Jordan’s National Expert Committee hosts its second meeting to support MENALINKS implementation
On 29 April 2025, the National Expert Committee (NEC) of the MENALINKS programme in Jordan reconvened in Amman for its second official meeting. Chaired by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR), the session focused on refining regulatory options to enable industrial flexibility, with a particular emphasis on load shifting, demand-side flexibility, and aggregator models.
To facilitate informed decision-making, the MENALINKS consortium presented the results of the report titled ‘Policy and regulation for activating industrial flexibility in Jordan’ during the 3rd national stakeholders workshop, including international benchmarks. In addition, the meeting also provided an update on the MENALINKS programme’s implementation status and outlined upcoming deliverables for the NEC’s consideration.
The role of National Expert Committees in MENALINKS
The National Expert Committees (NECs) play a strategic role in guiding the implementation of the MENALINKS programme across partner countries. Comprising 10–20 experts from key stakeholder groups—including ministries, regulators, grid operators, industry, academia, and financial institutions—the NECs serve as national sounding boards that provide targeted feedback, support data provision, and help align programme activities with local priorities. The committees meet regularly to review progress, comment on intermediary findings, and contribute to communication and dissemination efforts within their respective institutions. Their input is instrumental in identifying synergies with existing initiatives and ensuring that MENALINKS outputs are relevant, actionable, and widely adopted.
Workshop conclusions and technical priorities
Highlights from this session of the Jordanian NEC included the presentation of the Needs Assessment factsheet, accompanied by a request for member feedback, and the announcement of a study tour to Berlin for NEPCO’s operations team, designed to facilitate peer-to-peer training on flexibility mechanisms. Participants discussed key takeaways from the preceding stakeholder workshop on industrial flexibility, including:
The importance of conducting flexibility audits before setting priorities.
A recommendation to prioritise load shifting for daily solar integration via Time-of-Use (ToU) tariffs.
The need to segment flexibility strategies by industry type and process rigidity.
Measures to reduce curtailment of renewable energy sources.
MEMR’s representative Omar Alrosan emphasised the importance of developing more detailed options on load shifting and endorsed its prioritisation alongside flexibility audits.
The committee explored potential roles for Distribution System Operators (DSOs) in managing and activating flexibility, including the possibility amending regulations to formally assign demand side flexibility responsibilities to DSOs. A further key topic of the discussion was the definition and integration of aggregators into Jordan’s regulatory framework. In support of these priorities, MEMR requested MENALINKS’ support in drafting protocols, contracts, and business models to facilitate the discussed priorities. The MENALINKS team will set up a regulatory workstream to address these topics.