A six square kilometer tax-free zone is set to open in Abu Dhabi 2009

[LMagic007]

"All the large-scale manufacturing that's taking place now in solar and things like that, we want to bring it here. We want to be able to offer this up as an area where these kinds of skill sets are readily available."

A six square kilometer tax-free zone is set to open in Abu Dhabi 2009, offering full foreign ownership for light industry, development units and laboratories, as well as facilities for education and research.

Now that might be sort of incentive solar needs to fast track it.

Abu Dhabi, the next cleantech hub? | Cleantech Group

[August]

Middle East developers urged to follow green building codes | Middle East | News

The people, and the governments, of the Middle East sure has a lot of waking up to do. And wouldn't it be just perfect if they were to embrace the idea of constructing a lot more solar energy systems?

[LMagic007]

Yes good to see them waking up. I think they might be starting to realise that once the oil is gone, they will be left with sand. Not that sand doesn't have a value, but it all comes back to sustainability. If one builds an economy heavily dependant on one diminishing power source ( oil and petroleum-related industries ), over time they can become very exposed to risk of affordable supply. They cannot lock in their energy price indefinitely. Nor can we. At least renewables offer the chance to lock in a greater portion of future energy costs, due to the differentiation of a freely renewable energy source.

[include]

The interesting thing is that these places have so much fossil fuel they don't need to turn to solar, yet they are anyway, and in a big way. Says a lot I think.

[LMagic007]

I don't know what oil reserves they have left, but as oil exporters I suspect they might be heavily dependant on oil for income. Other more developed countries are oil importers but strong in other areas like agriculture or high technology. Thus even though they might have plenty of oil and cash reserves, they are locked into a system of wealth generation and maintenance dependant on that resource.

With carbon cap/trade/tax mandates 2010 and beyond along with renewable energy development and hybrid and electric motor vehicles likely to influence future global demand for oil, I think they have good reason to be establishing a longer term plan. Thus I think it's very prudent of them to be diversifying their economy, into areas where they can be competitive in the long term. Solar energy technologies seem like a natural long term fit to meet growing global demand in the renewable energy area.

[August]

Rather an interesting article on the development of the Middle East environmentalist movement since the early 1990s, linked below. But just for the record though: it is no more than a year ago I read a very long article about the popular disinterest in all things green or environmental as seen from the perspective of an environmentalist entrepeneur who was thinking of the entire Arab world as a whole, and saying it was a depressing fact that too many Middle Eastern governments didn't have the mind to ever looking beyond the economically fortunate fact of big oil.

Arab environmentalism creates new market | Middle East, The | Find Articles at BNET