Saudi Arabia Announces 10 New Renewable Energy Projects

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is mulling over the development of 10 new renewable energy projects in the country. According to reports, the new RE projects are aimed at enhancing the power generated from solar and wind sources and further reducing the use of fossil fuels – especially oil – to generate electricity.

The new renewable energy projects have been announced in the budget of Saudi Arabia for 2023 that was announced with a surplus. As per reports, the total capacity of power generation of the announced renewable energy projects will be 7 GW.

All of the RE projects are part of the strategy to realise the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision that aims at economic diversification and the expansion of renewable energy in the energy mix of Saudi Arabia to 50 percent by the end of this decade.

The specification of the projects or the costs to be incurred is yet to be known. In the budget, Saudi Arabia has set an objective of cutting the diesel consumption and the generation of electricity by over 5000 barrels a day in a quest to further the cause of decarbonisation of the economy.

In June, Fitch Solutions held that the OPEC member, which has about 700 MW of renewable energy online at present, would see 5.2 GW of green energy coming online by 2031. The Energy Minister of Saudi Arabia said that the country will double the renewable energy tenders this year and give a fillip to the clean electricity availability.

Until now, projects worth 7.1 GW have been tendered and are in different stages of completion. More than twice this capacity will come up in 2022 and 2023 for tendering in Saudi Arabia.

The Kingdom recently added five new renewable energy projects that will produce an additional 3300-MW of power and the projects are a part of the ongoing National Renewable Energy Program. According to the General Authority of Statistics, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the country has plans to produce a massive 15.1 TWh of renewable energy by 2024.