Many North African and Middle East countries are OPEC members and, as petroleum exporting countries, an important factor on the global energy markets. Moreover, they are natural gas supplier and attractive trade partners for the European Union, being involved in numerous cooperation agreements in the frame of the Mediterranean development process. Recently the expansion of nuclear energy is increasingly discussed in these countries with the moving spirit to maintain their petroleum and gas export capacities as well as to satisfy their highly increasing energy demand. The potentials of renewable energies and energy efficiency and the question how they can contribute to the achievement of these targets are not so much taken into account on the whole. The study of the Wuppertal Institute concentrates on Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, and the Iran as exemplary countries. This collaboration of the Wuppertal Institute and Adelphi Consult (Berlin) focuses on the following questions:

• What are the options for renewable energies and the implementation of more energy efficiency and how do these options perform compared to nuclear energy from a system-analytic view?
• What are the socio-economic effects of nuclear energy, renewable energies and energy efficiency in the selected countries?
• What effects on political stability in these countries and the whole region are to be expected?
• What alternative offer the significant development of renewable energies and the use of efficiency potentials to selected countries in the regions of Northern Africa and the Persian Gulf compared to the expansion of nuclear energy?