Over the last month Saudi Arabia’s government-owned ACWA Power has signed roughly $10 billion in clean-energy and water-infrastructure agreements, stretching from the Gulf to Central Asia and Africa. On paper, it’s a renewables story as they erect gigawatt-scale solar farms, grid-scale batteries, and desalination plants powered by clean electricity. Development finance is flowing into emerging economies.  The deals were signed at the Future Investment Initiative (FII9) in Riyadh known as Davos of the Middle East.

But strip away the slick branding and this feels uncomfortably like a new-era greenwash: the same wealth built on hydrocarbons now deciding the fate of clean power. One truth remains — oil money is now one of the biggest buyers of renewable infrastructure on the planet.

Should we cheer or flinch? It’s a moral knot: the petro-economies that fueled climate breakdown are now financing the transition — selling the sickness and then the cure. If this is the price of decarbonization, it forces a reckoning. Who gets to build the future? And why do we trust the arsonists to run the fire brigade?

ACWA’s largest shareholder is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia which is owned by Saudi Aramco. PIF’s finances come largely from oil revenue and Aramco dividends. Those petrodollars are now underwriting solar and wind farms abroad such as Uzbekistan’s vast steppe, North Africa’s desert grids, along with water-stressed coastlines from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

For Africa, ACWA Power deepened its long-standing partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) through two strategic agreements aimed at accelerating clean energy and water infrastructure deployment on the continent. The first Framework Agreement, valued at up to USD 1 billion, will provide project and corporate financing as well as capacity building and advisory support for ACWA Power’s growing portfolio across Africa.

This includes participation in the OPEC Fund for project financing, equity bridge loans, as well as equity investments support with USD 450 million as the initial target. “The agreement reflects the parties shared commitment to advancing utility-scale clean energy and water projects that drive inclusive, low-carbon growth across the developing world,” says ACWA, signaling its virtuousness as saving the world it is helping us destroy.

Saudi Arabia is modernizing, however, and this may open the monarchy up for criticism. Saudi Arabia let women drive in 2018, and this year users on social media showed how a Halloween party, considered haram by Muslims, was allowed to take place in Riyadh.

 

The country is scaling up for tourism and a culture shift by building megacity projects under the name of NEOM. Celebrities in favor of a great paycheck are already lining up to visit places like Shebara, a pristine island in the Red Sea built with no sustainability impact report.

This is not philanthropy but strategy. While Saudi Arabia can announce the “discovery” of a new oil reserve as a PR drill, consumers and oil importers will change loyalties the minute a university invents a way to create practical, unlimited, non-pollution energy.  Saudis, whose wealth knows no limits, are building stakes in a post-oil world, and they’re doing it faster and more decisively than many Western democracies whose politics have stalled climate spending.

In Washington, clean-energy capital flows through regulatory funnels and election cycles. In Riyadh, it’s sovereign mandate and execution, but it’s complex because Saudis do not have convention ambitions in size and scale of anything they create, with little concern for the environment except “on paper”. See The Line.

ACWA’s $10 billion announcement is about procurement, equipment orders, power-purchase frameworks, project finance. Meanwhile, the West is still arguing over heat pumps and carbon taxes. (Luckily Torus, connected to Warren Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway is putting practical energy in motion with a flywheel invention to stabilize the grid.)

There is a paradox here in every move ACWA and Aramco makes. Some call it green hypocrisy or hedging. But the more honest description is energy geopolitics moving into its next phase. Whoever builds and finances tomorrow’s grids will shape tomorrow’s trade routes, alliances, and dependencies — just as oil once did. So if you enjoy the west and your freedoms, fight for renewable energy independence by raising up and influencing projects and companies locally.

China understood this early through batteries, solar manufacturing, and Belt-and-Road transmission lines. Now the Gulf sovereigns have joined the board. They don’t want to be buyers of technology, but as builders and exporters of clean-power megaprojects.

The uncomfortable question is not whether oil money should fund renewables but maybe if anyone else can move this fast.

The post Oil is building our green future, and ACWA is showing the world how with $10 billion in investments appeared first on Green Prophet.

