By: OrePulse

Battery storage projects planned across the Middle East and North Africa by 2030 will require an estimated $15 billion to $19 billion in capital expenditure, according to a report by DII Desert Energy that puts the region's project pipeline at 128.6 gigawatt-hours (GWh).

The estimate is based on current installation costs of $120 to $150 per kilowatt-hour, the report said. As of August 2026, the region had 33 operating or committed battery storage projects with a combined capacity of 20.8 GWh, it found. A further roughly 84 projects, representing about 128.57 GWh of capacity, are planned for completion before the end of the decade.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Turkey and Kuwait were identified in the report as the markets with the greatest growth potential for battery storage additions. The United Arab Emirates remains an established player in the sector, though its newly announced projects are comparatively smaller in scale, the report said.

Among individual projects, Saudi Arabia plans to add 20 GWh of storage capacity through the first and second rounds of its Independent Storage Provider program, with a further 8 GWh planned in each of the third and fourth rounds. In the UAE, developer Masdar is building a project combining 5.2 gigawatts of solar generation with 19 GWh of battery storage, while state utility DEWA is targeting 8.4 GWh of storage in the seventh phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.

Oman's state transmission company has earmarked close to $1 billion for battery storage investment over the 2026-2030 period, according to the report. In Egypt, developer Scatec is building a project pairing 1,950 megawatts of solar capacity with 3.9 GWh of storage, under a 25-year power purchase agreement with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company signed in January 2026. Morocco's National Office for Electricity and Drinking Water began tender procedures in April 2025 for 10 battery storage sites with a combined capacity of 1,600 megawatt-hours.

The Masdar project reached financial close in July 2026 at a cost of $6.1 billion, including $5.1 billion in debt financing from a group of 13 banks spanning Gulf, Chinese, Islamic and international lenders, the report said. In Egypt, the country's first utility-scale battery storage project secured a $72 million debt facility from the International Finance Corporation, alongside funding from the Dutch development bank FMO, blended finance facilities and the Clean Technology Fund.

The report pointed to Islamic finance as a potential funding avenue for the sector: outstanding environmental, social and governance-linked sukuk globally are projected to exceed $70 billion by the end of 2026, while Saudi Arabia issued its first green sukuk, worth $1.3 billion, in 2020. No sukuk dedicated specifically to a battery storage project has been issued to date, the report said, describing this as an opportunity for the region. Saudi storage projects have so far been financed partly through Islamic structures including murabaha and ijara financing tranches.

The report also noted that insurers have tightened scrutiny of battery storage risk since a fire incident at a storage facility in Moss Landing, California, in January 2025. Specialist insurers' technology risk rates now run at roughly 30 to 40 cents per $100 of insured value, with closer examination of battery container design and reluctance to insure storage systems installed inside buildings, the report said. Large, outdoor containerized projects of the kind more common in the region, which have undergone large-scale fire testing, are better positioned for coverage, though the concentration of asset value at a single site remains a risk factor insurers weigh.