"Almost every country in the (MENA) region has a target for renewable energy from 5-15%," by 2030, Adnan Amin, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said.
"If we are able to meet these targets, we will have a net benefit of about $750bn for the power sector in the MENA region," Amin said on the sidelines of the sixth MENA (Middle East and North Africa) renewable energy conference.
Amin said the world is looking to double the current share of renewable energy of 16-17% in the global mix to 36% by 2030.
He said doubling the renewable energy share will help achieve the reduction by half of carbon emissions which would a pre-requisite for limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as decided by the Paris climate change summit.
Amin told the conference that global investments in renewable energy rose by 22% last year to a record $330bn.
The cost of production of renewable energy has dropped significantly in the past few years, he said.
In the past five years, the cost of solar photovoltaic power generation dropped by 80%, Amin said.
"It is already competitive with natural gas. There can be further reduction in cost," he said.
But Bassam Fattouh, director of Oxford Energy Institute Studies, said the targets set by MENA countries are "very ambitious."
He said several challenges hamper renewable energy production in the region, like state monopoly of the power system, a lack of institutional capacity and conventional energy subsidies.
Nearly half of all new installed power generation capacity in 2014 was in renewables - 37% wind, a third solar and a quarter hydro, according to the International Energy Agency.
Renewables only account for about 20% of global electricity generation, and three-quarters of that is hydro.
Source: AFP
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