Jordan is about to begin installing solar panels on its 6,000 mosques, aiming to cut electricity costs while helping the houses of worship generate revenue by selling surplus power back to the grid.
Fossil fuel imports supply about 95% of Jordan’s energy demand, Think Progress reports, and consume about 40% of the country’s budget. Uprisings in the region have also made some of those supplies less secure.
- Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
- A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
- The Weekender:The climate news you need.
So “late last year, Jordan’s energy minister announced that several renewable energy projects with a total capacity of 1,800 megawatts will be connected to the national power grid by the end of 2018,” Phillips writes. “Made up of large-scale wind and solar projects—including 12 power purchase agreements to develop solar projects with a total capacity of 200 megawatts—the country is now turning to distributed solar. And its first targets are the thousands of mosques scattered across the sun-drenched landscape.”
