Saudi to Invest $266 Billion in Clean Energy by 2030

/ Financial News / Tuesday, 31 January 2023 08:23

Saudi Arabia plans to invest more than $266 billion to produce cleaner electricity and expand its power grid, the Kingdom's Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has said.

During a forum organized by Saudi oil giant Aramco, bin Salman said the world's biggest crude exporter was also looking to become a global leader in hydrogen production.

"We are introducing over a trillion riyals ($266 billion) worth of investment by 2030 to address our plans to achieve cleaner forms of electricity within the kingdom as well as expanding and modernizing the power transmission and distribution grid," he noted.

"On the hydrogen front, we are determined to be the leading exporter as well as availing clean hydrogen for local usages in heavy industries to produce green products," bin Salma stated in the speech to the seventh annual IKTVA forum in Dhahran.

The kingdom would also double down on carbon capture solutions.

"We are no longer going to build any future power generation without carbon capture," the Saudi minister said.

Despite its goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2060, Saudi Arabia remains hugely dependent on crude oil exports that have powered its growth for decades, raising doubts about its potential for an economic makeover any time soon.

Soaring crude prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine allowed the kingdom to post its first budget surplus in nine years in 2022, giving it the financial firepower for economic development.

Separately, Saudi Arabia and France have underlined the need for mutual cooperation in the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

Saudi's energy minister and the French minister of economy and finance, Bruno Le Maire, discussed prospects for cooperation in the peaceful uses of atomic energy and ways to promote bilateral relations between the two countries. The two also explored future opportunities in various fields of energy, including areas of cooperation in renewable energy, clean hydrogen and the power grid.

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