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From standards to sandstorms

The Middle East now ranks among the world’s most ambitious solar markets. Gigawatt-scale projects across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt are supported by national programs that pair large tenders with local-content incentives aimed at onshoring production. Yet the same geography that powers the region’s solar boom challenges developers in unique ways, write Intertek CEA experts Jörg Althaus and Huatian Xu.

By

pv magazine

05 Dec 2025

The Sakaka Project – Saudi Arabia’s first large scale solar power plant. | Image: Nextracker

Solar development in the Middle East increasingly intertwines with industrial policies. Saudi Arabia and the UAE push to localize the majority of their PV supply chain through public-private partnerships and local-content requirements. This process is moving quickly. Production of polysilicon, wafers, cells, modules and key balance-of-system components is already local or planned within two years. …

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