Qatar Inaugurates 800 MW Solar Plant to Supply Green Power to World Cup

Qatar’s first solar power plant has been inaugurated by Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar. The next FIFA football World Cup will be organised in the Arab country. The organisers of the World Cup have informed that the newly inaugurated solar power project will supply clean energy for the football-match stadiums.

Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, the Energy Minister of Qatar and President of QatarEnergy, informed in a press conference that the solar energy farm that is located at al-Kharsaah, 80-km west of capital city Doha, is one of the biggest in the Middle East region.

The solar power project has been operational since June and has a green energy generation capacity of 800 MW. The solar project could be expanded further in coming years. The solar project can supply upto 10 per cent of Qatar’s power supply. It will also help the country to avoid 26 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. It has 1.8 million solar modules mounted on trackers.

The solar project was launched in 2016 through a partnership with TotalEnergies of France and Marubeni of Japan as Qatar gets bullish for renewable sources of energy. The two companies own 40 per cent of it while Siraj Energy will have 60 per cent share in the project. The farm is being operated by a consortium called ‘Siraj 1 SPV’ owned by all three companies. Presently, Qatar is one of the biggest producers of liquified natural gas in the world.

Qatar government said that the project is built at a cost of $467 million covering an area of over 10 sq km. The World Cup organisers held that the sizable solar plant will help the Gulf country host the first ‘net zero’ World Cup. This claim is not yet validated by the Qatari Government.

The renewable push in Qatar has been sluggish compared with other countries in the region, mainly UAE and Saudi Arabia. Recently Qatar decided to add 5-GW of solar energy capacity by 2035. In the line of the policy, it announced two sizable solar projects last August that will take energy produced from renewable sources to almost double in the coming couple of years.