Scaling up investment in renewable power can significantly contribute to addressing many of Jordan’s crucial challenges. These include: sustaining economic growth; improving energy security and reducing fossil-fuel consumption and imports; and reducing fiscal pressure linked to costly support to fossil-fuel imports. Unlike some of its neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Jordan has few fossil fuel resources of its own and imports around 96% of its total primary energy supply. Concerns over energy security and fossil-fuel imports dependency have intensified in Jordan due to political events in the region, including gas supply interruptions since 2011, and more recently, the rapid growth in energy demand caused by a large influx of more than one million refugees and asylum seekers, mostly from Syria and Iraq.
This report provides an assessment of Jordan’s existing policy and regulatory framework for investment in renewable power. It also provides non-prescriptive policy suggestions and raises key issues for Jordanian policy makers to consider in order to scale up private investment in renewable power, in the areas of: investment policy; investment promotion and facilitation; competition policy; financial market policy; public governance; and other cross-cutting issues. The report reviews key elements of Jordan’s policy framework for renewable-power investment, drawing from topics and themes addressed in the OECD Policy Guidance for Investment in Clean Energy Infrastructure (OECD, 2015a). This guidance is a non-prescriptive tool that assists governments in improving the domestic enabling environment for investment in renewable energy in the electricity sector