you want to have players such as SMEs on the smaller scale, you have players coming in on the larger market, and they want to interact freely without having a central body doing all of the procurement, then you really need to break out these costs so that everyone has it quite transparently, and they do their business models correctly, and they do not unintentionally create, uh, losses on other parties that usually are not profit-driven. So, the grid is not a profit-driven entity. They have to just cover their costs. So, the transmission is being looked at, the bulk supply tariff, the methodology, looking at the growth rates, and what elements can be opened up to the market beyond the single buyer. The energy mix was looked at. We also looked at the electricity, uh, energy attributes, or the renewable energy certificates, how to create that into a market that helps both, um, the penetration of renewables, but also the allocation of these certificates to the industries who want them. Last year, we had the autogeneration direct sales and wheeling policy that came out. If one looks at it from a high level, they'll think, okay, this is really just big, mainly for the utilities. But the way we designed the policy is that it also opens up the door for SMEs. And SMEs really had very limited business models on how they could participate in the market. Same, actually, with the big.
Let me pick it up from there. I think on SMEs, because we have Engineer Musab here, who has, uh, started this journey with his colleagues, 10 years ago, looking at, you know, the way you started, which is a research and development outfit, Sultan Qaboos University, and came out of it and made a business out of this. Maybe you can shine a light on how that environment, uh, supported you to to grow to where you are now, an independent successful ESCO in the country, and what policies later on supported you, you know, to do this? So, you, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, you went from an R&D all the way through to a policy that is outside that R&D. Maybe you can tell us something about that.
See, when you want to start a business, it's always, you think about a product that can definitely sell into the market. And when we graduated in in 2013, uh, our final year project was a subject of renewable energy. But then again, we thought, we looked at the neighboring countries, we looked at the world, Europe, and the West and the East, and we saw that these countries with less resources, less abundant resources of solar and wind, and they are utilizing renewable energy to the max. And on the other hand, we have rich resources, abundant, I mean, let me give you an example, out of 365 days in a year, we have 340 days of clear, of clear sky. Sky clearance. This is very good for for the for renewable energy projects, especially the, uh, the solar, uh, PV projects. This gives a very good business case. It gives a good product for the end users, for the residential, for the, uh, commercial and industrial, let alone for the utility scale, uh, products. So, we wanted to test a product which is a grid-connected system to start with, and we didn't know where to do that except inside the university, which actually allowed for this for the sake of research and development. And we did two projects there, get it connected. And from there, it took off to have the, to to have the regulations in 2017. And from there, the awareness was there. Lots of companies opened up, lots of training institutions opened up to give certifications to to be able to install solar, uh, certified technicians, certified engineers to be able to install solar on the on the rooftops of homes, of of factories, on on government buildings. And from there, we took off. Lots of projects were done. And I, I can say now in Oman, we are in a in a transition of having from a single source, which is the gas-fired source of power, to multiple sources, which is the renewable, the wind, and the conventional gas power.
Are you thinking in that direction? This, this is now actually happening. So, we are, we are in a transition phase of this. Yeah. Your organization has got a strategy to go into that. So, we contribute in the renewables. So, we, in the renewable spot. So, what's happening is that this energy mix in in our country needs a new infrastructure, needs a new, uh, optimized approach to protect the the infrastructure, which is by integrating, for example, storage systems, as as mentioned by Dr. Faris. The storage systems actually provide flavor to to the energy mix to make it stable, to make it, uh, basically sustainable, and to make it also, uh, cost-effective for the for the end user. When it comes to the storage, we have honestly started energy storage, uh, projects in Oman in in a in a commercial scale. Let's say, as Dr. K H said, we need to test on the lower scale and then we upscale it to to the large scale. So, we have done that for one of our clients. It's a government client, just to give you an example. They have this camp which is nearby. It's, it's a near remote area, and it's driven by diesel generators, right? So, and they were spending a lot of money on the diesel, on the diesel and diesel fuel, on the maintenance of the diesel. So, what was installed is with it was installed the solar PV plus the energy storage, the battery, plus the diesel generator. So, the generator was there. So, you can see this energy mix, and you can make, basically, an optimized controller to make a harmonic interaction between the three sources to give a final product, which is a low kilowatt-hour, a low-cost kilowatt-hour, a sustainable, and, uh, basically cost-effective solution for them.
