Solar Electricity Projects and the Changing Political Economy of Energy in the Middle East

This paper will analyse the role of renewable energy projects in reshaping the political economy of energy in the Middle East and North Africa. It will investigate several recent/emerging solar energy schemes: prosperity green solar PV park (Jordan), TuNur (Tunisia), and the Noor solar power complex (Morocco) chosen because all involve joint participation of a range of local and regional actors, including Israeli, Gulf and EU investors. These case studies, which involve similar actors but are rooted in different local dynamics and historical contexts, provide useful vantage points from which to analyse both specificities and general patterns about the ways that renewable energy projects are connected to wider shifts taking place in the region’s energy landscape. This study will examine interactions between the range of domestic, foreign, state and non-state actors involved in the implementation of these projects and ask: how do shifts in the global economy impact green industrial ambitions at a regional level? How do European, African, Arab and Asian actors hope to further wider investment, political and geostrategic considerations by participating in solar projects? In particular, what are the synergies and tensions between European energy security and decarbonisation strategies; African and Middle Eastern ‘polyalignment’; and the concurrence of US security interests and Chinese infrastructure ambitions in the region (under the Belt and Road Initiative)? By examining these questions through the lens of several flagship solar projects using a critical incorporated comparison, this study hopes to contribute empirically and conceptually to several emerging bodies of literature. Within IPE, it hopes to add to recent explorations of how states are attempting to navigate geopolitical shifts to their advantage by turning to increasingly muscular forms of statism, investment policy- or ‘new state capitalism’- to boost industrial and infrastructure projects. Participating in green value chains is increasingly a choice strategy for developing states. The paper will also contribute to explorations by geopolitical ecology scholars of the drivers and limitations of national decarbonisation strategies, and unequal ecological exchange particularly between global south and north economies. Finally, an exploration of the wider economic context should also benefit emerging literature examining the socio-ecological and political impacts of these projects – which, as evidenced by some of the economic, and environmental and energy-related demands raised in the latest round of ‘Gen Z’ protests in North Africa and beyond- are likely to intensify if trends such as intensifying climate crisis and high unemployment in these countries continue.