Gulf oil producers scramble to catch up on renewables
The coronavirus pandemic has pushed Gulf leaders to realize the region needs to accelerate its shift toward renewables; environmental activists accuse the Gulf states of double-talk.
When Christofer Rathke visited Saudi Arabia for the first time about five years ago, the CEO of the Solar and Sustainable Energy Fund, who lives in Singapore, informed investors and high-ranking officials of “the next big boom” in renewables. He warned fossil fuels could be “phased out quickly” as renewables will “soon be price competitive.”
The interlocutors of the fund manager expressed interest, but nobody turned the talk into action. “Instead, they all subscribed to the Aramco IPO, which is so ridiculous. I mean, they are doing exactly the wrong thing,” Rathke told Al-Monitor. The stock market listing of the Saudi oil giant in 2019 attracted $29.4 billion of investments.
Earlier this year, a senior official at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation acknowledged that “Kuwait is not pushing for a quick energy transition,” Petroleum Economist reported. “It is not our plan to suddenly be green and say goodbye to fossil fuels.”
Such a statement is clearly in contradiction with the commitment of the Arab Gulf states, all ranked by the World Bank in the top 16 per capita emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, to the 2015 Paris Agreement that aims at limiting global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) this century.
