Empowering Iraq’s Future: Renewable Energy Assessment (Solar and Wind) and its Role in Iraq’s Adaptation to Climate Change.

Abstract

Climate change has proven to be an aggressive enemy with undeniable socio-economic and environmental consequences for Iraq. In addition, the extreme dependency on fossil fuels, compounded by the exacerbating energy crisis, poses a significant barrier towards Iraq’s sustainable development. Renewable Energy is proposed to be an effective solution to mitigate climate change impacts and increase the current capacity. A remarkable collection of tools was utilised to assess the potential of solar and wind energy sources in Iraq including Solcast, Renewables.ninja, and PyPSA-Earth. More importantly, Iraq possesses substantial solar energy potential across the entire country with a capacity factor ranging from 19.32 to 20.69%. On the other hand, the west, east, and south of Iraq exhibit sufficient capacity factor of onshore wind energy ranging from roughly 27 to 37%. Moreover, Iraq has a considerable capability to implement solar PV projects across the country and onshore wind projects in specific locations. Nevertheless, this requires remarkable investments in upgrading the existing infrastructure and building more power lines as well as battery storage systems. Thus, Iraq’s path towards renewable energy integration is fraught with challenges; however, strategic planning and robust policy are the key drivers towards a bright and sustainable future.