Saudi Arabia Looks To Double RE Capacity Through Tenders

• Aggressive tendering in 2022 and 2023 is expected to fasten the development of solar and wind projects in Saudi Arabia.
• The quest of the Europeans to find new sources of energy to replace the Russian oil is also being seen as an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to invest in renewable installations.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is mulling to double the renewable energy tenders this year and give a fillip to the clean electricity availability. According to reports, the country will continue the spree in 2023 for faster development in the solar power and wind farm projects.

The Energy Minister Saudi Arabia has an online capacity of 700 MW of renewable energy currently. This is set to witness a share increase in the coking years as 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 Energy Minister of the country also held that for Saudi Arabia, the present situation renews focus on replacing the share of oil in the power mix with natural gas and solar energy. The country believes that there could be more valuable exports to the key markets like Europe like green hydrogen etc. from Saudi Arabia, believes the minister. He also added that more deployment of solar power can lead to 50 per cent renewable energy generation by 2030.

The quest of the Europeans to find new sources of energy to replace the Russian oil is also being seen as an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to invest in renewable installations.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has recently announced the commissioning of 287 of 11,000 volts substations in the emirate during the first half of 2022.

The RE Show in Arab World

The renewable energy development has been quite slow in West Asia despite having immense natural resources to produce clean energy. According to IRENA, last year, of late, renewable energy grew by 5.4 per cent to about 24 GW. The highest share of RE growth was clocked by Iran and followed by Israel.

Saudi Arabia is on the catching spree with its other Arab neighbours with regards to renewable energy generation.Early this year, Energy Minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman revealed that the country has set its sights on issuing fresh tenders towards the generation of 15,000 MWs capacity of electricity with the renewable energy projects in 2022 and next year.

Moreover, 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. At present, under the National Renewable Energy Program, there are 13 projects with a capacity of more than 4800 MW. More than 90 per cent of the renewable energy comes from solar as the irradiance is quite strong in Saudi Arabia, and the rest comes from wind farms.