During the Saudi Green Initiative Forum, Saudi Arabia unveiled its green roadmap toward a net-zero emission world to join forces in combating the existential crisis of climate change.
The timing of the announcements coincided with one of the most important meetings on the climate challenge in Glasgow, Scotland.
Several historic announcements were made at the SGI event, including the very ambitious goal to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2060 and the more than doubling of KSA’s initial national determined contributions toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 130 to 278 million tons annually by 2030.
While these targets are hinged on the attainment of economic diversification and prosperity, they constitute another focal point in the Kingdom’s efforts to make a positive global contribution on the issue of climate change. They also signal the determination of the leadership to transition from a global oil exporting nation to a global energy exporting country with bold investments in cleaner energy options.
In its official submission to the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kingdom laid out more details about its mitigation plans to achieve these targets through bold investments in various energy efficiency measures, fuel switching, including sizable investments in renewables and cleaner energies such as hydrogen, and turning the industrial cities of Jubail and Yanbu into global hubs for carbon capture, utilization and storage.
These goals mark a critical inflection point in the level of ambition by Saudi Arabia in tackling the climate issue, especially with respect to the net zero target.
This assessment is based on modeling studies we have recently conducted at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center. To bend the emission curve in Saudi Arabia to net-zero in the next 40 years is no trivial task.
A key theme in the Kingdom’s approach to tackling the climate challenge is the adoption of the circular carbon economy framework, which was developed during Saudi Arabia’s G20 presidency and endorsed by G20 leaders and energy ministers.
At the research center, we have been using computer simulations of energy economic models to assess how the various countries that have made climate pledges will stack up in the global race to hit net-zero in the coming few decades. Our analysis shows that current global pledges are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goal, and efforts will need to increase in ambition.
Our CCE scenarios, however, show that achieving the Paris Agreement goal is still within reach, but it is a daunting task that will require all regions, all sectors and all technologies to contribute and with greater ambition than has been offered to date. We estimate that a net-zero CO2 emission world by 2075 that is consistent with the Paris Agreement of being less than 2 C warming above pre-industrial levels would require massive energy transformations across sectors, including massive investments in renewables, electrifications, fuel-switching, carbon capture, utilization and storage, and other removal technologies.
Similarly, we will need to make great strides in electrifying our end-use sectors (buildings, transport, and industry) with the share of electricity in the final energy consumption to increase from 17 percent in 2015 to 47 percent in 2075.
This will require massive investments in renewables, especially in wind and solar, with roughly 390 GW of wind and solar capacity to be added annually between now and 2075.
While more and more countries are updating their NDCs with even more ambitious climate goals and with net-zero emission pledges such as in the case of Saudi Arabia, the world is facing the dilemma of countries seeking to revive their economies in the aftermath of the pandemic while also having to deliver on their climate promises. So a key focus in this year’s COP is to keep momentum and encourage other countries to raise the ambition of their medium-term climate targets, join the net-zero club and develop detailed roadmaps to reaching net-zero emissions, and to direct their infrastructural investments to the extent possible in supporting technologies that would push the world toward an industrial green revolution.
• Mohamad Hejazi is a research fellow at KAPSARC.
