Bankable projects, verifiable data key to Oman’s green finance push

MUSCAT, SEPT 20
The Gulf does not lack capital for climate investment as much as it lacks a deeper pipeline of projects that meet international investors’ requirements, according to sustainability executive Arooshi Dahiya.
“The pipeline problem in the Gulf isn’t capital — it’s bankable, investment-grade projects,” Dahiya, CEO of sustainability technology company Oren, told the Observer following her participation in Oman Climate Week.
She said Oman has strong sovereign commitment and genuine resource advantages, particularly in solar energy and green hydrogen, but international investors require a track record of properly structured and de-risked transactions before committing capital at scale.
Dahiya identified stronger local project-preparation facilities, blended-finance structures that allow concessional capital to absorb early-stage risk, and a consistent green taxonomy among the measures that could help investors compare an Omani green asset with opportunities in Europe or Southeast Asia on comparable terms.
Her comments followed a September 15 Oman Climate Week panel on mobilising climate finance for a resilient and low-carbon future. The official programme placed financing gaps, public and private capital, green investment, blended finance, bankable projects and adaptation finance at the centre of the discussion. The panel also included representatives of Muscat Stock Exchange, the World Bank Group and Development Bank, and was moderated by the Green Climate Fund.
The issue is becoming more immediate as Oman works to turn climate policy into an investable project pipeline.
In June 2026, the Green Climate Fund approved a 36-month readiness programme aimed at strengthening Oman’s climate-finance architecture. The GCF said Oman has developed a strong climate-policy framework but faces challenges in coordinating climate finance, developing investment pipelines and mobilising resources.
The programme is intended to develop a Climate Investment Plan and Financing Framework, establish systems for pipeline management and climate-finance tracking, and support the preparation of GCF project proposals.
Recent market activity also shows that international demand can be strong when an Omani green asset reaches investors in a financeable form.
Oman Electricity Transmission Company’s inaugural five-year green sukuk raised $750 million in 2025 and attracted orders exceeding $2.25 billion. Around half of the issuance was placed with institutional investors in the United States and Europe, according to Oman Investment Bank. OETC’s audited financial statements say the proceeds are being used to finance and refinance eligible capital expenditure under its green-financing framework.
For Dahiya, however, financing, project bankability and data quality should not be treated as separate problems.
“They’re sequential, not separate, and data is upstream of the other two,” she said.
Weak climate-risk information, she said, makes it harder for underwriters to verify what a project or company is reporting and can feed directly into the price of risk.
“Weak climate-risk data doesn’t just mean ‘less information’ — it means underwriters can’t verify what they’re being told, so they price in a risk premium for uncertainty itself, on top of the actual project risk,” Dahiya said.
She described the highest-leverage improvement as disclosure infrastructure that is “correct, complete, and auditable by design”, rather than disclosure treated mainly as a compliance exercise.
That logic also shapes her view of artificial intelligence.
“The most valuable role for AI here isn’t prediction — it’s assurance,” she said.
For capital providers, Dahiya said three questions matter: whether a reported number is correct, whether the information is complete and whether it can be traced back to its source document.
She said AI could help automate Scope 3 emissions estimation and cross-reference disclosures against standards such as IFRS S2 or GRI while retaining a clear audit trail rather than creating a black-box output that investors have to accept on trust.
The need for traceability becomes particularly important in sustainability-linked loans, where financing terms can be tied to agreed ESG performance targets.
Dahiya said lenders need confidence that a target reported in one year is based on the same methodology, boundary and data lineage as in the previous year, and that it can be independently verified if challenged.
AI-enabled audit trails could allow reported figures to be traced to their underlying sources and recalculated consistently, she said. Without that traceability, sustainability-linked loans risk remaining a niche product or facing greenwashing concerns that could weaken confidence in the wider market.
For Oman, the next phase of sustainable finance may therefore be less about demonstrating that capital exists and more about expanding the number of projects that investors can assess, verify and finance with confidence.