War-driven shipping disruptions are strangling UAE solar imports

Solar equipment is getting harder to come by in the UAE, and developers are starting to feel the pinch. “It's getting really tight,” Supply Chain Analyst at Rystad Energy Sara Sarhan tells EnterpriseAM at Middle East Energy. Tier-one suppliers are already having to “rethink and strategize,” she says, while input costs across the supply chain are up 7-15% so far. Her read: Stockpiles across the region are still healthy for the time being, but they’re increasingly stretched.

By the numbers: The UAE's average monthly solar PV imports fell from 785 MW in 2025 to just 98 MW since the war began in March — a drop of 687 MW, or nearly 88%, according to a new Rystad Energy whitepaper (pdf). This wasn’t just a UAE issue: Saudi Arabia lost a similar 580 MW, falling from 719 MW to 139 MW. Iraq, Oman, and Iran also saw declines. Egypt, Morocco, and Israel, by contrast, gained import share, given their independence from Hormuz-linked shipping routes.

Why it matters: The UAE relies on China for the bulk of its solar equipment. Only around 20-25% of its solar equipment needs are currently manufactured locally, with the rest imported, Carlos Torres Diaz, Rystad Energy's senior vice president and head of power, tells EnterpriseAM. “We rely a lot on imports for equipment — solar panels, inverters, mounting structures,” Sophia Hasnaoui, senior business development manager at renewable energy developer Yellow Door Energy, tells EnterpriseAM.

It’s been manageable so far, but the cost is where the squeeze shows up first: “There were some disturbances in terms of logistics and getting the supply, but overall, we've been able to meet our obligations despite the worsening situation,” Hasnaoui adds. Freight rates on the Asia-Mediterranean route rose 25-30% between late February and early April, per Rystad's figures, while China's removal of its VAT export rebate on 1 April added roughly 9% to module costs.

For developers, that collides with fixed-price contracts signed before the disruption began. “If it’s already procured, then you don't have much impact,” Hasnaoui says. “But some projects where you need to procure — and you still have to maintain the tariff you committed to — become a little bit tricky,” she adds. “We’re trying to be agile and find solutions around it. It's not easy, but I guess it's not easy for everyone.”

!SubHed! The UAE is working on its import dependence

The UAE is expected to account for a large share of increased local manufacturing of solar modules, alongside Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Egypt. Its pipeline is built around manufacturers Dusol Industries and Microsol International — both expanding into N-type technology — plus newer entrants, including Trina Solar, Almaden, Gstar, Nippon Energy, and Sahaj Solar. Rystad's data shows MENA's solar module manufacturing capacity on track to jump from 1 GW in 2020 to 46 GW by 2030, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Egypt expected to account for the bulk of that capacity. However, Rystad flags that a meaningful share of the UAE's pipeline could still face delays or cancellation, given its reliance on Chinese partners and US re-export access.

The UAE has already invested bns in diversifying its energy mix — and it has targets to meet. Abu Dhabi utility EWEC is targeting more than 30 GW of solar PV by 2035 — about 40% of the UAE's total power generation — anchored by the Masdar-EWEC project pairing 5.2 GW of solar with 19 GWh of storage for round-the-clock clean power. The UAE currently has just over 6.5 GW of solar PV installed, 17% of MENA's total. Getting from here to there requires an uninterrupted flow of the same panels and inverters, which are now taking months longer to arrive.

!SubHed! What’s next

Rystad isn’t reading this as a UAE setback so much as a pause. In its own risk-opportunity framework, the firm places the UAE among the region’s “resilient accelerators” — low crisis exposure paired with strong pipeline momentum, in the same bracket as Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Part of that comes down to incentives. Every MW of solar or wind the UAE deploys at home frees up gas for export at wartime-elevated prices, which keeps the case for building renewables intact even as near-term shipping gets harder.

Rystad expects the region’s active pipeline to be delayed by three to 12 months overall — but for the UAE specifically, it's forecasting that the short-term hit will give way to a sharper acceleration once shipping and financing conditions stabilize.

The pressure point to watch is pricing. The region's auction market was already brutally competitive before the war, producing record-low, thin-margin bids that left developers little room to absorb new costs. With war-risk premiums and freight costs now stacking on top, EPC contractors are repricing force majeure and logistics risk directly into new bids — a squeeze that falls hardest on projects that haven't yet reached financial close, Rystad Energy says. The clearest early read on how much of that repricing shows up in the UAE specifically: DEWA's upcoming Phase 7 auction for the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, which will add up to 2 GW of additional capacity and feature one of the world’s largest solar-plus-storage systems.