Europeans should view the summits taking place in Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the coming months – the second Middle East Green Initiative Summit, the UN’s Climate Week, and COP28 – as catalysts to upgrade their energy relations with the GCC monarchies into a more strategic engagement on green transition and decarbonisation. The focus of thi

As industrial actors start looking into operationalising existing cooperation agreements on hydrogen, the question of mutually agreed standards – covering safety, product quality, and carbon content, as well as systems of certification and accreditation – has become more prominent. Industry will have to account for carbon emissions across the e

Here, the EU-GCC Cooperation on Green Transition and De-carbonisation could become a particularly useful platform – once it is fully defined. The objective of this new action is to facilitate cooperation in research and business, and promote the uptake of green transition policies and technologies in GCC countries, by exchanging best practices an

The production of green hydrogen also demands huge quantities of water. GCC countries rely heavily on desalination for their water needs, including for renewable energy production. Desalination plants are usually energy-intensive and often powered by fossil fuels. In most cases, a by-product of desalination is brine, which increases the salinity of

in order to be early movers. The EU would be their most important market, as the bloc – alongside key European countries such as Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France – has officially identified hydrogen as key to the energy transition. In the REPowerEU initiative and External Energy Strategy, the EU reiterated its strategic int