Major companies in Saudi Arabia resort to solar energy to provide energy costs after the government has canceled electricity support.
According to the Financial Times, thanks to the low costs of photovoltaic panels and sustainability goals set by the state, many major companies have installed in sectors of logistical services to retail trade, solar panels on their surfaces in recent months.
The Saudi government is seeking half of the power generation in the Kingdom from renewable sources by 2030, and to achieve net zero emissions by 2060.
But experts say that the decisive factor that has increased solar energy recently may be the gradual cancellation of energy support that started in 2018 as part of broader economic reforms, which included launching large -scale renewable projects.
Fruits reap
“We invested in solar energy, and we started reaping its fruits already … We have succeeded in reducing our carbon silence, and we reduced the cost, although this is slightly, because solar energy is still expensive, and capitalist investment is great,” the newspaper quoted the head of the Fakih Kiir Group, Mazen Fakih, as saying.
The photovoltaic panels, the vehicle on the surface of the company’s car parking (the group), helped to provide more than 170 thousand Saudi riyals (45 thousand dollars) of electricity bills in 2024.
“It is a long -term investment, so to achieve a full investment return, we need two or 3 contracts. But we are encouraging the initial results,” Fakih added.
Fares Al -Suleiman, the co -founder of Hala Energy, a local startup that helps companies build solar energy systems, pointed out that there is a clear difference in demand between commercial and industrial customers.
“Commercial customers, shopping centers, warehouses, and others, who pay the highest electricity tariffs, are 0.30 riyals per kilowatt hour, are much more acceptable to the feasibility of solar panels on the surfaces … and industrial customers, who pay a less tariff, are 0.18 riyals, they are less responsive,” he said.
Saudi companies, which are among multinational groups, such as IKEA and Glaxo Smith Klein, have published solar energy with the encouragement of their mother companies, which set sustainability targets, and formed the meeting of these expectations as an influential factor as well for other Saudi groups, including logistics and transportation companies, which have links to Western markets.
Sustainability of the supply chain
“The main goal is to contribute to the sustainability of the supply chain in a positive way, because this is also realized by our sellers, our suppliers and our partners in the end,” said Amr Al -Mansouri, CEO of the supply chain in the Tamr Group, which was founded in 1922.
“We are cooperating with more than 200 resources around the world from different sectors, and each of them has its own goals regarding the transition to the green,” he added.
However, the company provided more than 440 thousand Saudi riyals through energy efficiency and reducing the costs of the elbow last year after installing solar panels on the roofs of its logistical centers in Jeddah and Riyadh.
Al -Mansouri explained that its goal now is to expand this scope to include all its main distribution centers within two years.
In this transformation, the supply of Chinese -made solar weapons units contributed to reasonable prices, and the total new foreign investment from China to the Kingdom from 2021 to October of last year amounted to $ 21.6 billion, and about a third of these investments were directed towards clean energy technologies such as batteries, solar and wind energy, according to the investments followed by FDA Markets.
But experts believe that the most important engine may be state reforms to reduce support and diversify the economy, which led to 44% increased diesel prices last year.
