SAUDIS TARGET $109 BIL, 1/3 ELECTRICITY FOR SOLAR

Saudi Arabia Weighs Annual Budget to Boost Clean Energy

Louise Downing, July 11, 2012 (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

“...Saudi Arabia in May said it’s looking for $109 billion in investment to create a solar power industry that generates a third of the nation’s electricity by 2032, helping reduce domestic consumption of oil that it would prefer to export…Oil sold for domestic power generation and transportation needs currently fetches about $5 a barrel, below the almost $100 a barrel it can be sold for on international markets…[and] domestic oil consumption will rise to 8 million barrels a day by 2045 from 2 million to 2.5 million barrels currently…

“…[Faisal Bin Turki AlFaisal, president of the Global Strategic Studies Institute, said a feed-in tariff guaranteeing a premium for solar and wind power probably wouldn’t work in Saudi Arabia’s closed economy, where energy costs paid by consumers are subsidized]…The King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, a government-backed agency established to oversee the country’s renewable energy strategy… plans to start a tender targeting mainly solar and wind power projects early in 2013.”

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“Currently, Saudi Arabia has only a few small-scale solar projects. It gets all of its energy from oil and natural gas produced by its own fields and none from renewables, coal, nuclear or hydropower…Energy demand in the country is growing at about 6 percent a year…

“An annual budget for renewables would differ from the feed- in tariffs that Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Britain offered to spur solar and wind power in their nations…Initially projects will likely be “big, massive” utility scale solar projects rather than the smaller rooftop units, AlFaisal said. The country is aiming to install about 25 gigawatts of solar thermal generation by 2032 and 16 gigawatts of solar photovoltaic facilities. It’s planning 9 gigawatts of wind, 3 gigawatts of biomass and 1 gigawatt of geothermal power…”

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