When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced Saudi Arabia’s “green initiative” this year he did so with the type of eye-catching pledge that has come to characterize the young royal’s grandiose plans to modernize the kingdom. Promising that the world’s top oil exporter would lead the “next green era”, Prince Mohammed vowed that 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s power generation would be provided by renewables by 2030, with the other 50 percent fuelled by gas. Riyadh would also plant 10bn trees in the desert nation in the coming decades.
“As a leading global oil producer, we are fully aware of our share of responsibility in advancing the fight against the climate crisis,” the prince said as he unveiled the plan in March. “And as [with] our pioneering role in stabilizing energy markets during the oil and gas era, we will act to lead the next green era.”
But as with many of the prince’s ambitious schemes, skeptics question whether his rhetoric will be matched with tangible action on the ground. The kingdom burns about 1m barrels of oil equivalent a day to fuel its power system, a figure that rises sharply in the scorching summer months when Saudis rely on air conditioning to keep cool. The Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, rates Saudi Arabia’s climate commitments as “critically insufficient”, citing a lack of clear policies or data about its emissions.
“It’s not very clear how they actually aim to achieve these [climate goals], it’s not very transparent at all,” said Mia Moisio, an analyst at the NewClimate Institute, which helps collate the Climate Action Tracker data. “I am quite cautious about [the kingdom’s] announcements . . . There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be possible in Saudi. But there’s a lot of inertia.”