Red Sea helps farmers prosper near dead or dying aquifers

RedSea LLC, a company founded in the heat of Saudi Arabia has cracked the code for sustainably growing plants in high heat conditions. They offer the answer to increasing cultivation on dead and dying aquifers. 

Growing food in greenhouses in a European winter makes sense. The Dutch invented the idea in the 1800s when botanist Charles Lucien Bonaparte wanted to grow medicinal plants in Leiden. These greenhouses retain heat in the enclosures, allowing cultivation even during the cold Northern European winter months. 

Hydroponics –– or growing trees and plants in a water medium with nutrients –– is having a moment now but it started with a California botanist in the 1800s and was perfected in the 90s by cannabis growers in Canada. Hydroponics tech is now used for growing salads in food deserts everywhere. Hydro-grown has its challenges, and high costs, however.

Drip irrigation, designed to precisely control the delivery of scarce water and costly fertilizer directly to plant roots is credited to the Polish-Israeli agronomist Simcha Blass. This solution allowed cultivation in arid climates where the growing season was limited. More recently, American-Israeli Daniel Hillel received the World Food Prize for devising drip irrigation systems in the developing world and this technology, delivered by companies like Netafim and Rivulis, is now a multi-billion dollar global business.

Climate change and increasing world temperatures now presents additional challenges for agriculture –– especially where climates are becoming more hostile, and water less available. A growing world population, and concerns over food security in the hottest countries in the world has shifted the focus of innovators to ask the question of how to sustainably feed this growing population, and how to overcome the challenges of cultivating in increasingly arid climates. 

RedSea LLC, a company founded in the heat of Saudi Arabia, has cracked the code for sustainably growing plants in high heat conditions and they offer the answer to increasing cultivation on dead and dying aquifers. 

The founders include an Australian plant biologist Prof. Mark Tester, known as the Indiana Jones of the plant world, Prof. Derya Baran, a leading materials scientist and Dr. Ryan Lefers, an expert on water systems and water preservation in agriculture. The trio have built a platform of technologies that adapts the best of the innovative pioneers before them in materials, AI, hydroponics, smart farms, and drip irrigation and have applied know-how in materials, water and plant genetics to sustainably grow crops in hot and dry climates. 

This starts with the water, as access to fresh water is an increasing challenge with agriculture currently using up to 70% of available fresh water to grow crops. The challenge was how to grow plants in increasingly arid conditions on dead or dying aquifers. Tester went to the Galapagos on a mission to figure it out and came home inspired by the tomato plants that he found there growing on rocks right next to the sea. 

He tells Green Prophet that he questioned whether these tomato plants could handle the salt, and if so, could they be modified to be grown commercially while reducing the draw of fresh water resources? Brackish water is saltier than water that comes from the tap and plants don’t like it. It is the water found in estuaries where rivers meet the sea. It is also the water found in aquifers near the sea or in deserts –– or in areas where climate change, and overpopulation has depleted aquifers. 

In all parts of our drought-facing world, and especially in the dry Middle East and regions of California and Texas, brackish water in damaged and dead aquifers is common. Tester has made it his life mission, and with his co-founders established a successful company now scaling into new markets, to grow food on dead and dying aquifers.

“It really depends on the crop, but when our technologies are combined this means you can build greenhouses near dead or dying aquifers. In reality there are a lot of factors in play, but this is the idea,” says Tester, pointing to a suite of agri-climate technologies RedSea has built: “The fundamental idea to address is to reduce the use of freshwater for producing fresh food and if we can do that by using more saltwater, then that is definitely a useful contribution.”

Tester was educated in the UK at Cambridge. He is a research professor at KAUST, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia.  

Perfecting saltwater greenhouses has been a quest for everyone in the Middle East. Maria Telkes, a Hungarian-American scientist laid the foundation for passive desalination greenhouses decades ago in her basic desalination kit made for providing water for soldiers at sea. Sites in Qatar and Abu Dhabi have piloted saltwater greenhouses. 

But Tester’s background is in plant biology, not just tech, furthering the understanding of salt tolerance in plants for desert agriculture. He has developed methods for developing new types of seeds that are used as a hearty rootstock which can handle brackish water. Other plants, which are not as tough, but which are tasty can be then grafted onto these rootstocks. 

