Is Saudi Arabia Really Moving to Renewables?

The word on the street for the past couple of years has been that Saudi Arabia is continuing to sell oil on the world market, but moving to renewable energy, largely solar, for its own use domestically.  But when they cancelled the largest renewables project ever announced, $200 billion worth of solar panels stretching across hundreds of square kilometres of the Saudi Arabian desert, people started wondering how sincere all this really is. 

Lord knows the Saudis, best known for their brutal and massively illegal campaign in Yemen, not to mention their flogging of women drivers and their dismemberment of a dissident journalist, could use some good PR.   It is therefore no surprise that the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, would bill the massive solar initiative as a “huge step in human history” when it was unveiled in March last year.

That it was cancelled by October underscores some analysts’ beliefs that there is no substance behind these announcements.  Ramping up its fossil fuel production and continuing to lobby to soften the terms of global carbon emissions-reduction agreements makes matters even worse.