As the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia has long been the world’s largest oil producer, and its economy is highly dependent on fossil energy exports. However, in recent years, with the changing global energy landscape and the increase in environmental awareness, the Saudi Arabian government has begun to recognize the need to find new energy outlets to meet the challenges of the energy transition in the future.
The rise of solar power presents a golden opportunity for Saudi Arabia to liberate itself from a monolithic oil economy model and diversify its energy industry. By building solar power plants on a large scale, Saudi Arabia will be able to reduce its dependence on oil exports, reduce economic risks, and increase the resilience of its economy.
In order to actively respond to the challenges of the energy transition, the Saudi Arabian government has fully launched the ambitious “Saudi Vision 2030 Plan”. The program aims to move the country’s economic model away from an over-reliance on oil exports to one that is diversified, green, and sustainable.The Saudi government’s elaborate “renewable energy project” has an ambitious goal: a staggering 200GW of renewable energy capacity in the country by 2030, with solar power dominating.
Saudi Arabia is uniquely positioned to support its transition in the field of solar energy. First of all, Saudi Arabia is located on the Arabian Peninsula and enjoys abundant sunshine resources, which are very abundant almost all year round, which provides excellent conditions for solar power generation. Especially in southern areas, such as Jazan, the average sunshine hours per year is more than 9 hours, making solar power generation extremely high here.
Secondly, Saudi Arabia has huge reserves of solar energy resources. It is estimated that Saudi Arabia receives hundreds of times the amount of solar radiation it receives each year as much as the country’s electricity consumption, which means that the kingdom has great potential to convert solar energy into a clean energy supply. The Saudi government has recognized the huge potential of solar energy and has taken positive actions, planning to build solar power plants on a large scale in the next few years to diversify and sustain the energy mix.
In addition, Saudi Arabia’s geography and vast land area also bring low-cost advantages to solar power generation. The Saudi government has taken advantage of these advantages to promote the rapid development of the solar industry through large-scale photovoltaic power generation projects. With technological advancements and reduced costs, solar power has become a competitive energy option in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has an advantage in solar power generation, but it is challenged by harsh climatic conditions such as high temperatures and high humidity, and needs to deal with the high cost of equipment maintenance and replacement. At the same time, financial and technical support is insufficient, and the complementarity of solar power generation to the grid is also an obstacle. To this end, the Saudi government has taken measures to encourage investment, attract international companies, promote research and development of energy storage technology and transform the power grid to overcome these difficulties and promote the development of solar power generation.Taking the Al Shubach photovoltaic power plant project in Saudi Arabia as an example, the project is the world’s largest photovoltaic power station project under construction, and China Energy Construction is responsible for the EPC general contracting construction, with a total installed power generation capacity of 2.6GW and a total investment of 2.37 billion US dollars.