“I am a plant guy and in this company I am delivering the fruits of my lifetime’s research which is fundamental science: how plants move solutes in and out of the plants, and applying it to salinity tolerance. With my co-founders Ryan Lefers and Derya Baran a suite of products was developed and commercialised that can leverage this research,” he tells Green Prophet.

Grafting is used with many varieties of plants, such as apples, cherries, roses, watermelons, nut trees, and tomato plants. Developing new types of rootstocks that can handle brackish water and other challenges such as heat and drought is the aim –– and “then we graft the edible bits on top,” says Tester.

In some cases, RedSea can graft across species, but only closely related ones: “We can graft a tomato onto a wild tomato, an eggplant onto a wild eggplant, and sometimes even a tomato onto a wild eggplant, but we can’t graft an orange onto an apple, for example. They have to be fairly closely related.”

The work of grafting also allows the farmer to extend the growing period of the plant, says Tester: “We can help tomatoes be economically productive for longer, such as from 10 months to 11 months in a greenhouse.” 

The RedSea technology works on a soil-based substrate, hydroponics or on open fields in soil: “We are developing rootstocks for all of these conditions,” says Tester.

“In tomatoes, for instance, we are working with brackish water, which is more dilute than seawater but more salty that you and I can drink, is the reality is that in many places around around the world a lot of our food is grown using groundwater and every major aquifer is being depleted. As it gets depleted, it gets salty. 

“We have few aquifers straight outside our university that have been abandoned because of that – now we can access water that’s currently not being used.”

Turning greenhouses inside out

Apart from the unique rootstocks that RedSea is providing, the company has a number of technologies now being sold in export markets. While greenhouses typically need to be heated in Holland or Canada, in the Middle East, the reverse is true. It gets too hot. So RedSea has also helped solve that problem.

They have developed a range of heat blocking greenhouse covers. These are based on additives that can be incorporated into any polymer based cover that blocks damaging heat from penetrating into the greenhouses –– a product called iyris SecondSky which incorporates a nanoparticle technology invented by Baran.

“Derya developed a nanoparticle that when dispersed in plastics absorbs near infrared radiation – which in layman’s terms translates to heat. This absorption of the heat load that would otherwise be damaging to plant health delivers a huge reduction of the resources that are needed in such structures to control the climate and manage plant health in the greenhouse,” says Tester.

The technology can be easily Integrated into standard plastic greenhouse covers, be that polycarbonate, polyethylene or net, resulting in a product that is a one for one replacement of standard greenhouse covers – just better –  because the heat blocking is already integrated into the plastic during the manufacturing process. This means that there is very little compromising impact on the PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) transmission through the cover compared to alternative heat blocking methods. 

Alternative heat blocking solutions include additional reflective films, chalking or internal shade screens, which are, in the case of films, expensive, an operational nuisance and potentially degrading to the plastic. In the case of chalking and compromise the PAR transmission within the greenhouse. Results achieved with the use of SecondSky have been impressive, Tester reports.

Ryan Lefers, the CEO of RedSea explained more about the potential of how disruptive this integrated heat blocking can be within high heat regions: “Greenhouse technology has become highly developed in Northern European countries such as the Netherlands, offering a solution to keep heat in winter so that crops could be grown out of season, but here in the Middle East and over vast areas of the planet we need to keep the heat out in summer, so our thinking was to take the original greenhouse and turn it inside out,” he tells Green Prophet.

“Water scarcity is another major challenge, so finding ways to operate farms with a lower environmental impact, while empowering farmers to continue to farm without an expectation that they make fundamental changes in the way that they farm was a key driver for us.”

The saltwater greenhouse dream

In facilities where SecondSky is installed, farmers can save up to 30% on water and fertilizer use when compared to hydroponic systems and up to 90% compared to soil based cultivation. Many farms also use a reverse pressure pad and fan cooling system in the region to assist in coping with the extreme temperatures. Farmers can save up to an additional 32% in energy costs once a SecondSky cover is installed. 

RedSea has developed an add-on to their technology suite that enables farmers to use brackish water in these cooling systems further reducing the environmental impact of farming in hot climates.

RedSea was founded in 2018, and to date has raised a total of about $36.5 million USD. Saudi Arabia’s oil company Aramco through their investment fund Wa’ed is among the investors. A new Series A funding round will close shortly, adding investors and additional funds for the company’s planned expansion. 

