Amid the wartime focus on the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of critical hydrocarbon supplies to global energy markets, another major transformation in the Gulf has received far less attention: the rapid expansion of renewable energy. Over the past decade, the Gulf Cooperation Council region has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing solar energy markets. Solar power now accounts for roughly half of the GCC’s energy mix, up from less than 10 percent in 2014, with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were responsible for more than 90 percent of the Middle East’s increase in solar capacity in 2023.
The scale of this transformation is striking. When Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park was first announced in 2012, its target capacity was to generate 1,000 megawatts (MW) by 2020. Today, that target exceeds 8,000 MW by 2030. Driven by abundant solar energy resources, falling technology costs, and growing demand from emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence and green hydrogen, GCC states continue to raise their renewable energy ambitions.
While ultimately positive for reducing emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, this expansion carries trade-offs—as most climate solutions do—and these play out differently across contexts. As solar deployment accelerates across increasingly large areas of land, greater attention must be paid to how solar infrastructure interacts with the vulnerable ecosystems on which it is built. The GCC is well placed to demonstrate that renewable energy expansion and ecosystem protection can advance together, and the region already possesses many of the institutional and technical tools required to do so.
More Than Sand
The ecological risks associated with large-scale solar deployment in the Arabian Peninsula remain poorly understood. Most solar expansion in the GCC takes the form of sprawling, ground-mounted installations covering thousands of square kilometers of remote desert. Although these landscapes often appear barren, they are far more ecologically complex than their sparse appearance suggests.
The peninsula’s deserts support plant and animal life specifically adapted to extreme heat and scarce water, often concentrated in small but ecologically distinctive pockets. These can include wild relatives of crops that are significant for global food security, particularly in the context of a changing climate. Some areas function as refuges where endemic species survived past periods of severe climate change and where biodiversity persists because of that historical shelter. Oman’s Dhofar highlands, where the Dhofar Governorate Solar Project IV is currently being planned, are a widely recognized example.
Below the surface, thin communities of microorganisms that stabilize desert soils, prevent erosion, and enrich otherwise infertile soils with nutrients play a foundational but largely invisible role in maintaining ecosystem health. Disturbance can degrade these biological soil communities, and recovery in the most arid environments can take decades or even centuries, if it occurs at all.
Research from comparable arid environments has documented further risks from large-scale solar infrastructure: displacement of specialist pollinators that sustain native plant life, disruption to plant reproduction, and over time, alterations that can reshape which animal species are able to survive in a given area, thereby changing the stability of the ecosystem as a whole. These ecosystems are already under pressure from desertification, habitat degradation, and climate change. Large-scale solar development adds an additional layer of pressure – one that remains poorly understood in the specific context of the Arabian Peninsula.
Planning with Nature
None of these risks makes a case against solar expansion. Decarbonization is urgent, and the region’s energy direction is clear. But ecological damage from solar expansion is not inevitable. It is largely a function of design.
The most effective way to limit impacts on surrounding ecosystems is through precautionary or strategic siting – prioritizing previously disturbed or degraded land – and avoiding ecologically sensitive areas from the outset. International bodies, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), recommend that developers first avoid ecologically sensitive areas entirely, then minimize unavoidable impacts, and restore or offset what remains. Applied early in the project design phase, this approach can reduce ecological harm while keeping projects viable.
This requires detailed, region- and site-specific data to be gathered before projects are planned. While global biodiversity mapping tools can flag ecological risks at the screening stage, they need to be complemented by regional and national data. However, nature-related data for hyper-arid environments in the Arabian Peninsula remain limited. Addressing this gap will require systematic pre-construction baseline surveys, building on the region’s existing expertise in environmental impact assessment, monitoring, and site remediation developed through decades of industrial and infrastructure development. It will also require drawing on the place-based knowledge of pastoral communities – knowledge of seasonal water flows, vegetation patterns, and wildlife movements that are often missed by formal surveys, and that ministries of environment and culture across the GCC are well placed to help document and integrate. Further, consolidating these data sources into a shared Gulf environmental data platform would enable consistent reporting and comparison across projects and borders, contributing to an enhanced global scientific understanding of arid ecosystems.
Existing Institutional Foundations
Saudi Arabia is rapidly expanding its protected areas network. Abu Dhabi’s Environment Agency leads major wildlife preservation programs. Oman has maintained long-standing conservation frameworks. The opportunity now is to extend this institutional capacity into project-level decision-making at the earliest stages, before commercial decisions lock in siting choices that are difficult or costly to revisit or reverse.
Sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises, which finance the majority of the region’s large-scale solar infrastructure, are particularly well-positioned to drive this shift. With around 90 percent of regional state-owned funds already operating under environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, there is a clear institutional basis on which to layer more systematic nature-related requirements into project design and procurement. Financial disclosure frameworks designed to account for nature-related risks offer practical tools for doing so: identifying ecologically sensitive areas early, assessing ecosystem risks at each site, and requiring findings to be disclosed to investors before construction begins. These requirements are most effective when applied early, and prevent the far costlier disruptions that follow when ecological risks surface after construction has begun.
The region’s energy partnerships provide a further opening. Chinese companies’ participation as project developers, contractors, and equipment suppliers in the GCC’s green energy projects reached an estimated $9.5 billion between 2018 and 2023, and the relationship continues to expand. China has developed environmental guidelines for overseas infrastructure investments under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including requirements for environmental assessments and biodiversity protection in ecologically sensitive areas. If consistently applied, these frameworks would extend to solar projects across the Gulf. They also provide a basis for deeper collaboration based on shared environmental monitoring, knowledge exchange, and capacity building focused on desert ecosystems. China’s experience with large-scale solar in arid regions, including cases where installations have contributed to vegetation recovery on degraded land, provides useful lessons on both the opportunities and risks of desert-based solar expansion. Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power has already begun to build this kind of cross-border research linkage through its Shanghai-based Overseas Innovation Center.
The Standard to Set
The full benefits of solar expansion depend on how and where projects are designed. Early planning, siting decisions, and ecological integration are central to whether solar expansion contributes to degradation or supports more resilient coexistence with local ecosystems. Relevant frameworks exist, institutions are in place, and capital is committed. What is missing is the link between this governance infrastructure and the moment in the planning cycle when it matters most – early enough for siting to be guided by ecological data rather than corrected after construction has begun.
As the GCC’s solar footprint extends into some of the world’s most ecologically distinctive arid landscapes, the region has a genuine opportunity to show what responsible large-scale solar development looks like in a desert environment. In doing so, the GCC would not only protect its own landscapes but also set a replicable standard for solar expansion across arid geographies where similar ecosystems, investors and choices are already converging.
