An overview of renewable energy potential in Palestine

The energy sector situation in Palestine is highly different compared to other countries in the Middle East due to many reasons: non-availability of natural resources, unstable political conditions, financial crisis and high density population. Furthermore, Palestine depends on other countries for 100% of its fossil fuel imports and for 87% of its electricity imports. In addition high growth of population, increasing living standards and rapid growth of industrial have led to tremendous energy demand in Palestine in recent years. The total energy consumption per habitant in Palestine is the lowest in the region (0.79 MWh/inhabitant) and costs more than anywhere else in the Middle East countries. The primary goal of this paper is to analyze the current energy sector situation in Palestine and to highlight the status of the potential of renewable energy as an essential future energy source sector in Palestine. Regarding the main possibilities of RE, the wind speed averages (m/s) for main 5 cities were: Tubas 4.97, Salfeet 4.26, Ramallah 3.09, Hebron 2.90 and Jericho 1.32. With these data, Palestine can be considered as a country of moderate wind speeds. By the other hand, Palestine has a high solar energy potential about 3000 sunshine hours per year with a solar radiation (kW h/m(2)/day) for year 2013 of 8.27 in Ramallah, 7.51 in Hebron, 6.86 in Salfeet and 6.15 in Tubas. These values are encouraging to exploit the solar energy for different applications. This study highlights that the main renewable energy sources in Palestine are solar energy, wind energy and biomass, thereby the energy dependence on neighbouring countries may significantly decrease, when Palestine uses the available renewable energy sources. The renewable energies in Palestine open new perspectives for energy sector in order to prompt practices for sustainable development. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.