There's a mix here on the table, right? You have, you have a private sector, you have an oil and gas sector here, double hatting. Double hatting. I know. Let's take the first hat, so that it becomes a nice mix. And then you have a government. You, you will be surprised to tell you that our best customers are the oil and gas customers. That's what I was going to ask you. So, if you look at that mix, and you've got the government sector here, is another mix. So, what would you see a nice model? What would you ask them? Because you need, you know, there is a policy enablement that you need from the government, that is collaboration. You need from somebody like, you know, fossil fuel, which our economy is based on, you need collaboration there, in a in a context that you don't tell them, I'll take away your business of energy. So, what would you tell them? What, what, from a challenge point of view, what do you think it will be a nice workable model for the next 10 years of your company's growth, given that mix?
See, when it comes to the business model, as as a PPA model, it's clearly, uh, public-private partnership model. So, so it's a win-win situation for all. For the government, because they are applying their policies, right? They are, uh, seeing their policy applied in the right manner. There's no maneuvering around the policies. So, so you could see it, uh, clearly applied, and with clear instructions. The developers would be encouraged to come, to bring foreign, uh, currencies to to the market. SMEs themselves will have better access to to finance for these projects. Oil and gas companies, part of their transition, as we mentioned, it's not a replacement, it's not a competition, it's coexistence, basically. The renewables plus the oil and gas. I told you, the oil and gas companies are one of the best customers when it comes to renewable adoption. So, I think maybe Dr. K H, first, you mind.
The way you posed the question, Dr. Muhammad, you presented it as this is a zero-sum game, and you tried to say that they actually coexist. If you focus and zoom in on the electricity sector and the role of gas in it, then it is a zero-sum game. You are displacing gas out of the market and replacing it with renewables. But the economy is not based on that. The economy is much larger. You have the industrial sector, you have the LNG for export for gas. So, if you look at, if you broaden the perspective, it's not a zero-sum game. There are other uses that this gas can go to, and I would argue there are better uses than generating electricity with them. We are having a lot of lost opportunities by actually using this gas in the electricity sector. So, um, I don't see it. I agree with Musab that there's no, uh, competition.
Just to, to chip in here, I mean, the, the electricity sector is partially subsidized by the government. The government is paying around 400 to 500 million to subsidize the electricity sector. Majority of this subsidy goes to the residential market. So, the residential actually consumes a lot of electricity. I think it's, it's one of the largest consumers, if I'm not mistaken, right?
Well, they're the largest permitted tariff. So, the, the others are cost-reflective, and that will not necessarily change when we shift from gas to renewables, because the subsidy is not on the gas per se, it's actually on the tariff itself. The tariff itself, right? So, that is another topic that needs to be addressed. And in fact, as you mentioned earlier in the conversation, is that if these tariffs or these subsidies are removed on residential, then they will be more open to adopting rooftop solar themselves, or maybe community solar, if that becomes so. It's a very beautiful system. So, so the mix between the entrepreneurs, between the R&D, the policymakers, all of the, and the internationals, it really creates a dynamic field with moving parts, which makes our lives very interesting. What, what missed to it is he mentioned, and Dr. Faris mentioned, the gas, the LNG. This is why we should be talking about primary energy sources, not just the electricity in isolation. It used to be several systems, but with the renewables coming in place, and with hopefully, in in the future, the hydrogen coming in place, now these systems are interacting, and you cannot afford just treating them in isolation. They have to coexist, but also they have to be optimized together. I'm doing more renewables, I have more gas. Where do I send the gas now? The gas, gas is not only for electricity, it's for other things. If it's cheaper to get, uh, renewables to get electricity, let's liberate that gas and send it somewhere. In the future, when the hydrogen comes, what you're doing, what you're doing essentially, you're converting, you're using electricity to produce gas, and then that gas goes into industry. So, this system will become ever complex in the future, and then your ability to deal with it holistically will be a very, very interesting challenge to to optimize a primary energy system. You're no longer optimizing gas lines, or electricity lines, or or oil lines. It will be one integrated, optimized system. I don't know when, but this is the way I see it. And we're starting to see it now with more renewables. We're talking, what do we do with the gas? Now we have renewables. Do we need gas? Do we need to have system security? Because if renewables go, we allocate more gas. We are already into that phase of meddling with the whole energy system rather than with separate units.
