Chinese multinational Envision Energy has won a contract to provide 1.67GW of wind turbines for a green hydrogen project within the proposed green mega-precinct known as Neom that Saudi Arabia plans to build at a cost of $500 billion,
The contract promises the delivery of more than a hundred of its 6.5 MW “smart” wind turbines to be installed as part of Neom’s proposed US$8.4bn green hydrogen production facility.
Hydrogen is a key part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan to reduce the oil giant’s economic dependence on the export that made it rich.
The flagship Neom project describes a 26,500km square expanse of land – larger than the countries of Kuwait and Israel – that will house, among other things, a 170km long megacity, and a floating city called Oxagon, the proposed site of the green hydrogen project.
Neom claims it will be the world’s most self-sufficient region, producing its own food via vertical farming and mega-greenhouses.
The city would be powered by wind and solar, say its proponents, and its water will be produced from desalination – fuelled by renewable energy – with the waste brine used as an industrial raw material.
The country has already struck an agreement with hydrogen-thirsty Japan to provide hydrogen and fuel-ammonia: Japan received its first shipment of ‘low-carbon’ ammonia (labelled ‘low-carbon’ because the CO2 produced was captured and stored) from Saudi Arabia in April.
The Neom Green Hydrogen Company (NGHC) says the project will deliver up to 600 tonnes of “carbon-free” hydrogen by the end of 2026. When built, NGHC says the facility will be the world’s largest commercial-scale green hydrogen project.
Asked whether this next phase of Neom’s hydrogen project is feasible, Professor John Loughhead, Industrial Chair in Clean Energy at the University of Birmingham, UK, is cautious.
“While ambitious the overall plans are credible,” he says. “Neom has a lot of space to install these turbines, a fairly good wind resource to power them, and the proposed installed power is around 10% of China’s annual installation rate of wind energy so is consistent with their demonstrated industrial capacity.
“Whether they are realistic is dependent on the readiness of Saudi Arabia to move from intent to action – the plans for green energy have been publicised for at least two years already but this is the first concrete implementation plan announced, and there’s no mention of timescale.”
Dr Conor Walsh, an environmental scientist at the University of Greenwich, UK, agrees that the wind installation required for this hydrogen project, while ambitious, is not unimaginable.
“The UK currently has about 28 GW of installed capacity, roughly equal between on and offshore, so 1.7 GW is a significant undertaking,” he says. “However, we have seen significant growth in global installed wind capacity in recent years.”
Loughhead says some aspects of the project are less technically feasible than others.
“Procuring electrolysers to produce the hydrogen may take time as at present the largest available module sizes are around 10MW, and although manufacturers are speaking of larger units these are not currently easily available,” he says.
Walsh points out that sourcing the feedstock water will be particularly difficult for such a dry nation without, ironically, utilising fossil fuels.
“Water is the feedstock in the production of green hydrogen, and it must be treated to ultrapure quality prior to splitting into its component elements,” he says. “Therefore, finding the right pre-treatment technology for the source of water, presumably the sea, is essential.
“Ordinarily, such a large scale demand for pure water in a region like Saudi Arabia would imply increased desalination, which at present is very much underpinned by oil consumption, which cannot continue under a net zero step change, no matter how tempting or economical it can be.”
Neom says it will produce the water for both its green hydrogen project and its projected nine-million-strong population by desalination powered by renewable energy. Whether that will be borne out remains to be seen: desalination using renewable electricity is still in its technological infancy.
Loughhead says other aspects of the hydrogen project are certainly plausible.
“Transport of hydrogen can be done by pipeline regionally or used locally for green ammonia production, both of which are commercially and technically feasible,” says Loughhead.
Plagued with questions about the project’s feasibility, Neom published its first evidence of progress – in the form of a YouTube video depicting footage of construction at The Line, Oxagon, and two other key locations within the precinct – in January.
More broadly, NEOM’s ambitious plans – to be a renewable-powered, self-sustaining megacity – have been called into question, alongside the Vision 2030 policy.
The nation’s express goal is to generate 50% of its national electricity renewably by 2030, but currently just 0.1% of its electricity comes from renewable sources, with just seven years to go. A scale-up of those proportions would require prodigious effort.
Loughhead says NEOM’s clean energy and sustainability goals are feasible, but would require major investments in a project that at present is not commercially profitable – a significant leap of faith.
“Given the unprecedented scale of the development it is difficult to make meaningful comments without more specific details on how basic resources are met,” says Walsh.
“Saudi Arabia already uses significant quantities of fossil water – water from isolated aquifers – which is not sustainable.
“Therefore, the feasibility of these plans may well hinge on how efficient NEOM will be in a applying genuine circular economy paradigm and reusing and recycling and producing material internally.”
More broadly, Saudi’s climate commitments came under scrutiny after the nation successfully pushed for the inclusion of references to carbon capture and storage – technologies as yet unproven at scale – across the IPCC’s sixth assessment report in 2022.
The country’s Paris Agreement pledge is explicitly based on a scenario in which it continues to export substantial amounts of fossil fuels.
“As climate change is a global problem, it is not within the gift of a single region to address unilaterally,” observes Walsh.
“Even if Saudi Arabia were to fully transition away from oil as source of energy, it would also need to halt exportation of oil as other large energy consumers themselves decarbonise their own options.”
