Iceland is often celebrated as a model of clean energy: a nation running on geothermal heat and hydropower, with a reputation for green resilience. Yet closer inspection reveals that its prosperity rests as much on fossil fuels as on volcanic springs. Food, tourism, trade, and industry remain tethered to oil-powered ships, aircraft, and global supply chains. The image of independence masks dependence.

For observers of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Icelandic case is less distant than it seems. It demonstrates how renewable success stories, even in favourable geographies, rarely escape the gravitational pull of hydrocarbons. The lesson matters for a region where energy transitions are spoken of with urgency but delivered with hesitation.

Ageing Infrastructure and New Promises

In North Africa, the oil and gas infrastructure that underpins state revenues is now decades old. Algeria’s pipelines, Libya’s refineries, and Egypt’s offshore terminals were largely built in the 1960s and 1970s, financed by the early oil booms and foreign contractors long since gone. These assets remain critical but are increasingly fragile. Depletion has reduced output, while procurement bottlenecks make maintenance a recurring ordeal.

Into this ageing landscape comes the language of transition. Solar farms in the Sahara, wind arrays along the Mediterranean, and visions of hydrogen corridors to Europe are presented as solutions to both climate change and fiscal dependency. The rhetoric is ambitious; the structural realities are stubborn.

Supply Chains, Currency and Politics

The obstacles are not only geological but institutional. Currency restrictions in Libya, protectionist rules in Algeria, and fragmented governance across the region complicate procurement. Even when projects are financed, importing turbines, panels or electrolyser components is slowed by regulations, bureaucracy and logistical bottlenecks.

This is where companies like Netrako operate, navigating between international suppliers and local constraints. Procurement becomes less about finding the cheapest solution than about ensuring anything arrives at all. The contrast with Iceland is instructive. Iceland’s renewable projects were underwritten by Marshall Plan aid, American troops, and abundant fossil-fuelled trade. North Africa faces the transition without such structural windfalls.

Intermittency and Reliability

Wind and solar potential in MENA is vast, but physics remains uncompromising. Without affordable storage, intermittent sources destabilise grids. Gas-fired plants continue to provide the only secure baseload. Governments, conscious of the political consequences of blackouts, are cautious. Renewables are added, but hydrocarbons remain indispensable.

Even Iceland’s “clean” system depends on oil-fuelled trade to make hydro and geothermal viable at scale. For MENA states, where domestic consumption is rising and revenues are tied to oil exports, the dependence is even more pronounced.

Netrako’s Reading of the Landscape

From its vantage point, Netrako views the transition less as a revolution than as a negotiation with reality. Hydrocarbons will not vanish; they will coexist with renewables in uneven patterns shaped by procurement, politics, and fiscal priorities. The firm’s work in maintaining ageing oil infrastructure while advising on renewable feasibility illustrates this pragmatism. Its perspective mirrors Iceland’s story: renewables can augment, but they cannot replace, the fossil foundation that still supports prosperity.

The Fossil Foundation Endures

The comparison with Iceland underscores a broader truth. No economy modernises in isolation. Even the most celebrated examples of “green success” are embedded in fossil-fuelled systems of trade, logistics, and finance. For MENA, the challenges are more acute: declining fields, demographic pressures, weak grids, and political volatility.

The energy transition, in this light, is less an imminent reality than a deferred horizon. Renewables will expand, but hydrocarbons will remain the backbone—just as in Iceland, albeit in subtler form. Firms such as Netrako, with decades of experience in both oil projects and emerging technologies, recognise that prosperity in the region depends not on abandoning fossil fuels but on managing their decline intelligently while slowly building alternatives.

Netrako: Between Dreams and Realities

Iceland’s story reminds us that the appearance of a clean transition often rests on deeper, fossil foundations. For MENA, where energy infrastructures are older, procurement more difficult, and economies more dependent, the realities are even starker. The rhetoric of solar and wind will continue, but hydrocarbons will remain central to the region’s political economy.

Netrako’s experience captures this paradox: navigating ageing assets, constrained supply chains, and tentative renewables. The company’s work is a reminder that the transition is not a rupture but a slow, uneven negotiation with physical, financial, and political limits. The dream of a post-carbon MENA remains distant; the reality is one of adaptation within a fossil-fuelled world.