Washington Post published a not-so-nice article today about Kuwait that has been making its way around the web. The article, in summary, talks about how Kuwait is a significant polluter, has poor plans in eliminating emissions, and how nobody really cares, yada yada yada. One thing that did catch my attention though was in this paragraph:
An hour drive outside the dingy suburbs of Jahra, wind turbines and solar panels rise from clouds of sand — the fruit of Kuwait’s energy transition ambitions. source
What turbines?? I was pretty surprised I hadn’t heard of it before or seen any pictures. A quick search on Google Maps for “Shagaya Energy Park“, the name of the project, quickly pops up with imagery showing the turbines as well as the solar panels.
It’s on highway 70 which I’ve taken multiple times but I’ve only ever been as far as the Salmi scrapyard. The energy park is a short distance after which is why I never came across it. It might be worth checking out since it seems you can just drive up to the turbines if you go off-road. Here is the location on Google Maps
7 replies on “Kuwait, among world’s hottest places, lags on climate action”
5 turbines….that’s it?
Just enough to power up the lights in Phase 1 of the Avenues.
It’s a pilot project, that’s why it’s small-scale
Those are parts of pilot project initiated by KISR to achieve renewable energy.
https://www.kisr.edu.kw/en/gi/5/details/
The most interesting I`d say it`s the CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) part which uses molten salt to store energy.
It’s not the Washington Post, its an Associated Press article that is syndicated by the Washington Post and many other publications. Expect more of these. “The Kuwaitis don’t care about the environment” really is just part of a broader narrative being deployed globally to support public policy to tax carbon. Broad themes will be inequality and social justice, packaged into cute relatable stories. Replace “Kuwaitis” with “rich natives from x petrostate”. Chose a victim group and push anecdotes about how consequences from changes in the environment that the rich natives are responsible for make the victim group disproportionately suffer. If there’s a contemporary event that has broader interest, like the Qatar World Cup (ie. big carbon footprint), or terrorism (ie. famine causes social unrest causes instability causes terrorism) weave that into the narrative.
The reality is, a carbon tax and changing the energy mix will bring about suffering in the short to medium term in the form of higher energy and food prices, so the western public needs a cause, an enemy, to justify “doing the right thing” which on the surface, doesn’t make sense. Nobody wants to eat bugs or pay higher gas prices to stop global warming, but maybe we they all have to sacrifice to fight the damn rich savage Arabs.
I didn’t say the Washington Post wrote the article I said they “published” it.
Surely, a little A for Afforestation in Kuwait would not hurt.
And Mark, you are cut out for a career up on the Temple in London 😜🤣