Considering the importance of energy for social and economic development, access to clean, affordable and reliable energy has been adopted as one of the United Nations sustainable development goals that all countries aim to achieve by 2030. However, much of the world's energy is still produced from fossil fuels and thus the progress towards clean and renewable energy is slow. This paper explores the key challenges towards renewable energy in Gulf Cooperation Council countries blessed with plenty of oil and gas reserves. The key challenges identified through literature review were ranked using a quantitative approach through the data collected from a selective sample across the six countries. These challenges in order of importance were found to be policies and regulations, manpower experience and competencies, renewable energy education, public awareness, costs and incentives for renewable energy and government commitment. The findings could be helpful to decision makers and government organisations in the region to develop strategies to overcome these identified challenges.

中文翻译：

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可再生能源面临的挑战：来自阿拉伯海湾地区的一项探索性研究

考虑到能源对社会和经济发展的重要性，获取清洁，负担得起和可靠的能源已被用作联合国可持续发展目标之一，所有国家都希望在2030年前实现这一目标。然而，世界上仍有许多能源在生产矿物燃料，因此向清洁和可再生能源的发展缓慢。本文探讨了拥有丰富石油和天然气储备的海湾合作委员会国家在可再生能源方面面临的主要挑战。通过从六个国家的选择性样本中收集的数据，采用定量方法对通过文献综述确定的关键挑战进行了排名。发现这些挑战的重要性依次为政策法规，人力经验和能力，可再生能源教育，公众对可再生能源的认识，成本和激励措施以及政府的承诺。这些发现可能有助于该地区的决策者和政府组织制定战略来克服这些已确定的挑战。