3 minutes read

The project aims to analyse the Mediterranean energy markets at medium and long-term up to 2030 and to assess the potential of advanced energy technologies in the region. A detailed version of the POLES model, called the MEMA version, has been elaborated to evaluate the energy prospects of the region. This version allows to elaborate scenarios for energy demand, supply and trade, taking into account the expected evolution of energy technologies as regards efficiencies and costs.

The project aims to analyse the Mediterranean energy markets at medium and long-term up to 2030 and to assess the potential of advanced energy technologies in the region. A detailed version of the POLES model, called the MEMA version, has been elaborated to evaluate the energy prospects of the region. This version allows to elaborate scenarios for energy demand, supply and trade, taking into account the expected evolution of energy technologies as regards efficiencies and costs.

In parallel, studies are carried out concerning the market potential of advanced energy technologies in the following sectors: oil and gas production and transport technologies, electricity production (including the renewable energies), refining, transport, energy demand in the industry, energy demand in the residential/tertiary sector.

The objectives of the MEMA project are to evaluate the prospects for the energy markets in the Mediterranean region and to assess the potential for the use of new energy technologies.
The Mediterranean region plays a key role in the energy sector as it includes the southern European countries, which are major energy importers and the North Africa and Middle East countries, which combine increasing local energy demand and important energy exports to the EU.

In order to limit the growth of energy demand and to secure energy supplies for the EU, it is important to promote and diffuse new energy technologies. This will enable the protection of the environment while allowing economic development.

Due to the large increase of populations in the southern Mediterranean countries and the Gulf countries and the expected economic development, the energy demand will increase dramatically unless very efficient technologies are promoted in all sectors. The MEMA project enables to identify the technologies with the largest potential and to estimate the expected benefits related to their diffusion.

Governmental officials and industrial executives have been informed of the results of the project in order to orient future actions regarding the diffusion and promotion of energy technologies in the Mediterranean region. The results of the project also enable to orient future R&D programmes in order to support the improvements of the most promising technologies for the Mediterranean region.

The role of FEEM
FEEM coordinates and executes the task of the project concerning the market analysis of energy technologies. The activities carried out within this task are mainly concerning the assessment of resources, the identification of relevant technologies for the Mediterranean area, and the preliminary assessment of their technical and market potential.

As the time horizon of the study is 2030, the energy technologies selected are those that are already deployed or have reached the final stages of development.

Seen the wide spectrum of technologies to be covered within this study, the level of details in the technology description is not very deep and it is not uniform over the sectors. The level of description of the technologies is also conditioned by the way they are taken into consideration within POLES.