Saudi Arabia renewable energy target calls for 130 gigawatts by 2030
Saudi Arabia renewable energy target calls for 130 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030, Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said in December 2023, Argaam reports. A gigawatt equals 1 billion watts, a unit large enough to describe how much electricity a national power grid uses at once. He said reaching it would take 20 gigawatts of new renewable capacity a year.
The pace needed to hit it has grown
By March 2026, an independent forecast pointed to a faster pace than the minister first stated. GlobalData, an analytics firm, forecasts Saudi Arabia now needs to add more than 23 gigawatts of renewable capacity a year to reach 130 gigawatts by 2030, pv magazine Global reports, and forecasts the country will not reach the target until around 2035 at its current pace. The International Renewable Energy Agency counts Saudi Arabia total installed electricity capacity, the most every power plant in the country could generate at once, at 94 gigawatts in 2024, renewable sources making up about 5% of that total. Applying that 5% share to the 94 gigawatt total, a calculation done for this article rather than stated by the agency, gives a current renewable capacity of roughly 4.7 gigawatts, making the 130 gigawatt target roughly 27 times that amount.
The 2.79 and 12 gigawatt figures cover ACWA Power capacity only, pv magazine Global does not name which projects make up either total.
Show the numbers
| ACWA Power capacity added in 2025 | 2.79 |
| Capacity under signed agreements for 2027 and 2028 | 12 |
| National renewable target for 2030 | 130 |
2 megaprojects show the scale of the climb
2 named power plants show what building toward that target looks like in practice. The Sudair Solar PV Plant, about 120 kilometers from Riyadh, reached financial close in 2021, when its funding was finalized, for 1.5 gigawatts of capacity, an investment of about 3.4 billion Saudi riyals, about 907 million dollars, developed by ACWA Power, Badeel and Sapco, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, DNV reports. Once fully operational the plant is expected to power about 185,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by about 2.9 tons a year, DNV states. Sudair own 2021 announcement targeted the second half of 2022 for its first phase to begin generating power, but no source read for this article confirms Sudair has since reached full commercial operation, meaning certified ready to sell power to the grid, at its complete 1.5 gigawatt capacity.
We are delighted to have supported Saudi Power Procurement Company SPPC in obtaining PPA signoff on the impressive 1.5 GW Sudair Solar PV project.
Santiago Blanco, vice president and area manager for southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America of energy systems at DNV. Source 3.
The Al Shuaibah 1 solar plant, 600 megawatts of a larger 2 phase project with Al Shuaibah 2, received its commercial operation certificate in November 2024, Argaam reports, with the 2 phases together now exceeding 2.6 gigawatts. ACWA Power, Badeel and Saudi Aramco finalized the joint project in August 2023.
The 4.7 gigawatt renewable capacity figure is this article own calculation, applying the International Renewable Energy Agency 5% renewable share to its 94 gigawatt total, not a figure the agency states directly.
Show the numbers
| Total installed electricity capacity, all sources | 94 |
| Renewable capacity built to date, estimated | 4.7 |
| Renewable capacity added during 2024 | 1.8 |
What speeding up would take
Reaching the faster pace will take more than 2 plants. Attaurrahman Ojindaram Saibasan, a power analyst at GlobalData, says the country should expand distributed solar for businesses, secure lower cost financing such as green bonds, and adopt operating standards suited to desert conditions, pv magazine Global reports. ACWA Power alone brought 2.79 gigawatts of new capacity online in 2025, and has another 12 gigawatts under signed power purchase agreements, contracts fixing a price before a plant is built, scheduled to come online across 2027 and 2028.