In the heat of the Gulf summer, Dubai closed a deal to build solar power plants that will produce renewable energy at the world’s lowest production cost, 5.98 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, or DEWA, the emirate’s utility provider, created a very competitive tender at a propitious moment in energy pricing. Solar power generation technology has finally become cost effective relative to gas and coal-fired electricity generation, and Saudi-based developer ACWA power was poised and ready to compete with international bidders. There is some irony in a Saudi company (privately owned by conglomerates and the Saudi public investment fund and pension agency) beating out competitors in a neighboring country, while Saudi Arabia has struggled to meet its own renewable energy targets. Read more
In the beginning of October, the United Arab Emirates held elections for its Federal National Council. The elections understandably received little international media attention. The Federal National Council is an advisory body without legislative powers or decisive influence. And the elections themselves involve only a fraction of the Emirati population: prechosen electors vote for 20 members, while the other half of the 40-member council is appointed by the rulers of the respective emirates. Read more
AGSIW.org at the Library of Congress
As part of its Web Archiving initiative, the Library of Congress will be including the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington’s website, AGSIW.org, in its collection. AGSIW.org is being included in the collection of materials related to public policy topics, as the Library of Congress considered the website “to be an important part of this collection and the historical record.” Content from the website will be included and will be made available for researchers at Library of Congress facilities and by special arrangement. Read more
As part of its support to Washington's Arabian Sights Film Festival, AGSIW's Raymond E. Karam participated in a panel on the "New Arab Cinema". Panelists discussed the wide-ranging and significant strides in the evolution of Arab cinema, regionally as well as internationally, and the requisites for a strong industry with solid foundations. Karam spoke of the importance film plays as a vehicle to understand and study the culture and society of a certain country. Read more
In the Media
In a tvo program on the Russian intervention in Syria, AGSIW Senior Scholar Hussein Ibish said, "I think you would be hard pressed to find a more stark case of hypocrisy than Russia's stance on Syria." On VOA, discussing Russia's objective in Syria, Ibish stated, "I think that the way Vladimir Putin has packaged Russia's intervention as a major international counterterrorism initiative is laughable, frankly, both because it is clear what Russia's real interests and purposes are and because the actual conduct of the airstrikes...has not been targeting Daesh."
In a Foreign Policy article addressing the potential for a new U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East peace process in which the United States would restart talks at the United Nations on the creation of a Palestinian state, Ibish noted, “We don’t see any evidence of any new policy." He continued, "If there was a review, they must have decided that things were OK."