Okay, given, uh, all the discussion we had so far, let's, uh, take a turn to the foreign, uh, direct investment. So, what are the distinct points we have for for investors, and what do we have in Duqm? Dr. Faris, would you like to say something about it?
Sure. Um, and you rightly mentioned, we have these areas which were defined by the Royal Decree 10 by 2023, 65,000 square kilometers across Oman. Now, 50,000 square kilometers of those are actually in this area around us here, between Duqm to Al-Jazir and the Wusta area. And this is where we have the spots that are rich in both wind and solar. And as it happens, Duqm itself is, um, an aspiring and growing in a very attractive Special Economic Zone that will be a fantastic demand center. So, with the proximity of the generation and the demand to each other geographically, it means that the investments on the infrastructure are going to be lighter than if we had to transfer all of this electricity further to the north. Of course, we will take care of all of Oman and ensure that energy is equitably, uh, distributed. But there's a unique opportunity for us here in Duqm, both on the electricity side, as well as the green hydrogen side, that we haven't talked about. Because today, of course, we focus on renewables, but one of the derivatives that comes out of renewable energy is green hydrogen. So, having this clean gas that goes into certain industries, such as steel, for example, having electricity which goes also into steel and into aluminum and other industries. I think we have a fantastic opportunity to onshore a lot of, uh, industries over here. And not only those, but the upstream industries. We talked about steel, but we can have the upstream industries of having the solar panels and the winds. We can have downstream industries later on, as we mature and create clusters of having automotive parts, for example, coming in. There are, there's a lot that we can do. There's joint work and partnership that needs to happen between us, Oman, and those foreign parties to find the right formula to get it to to click and work, inshallah.
Excellent. As we bring today's podcast to an end, is there any final thought you would like to share?
So, so basically, I believe Duqm has a great potential, as mentioned, with with both resources coupled. We can, in, in actually have the capacity factor of the footprint of the renewables much larger, enabling us to produce green hydrogen on its, basically, own merit. Of course, we need to add to that the, uh, energy storage to have a full 24 hours of renewable energy production feeding the electrolyzers. I believe this is also where's opportunities might come in the specialization of integrating, uh, the, uh, energy storage systems, the electrolyzers, for example, the, the stack, stack, basically modules for the electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen. All of these efforts need to be combined between the public and the private and the foreign investors to enable this to make it a reality. The end is to have a cost-effective green hydrogen product, and I believe we are on the way to to achieving this goal, inshallah.
Thank you very much. Dr. K H, um, I would say, uh, energy transition is happening. It's been happening. What we see changing every time is the speed and the scale. I always refer to the speed and the scale. We need to be, uh, on top of the speed of the scale. Scale it up when it makes sense. Speed it up when also it makes sense. And don't, we shouldn't be, uh, afraid from scaling or speeding a little bit down if it does an economic sense. The socioeconomic benefits should be well integrated, and we need to be dynamic, and we need to be vigilant to the global changes and to the local social economic needs. Sometimes we'll have to do it because it is a socioeconomic sort of driver. Sometimes we'll have to do it because it is a global driver. There is no shame in saying that we change course. The ultimate goal is there. Energy transition is ultimately is going. We're going to get there. The speed of scale will always change, and we need to have the caliber, we need to have the courage to play with these two levers, the speed and scale, for for the better of the of the whole, uh, system of the nation. Thank you.
Fantastic. And I'll take that segue. I think it's wonderful we're all aligned. Um, our conversation has really been focused on renewable energy, but Oman has many levers. So, this interplay between the different levers and being agile. I fully agree with some of the things we need to keep in mind as we close this, uh, dialogue is that we have energy efficiency, electrification, mobility, and how that can change. We have potentially an abundance of white hydrogen, geologic hydrogen that could be there. We've worked on the carbon capture utilization and storage and blue hydrogen strategy. So, that is coming to a wrap with this techno-economic assessment, and that is another lever that we have. We have some unique players in Oman that are primed to have a significant role in our journey towards energy transition. We have the Oman Net Zero Center, and we have Omani Alternative Energy. And these two will have a significant role in, uh, um, shaping the future of Oman. And, uh, we all have our parts to play. And, yeah, and we're looking to attract new players and partners to join us, inshallah.
Thank you very much, guys. Thank you very much. We hope you have enjoyed the conversation on Renewables, Oman's green transition, and the opportunities that this brings to SMEs. I'm Muhammad Ali. Thank you for listening.
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