Saudi Arabia Looks to Secure $109 Billion to Develop its Solar Industry

The Kingdom Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (Ka-care), is agency set up by Saudi Arabia in April 2010 in order to organise and oversee the nations renewable energy strategy. Saudi Arabia hopes to drastically cut its oil consumption, and believes its current plans will help it to save an average of 523,000 barrels a day over the next 20 years.

The latest part of the plan is to secure $109 billion investment to create a solar industry that can provide a third of the Arab state’s electricity demand within 20 years.

Maher al-Odan, a consultant at Ka-care, has stated that the government wants to install 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2032, and a further 21,000 megawatts of nuclear, wind, and geothermal sources.

25,000 megawatts will be produced from solar thermal plants, and the extra 16,000 from photovoltaic panels.

Al-Odan, commented that, “we are not only looking for building solar plants. We want to run a sustainable solar energy sector that will become a driver for the domestic energy for years to come.”

Solar panel manufacturers such as First Solar and SunPower Corp could find that the Saudi Arabian market is a huge boon as European countries start to reduce solar subsidies in order to reduce the oversupply of PV panels in the market.

By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com