St. Augustine prayed in his youth: God make me pure, but not yet. Saudi Arabia has a similar stance on going off oil: lavish projects that somehow never happen, plus robust obstructionism. They should be careful, though. Someday it is going to take.
Saudi Finance Minister: “I Wouldn't Care If The Oil Price Is Zero"
After announcing ambitious goals for solar in the Kingdom back in 2014, Saudi Arabia unveiled the biggest solar program in the world in 2017.
The Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled the nation’s ambitious “Vision 2030” in an interview with Al-Arabiya in April. The roadmap lays out a wide variety of economic reforms that will transition Saudi Arabia away from oil and into a broader array of investments.
But that was then. How are they doing?
tl;dr Not so hot. Saudi Arabia is now one of the greatest obstacles to dealing with Global Warming.
On the whole, I wish we had discovered water.
Former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki al Yamani
At Cop25, a few nations - Brazil, the US, Saudi Arabia and Australia in particular - were emboldened as never before to stand against the world and nakedly try to weaken efforts to tackle climate change to benefit their short term interests.
Call this, if you like, the Trump effect. The US president has blown apart the assumption that opprobrium from fellows will foment a race to the top on climate.
On the flip side, a far larger number of governments held firm; preferring to see no deal, than what they viewed as a bad deal. Call that the Greta effect. Certainly more leaders than ever feel their electoral futures are tied directly to their efforts on climate change.
Solar Quotes, 2014: Solar nark’s worst nightmare: Saudi Arabia solar power project ushers in renewable era
The latest Saudi Arabia solar power project is part of a massive $US100 billion investment in solar energy which will deliver an estimated 41 GW of renewable energy by 2032. According to this 21/1/2014 SMH article, Saudi company Abdul Latif Jameel has teamed up with Spain’s Fotowatio Renewable Ventures in a three-year venture to build solar power plants worth $US130 million each in the desert kingdom and the Gulf region.
This prompts the question: have the oil sheikhs seen the renewable writing on the wall? Or is there one hell of a peak oil crisis on its way, perhaps a lot earlier than we think?
Of course this is a solar narks’ worst nightmare. After ignoring the breakthroughs in solar storage, as well as the contributions made by Australian universities in key areas such as solar cell efficiency (hats off UNSW), what if one of the main pillars of the fossil fuel industry began to dry up…literally?
Saudi Arabia Denies Its Key Role in Climate Change—The Intercept
Sep 18, 2019 - Anyone who was still questioning whether climate change can exacerbate violent international conflicts has only to look at Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia | Climate Action Tracker
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia constitutes the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. Saudi Arabia’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, and with 25% of the world’s oil reserves, the country is the world’s largest petroleum exporter. The oil sector alone contributes up to 80% of the country’s budget revenues and 88% of foreign income is from oil exports. Gross domestic product per capita is highly variable and the economy suffers greatly from the instability in world oil prices.
Oil giant Saudi Arabia 'attempted to block' UN climate change report--Al-Araby
Sep 24, 2019 - Oil giant Saudi Arabia held up adoption of a report on global warming and its devastating impact on ocean's and the earth's frozen zones.
Saudi Arabia and Climate Change—AGSIW
Jun 28, 2019 - Saudi Arabia has successfully lobbied for a major climate change report to be scrubbed from international negotiations on limiting global …
Solar Power in Saudi Arabia
In March 2018 Saudi Arabia announced that together with Softbank they plan to install 200 Gigawatt of solar power until the year 2030.[6] This project was cancelled in September 2018.[7] This compares to a global solar power installation of 100 Gigawatt in 2017. In the year 2016 Saudi Arabias electricity generation capacity stood at 77 Gigawatts.
Bloomberg: It’s Hard to Be the Saudi Arabia of Solar
The kingdom has grand ambitions in greener energy, but virtually nothing to show for them.
Around the world, high oil prices tend to accelerate the shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles. In Saudi Arabia, they have the opposite effect. Over the past six years, the Saudis have announced investments of more than $350 billion aimed at making the sun-drenched kingdom the, well, Saudi Arabia of renewable energy.
But virtually no construction has begun, and with crude more than doubling from early 2016 to this October, the Saudis’ commitment to renewable energy has wavered, says Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency.
Ambitious plans have not been matched by progress, but there may finally be signs of change.
It was the largest renewables project ever announced: $200bn (£158bn) worth of solar panels stretching across hundreds of square kilometres of the Saudi Arabian desert.
The massive solar initiative was billed by the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as a “huge step in human history” when it was unveiled in March last year. It was cancelled by October.
The collapse of the project was typical of the ambitious renewable schemes touted by Saudi Arabia in the past decade, analysts say. Headline-grabbing announcements have often been followed by limited progress. At the same time, the country has ramped up its fossil fuel production and continued to lobby to soften the terms of global carbon emissions-reduction agreements.
Greentech Media: Failure of 'World's Biggest Solar Project' in Saudi Arabia Is No Surprise
Jan 10, 2019 - The Renewable Energy Project Development Office of Saudi Arabia is ... The country's solar target for 2023 has been revised up from 5.9 GW to ...
SimplyAmazing:
the Saudis who are quite busy cashing out of their dwindling Aramco oil holdings to buy into wind energy companies.
Gulf States at COP25
COP25: Over 40 Gulf State Delegates Are Current or Former Employees of Fossil Fuel Companies