Saudi Arabia solar power capacity nearly tripled in 2025 as oil still fuels the grid

Saudi Arabia is one of the largest oil exporters in the world, and power plants there burn crude oil to generate part of the electricity the country uses at home. That crude burn reached a 9 year high of 814,000 barrels a day in August 2024, according to Kpler, a company that tracks oil markets. IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, maps Saudi Arabia solar power potential as among the best in the world, with most of the land inside the single highest sunlight producing class on its solar atlas, a concentration most other countries do not share across their own land. Yet renewable sources, mostly solar, supplied only 1.48% of the electricity Saudi Arabia actually generated in 2023, more precise than the flat 1% IRENA prints on its own summary chart. That figure divides 2 numbers IRENA itself reports, 6,534 gigawatt hours of renewable generation against 440,993 gigawatt hours generated in total. A gigawatt hour measures electricity actually produced, not the size of a power plant.

Saudi Arabia solar power additions kept accelerating in 2025

Saudi Arabia added about 7.8 gigawatts of solar power in 2025, a gigawatt measuring how much a power plant can produce at once, according to pv magazine Global, a trade publication. That took cumulative installed solar capacity to 12.465 gigawatts by the end of 2025, up from 4.665 gigawatts a year earlier, nearly tripling in a single year. IRENA separately reports that solar made up 92% of all renewable electricity capacity in Saudi Arabia in 2024, against 8% for wind.

Who is paying for the buildout

A single company alone has just committed a huge share of new solar capacity. ACWA Power, Badeel, a Public Investment Fund subsidiary, and SAPCO, a Saudi Aramco subsidiary, reached financial close, when financing is arranged and building can start, on 7 renewable energy projects totaling 15 gigawatts. The portfolio holds 12 gigawatts of solar power across 5 plants and 3 gigawatts of wind across 2 plants. Total investment is 8.2 billion dollars, including 5.9 billion dollars in senior debt from 20 banks. The projects are due to start operating between the second half of 2027 and the first half of 2028. ACWA Power ties the portfolio to a Public Investment Fund commitment to build 70% of the total renewable energy target capacity in Saudi Arabia.

Why the oil burn has not gone away yet

Despite the buildout, oil use for power has not disappeared. Crude burn at Saudi power plants fell 11% year over year in January 2025 and 21% in February, then rebounded 25% in March as temperatures rose, Kpler reports. Solar plants in Saudi Arabia ran at 37% of their rated capacity in 2023, a genuinely high figure for solar, but fossil fuel plants still ran harder, at 55%, with wind plants at 45%. The Saudi government has set a target of getting about 50% of the electricity mix from renewable sources by 2030, according to Saudipedia, a reference site backed by the Saudi Ministry of Media. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi Minister of Energy, said in January 2023 that the country seeks global leadership in clean energy production amid a global shift toward sustainability.

In parallel, it should speed project execution by streamlining permitting and land access.

Attaurrahman Ojindaram Saibasan, power analyst at GlobalData. Source 3.

That execution gap sits behind Saudi Arabia solar power. Jafurah, a new domestic gas field, is projected to displace up to 500,000 barrels a day of crude oil from power plants at peak output by 2030, according to Kpler, more than 300,000 barrels a day of that from Jafurah gas alone. Whether solar power or Jafurah gas frees more of that oil for export by 2030 depends on which buildout finishes first.