Utility-scale renewable power through direct proposals and IPP rounds, and the stop after 2021
Jordan's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources added utility-scale solar and wind plants selling to the grid every year from 2015 to 2021, mostly private projects under direct proposals and competitive rounds, peaking at 345 MWac commissioned in 2020, and then added none: its annual reports put grid-selling renewable capacity at 1,498 MW in 2022 and 2023 and 1,478 MW in 2024.
0 MW (stock 1,498 MW in 2022 and 2023, 1,478 MW in 2024), utility-scale renewable capacity selling to the grid added from 2022 to 2024 (computed from the reported stock), 2024. 345 MWac, utility-scale renewable capacity added in 2020, the peak year, 2020. Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Jordan, Annual Report 2024, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The ministry offered sites and long-term power purchase agreements with the state-owned single buyer NEPCO to private developers through direct proposals and competitive rounds, alongside donor-financed public plants, and added no utility-scale plant after 2021.
Preconditions
- A single buyer, NEPCO, able to sign 20-year take-or-pay contracts with sovereign backing
- A renewable energy law allowing direct proposals and a regulator able to license IPPs
- Grid capacity and demand growth to absorb more contracted capacity, which the report does not discuss and which is the most likely limit
Where else it has been used: Egypt's feed-in tariff (egy-renewable-fit) and Uzbekistan's solar tenders (uzb-renewable-ipp) are the same move; Jordan is the case where the additions stopped.
Limits: The 2024 annual report's year-by-year table, 'Renewable Energy Power Generation Projects: Direct Proposals and Grants', runs over PDF pages 13 to 15 with annual totals on page 15 (134.5, 270, 14, 339.1, 235.1, 345 and 135.5 MWac for 2015 to 2021, under a note that the 2015 to 2021 list 'remain[s] as stated'); the 2021 total is a misprint for 153.5, the sum of its three projects and the figure in the 2022 report. The zero is ours, not printed: it rests on the grid-selling capacity the ministry reports, 1,498 MW in the 2022 report (https://www.memr.gov.jo/ebv4.0/root_storage/en/eb_list_page/annual_report_2022.pdf) and the 2023 report (same path, annual_report_2023.pdf) and 1,478 MW on PDF page 12 of the 2024 report, and on the 2022 report's project table also stopping at 2021; the 20 MW fall in 2024 looks like reclassification (a new 10 MW biogas and hydro line) rather than a closure. The 345 MWac peak is a commissioning year for plants contracted in earlier rounds, so it overstates the pace at which new partnerships were being signed in 2020. The table mixes private independent power producers (Masdar's Baynounah 200 MW, ACWA's Mafraq plant, the Tafila wind farms) with plants financed by Gulf, EU and Spanish grants and loans, including an Air Force plant, so not every megawatt is a partnership; we did not separate them. The reports do not say why additions stopped. What kept growing was subscriber-owned capacity under net metering and wheeling, 1,079 MW in 2022 and 1,320.8 MW in 2024, which is private investment without a public counterpart contract. The erosion is in the frequency of new joint deliveries, not in the stock, which still operates. The ministry reports on its own programme, and the stop may be a pause rather than an end.