Saudi Arabia, a green energy leader?
When Taylor Luck, the Monitor鈥檚 Middle East reporter, first heard that Saudi Arabia was attempting to 鈥済o green,鈥� he wasn鈥檛 sure what to make of it.
Workers build a rainwater catchment dam wall as part of tree-planting efforts in Saudi Arabia鈥檚 Thadiq National Park on Feb. 8.
Taylor Luck
This week鈥檚 cover story almost didn鈥檛 happen.
When Taylor Luck, the Monitor鈥檚 Middle East reporter, first heard that Saudi Arabia was attempting to 鈥済o green,鈥� he wasn鈥檛 sure what to make of it.
As the world鈥檚 second-largest producer of oil, Saudi Arabia is 鈥渙ften seen as the spoiler to progress on climate,鈥� he says. So the Gulf nation鈥檚 commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060 through investment in renewable energy and reforestation was both intriguing and a bit dubious. 鈥淚t was just kind of hard to believe,鈥� he says.
So, Taylor flew to Riyadh from his home in Jordan to see for himself.
Some of what he found confirmed his skepticism. The kingdom isn鈥檛 giving up its hold of the global oil market 鈥� far from it. Saudi rigs continue to pump oil out of the desert for global distribution. But at the same time, Taylor found a nation striving to become a global leader in renewable energy technologies, particularly green hydrogen, a low-carbon energy source that could be a game changer for transportation and heavy industry if it can be perfected.
Some of that investment in renewable energy is intended to offset emissions associated with continued oil production. But the fruits of the Saudis鈥� research and development in this sector will inform technological progress in other nations as well.聽
鈥淢aybe the net-zero carbon equation might not be reached,鈥� Taylor says. 鈥淏ut at the end of the day, I could see that there were real positive聽steps, and that other people could benefit.鈥�
And out in the countryside, Taylor started to see sprigs of hope beginning to blossom, as he toured several reforestation efforts working toward the audacious goal of planting 10 billion trees.聽
鈥淚 have to admit that I went in thinking that they were just going to be importing a bunch of trees and planting them and just walking away,鈥� he says, pointing to similarly bold reforestation efforts elsewhere in the world that failed to adequately take the local climate and ecosystems into account.
Yet here Taylor met 鈥渓ifelong tree-huggers鈥� who were tapping into the private seed banks and extensive knowledge of the region鈥檚 dynamic ecosystems that they had been cultivating for years.
What鈥檚 more, it appears to be working.
Taylor visited a dam that had been built just this winter and found that 鈥渙ne little pool of water鈥� had sprouted trees. Birds and butterflies were already fluttering around this new oasis.聽
鈥淥ne thing that really struck me was, even in the arid areas, life can be brought back,鈥� Taylor says. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 an important lesson: There always is a chance to kind of bring life back, and it comes back very quickly.鈥