A war in the Middle East has pulled hydrocarbon supply chains, cargo insurers and capital away from the region's renewable pipeline just as that pipeline was gathering speed. Solar imports into the Persian Gulf have collapsed since March, while Egypt, Morocco and Israel have absorbed the shift. Behind the disruption, the longer arc has not changed: MENA is still building toward a power system four times larger than today's, with clean energy carrying nearly all of that growth.

For utilities weighing where and when to add capacity, the near-term picture and the 2050 picture are telling two different stories, and getting the sequencing right matters.