Rapid growth of sales and revenues is the company’s focus at the moment, with expansions into other countries. RedSea technology is being sold through manufacturers and distributors, but also directly to farms. There are installations in 16 countries to date and this number is growing.

But Tester, a plant guy at heart with a passion for the environment, has his eye on the bigger prize: “We wanted to have a company that is profitable and truly sustainable and highly impactful –– where we are across the world developing and selling technologies to reduce the environmental footprint of our food productions in both developed and developing countries. 

“And that’s where we came from ––  Ryan and me. We started with this idea of increasing sustainability in agriculture in developing countries ––  that’s in the DNA of the company.”

The post RedSea cracks the code for hot climate saltwater greenhouses  appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists who vandalized Vincent Van Gogh‘s Sunflowers (1888) painting with a can of soup are waiting to be sentenced, according to JSO press material.

The 22-year-old activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland,  “came within the width of a pane of glass of destroying one of the most valuable artworks in the world,” said Southwark Crown Court Judge Christopher Hehir.

It’s been 2 years since the incident and Holland and Plummer were remarkably only sentenced from visiting any museums or galleries, or for carrying glue, paint or adhesive materials in a public setting.

Holland and Plummer launched a can of tomato soup on the glass of the centuries-old painting, stating: “What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people?

“The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis.”

Plummer and a third activist, Jane Touil, were imprisoned after painting Heathrow airport a few days ago. Just Stop Oil says they are working to defend them and with groups internationally to demand governments establish a fossil fuel treaty, to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.

Phoebe Plummer and Jane Touil appeared before Judge Neeta Minhasat at Westminster magistrates court this afternoon, after taking action at Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport yesterday. They have been remanded to HMP Bronzefield until August 28th at Isleworth Crown Court, where they will appear for a case management hearing.

Yesterday, the pair used fire extinguishers to spray water-based paint at the departure boards in the terminal. The Crown is alleging £50,000 worth of damages.

Plummer said at the hearing: “Sending peaceful protestors like me to prison isn’t going to prevent us from resisting. You’re upholding an abysmal system. And you’re doing that to maintain business as usual. You won’t be protected from the climate emergency.”

Speaking before the hearing Jane Touil said: “I have become increasingly terrified about climate breakdown and increasingly appalled by politicians’ failure to take appropriate action. Convinced that the most effective thing I could do as an ordinary person was to take direct action to highlight the catastrophic situation we’re in, I became a Just Stop Oil supporter.”

“I was arrested for the first time in April 2022 and have been arrested several times since. I spent a short time on remand in prison after climbing an M25 gantry in November 2022. I will continue to act on my conscience to protect life and to challenge the greed, corruption and cowardice that are killing people right now. I refuse to die for fossil fuels.”

The two must be “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison” when their case is heard on September 27 by Judge Hehir, who has sentenced five JSO activists who committed similar offenses to a prison sentence of up to five years:

“The government continuously proves that they have little to no interest in attempting to curb climate change,” said Holland’s lawyer, adding: “They have proven that they have a great deal of interest in investing time and money into prosecuting young people trying to fight for the future of themselves and their children.”

Activists from various countries have targeted art and public spaces and private businesses over the past few years to raise awareness to the climate emergency. The tone was set by Greenpeace in the 70s when it started taking over whaling boats.

While it may seem heroic, Green Prophet does not support acts of violence and vandalism as a means to justify the end. Educating the next generation creatively might develop the next zero-energy super-fuel. Just Stop Oil activists are banging on an old drum that creates divisiveness and hate.

The post Just Stop Oil activists await jail time for Van Gogh and airport vandalism appeared first on Green Prophet.

As car manufactures switch to electric, Horse in London, Renault from France, Geely from China and Saudi Aramco which owns the world’s largest stake of oil, go all in for combustion engines.

Saudi Arabia’s oil company Aramco wholly owned by the Saudi Arabian government is one of the world’s wealthiest companies and is by far sitting on the world’s greatest amount of oil reserves. While Aramco does invest in what seems like noble deeds – in hydrogen energy for instance – its actions of actually developing mega real estate projects such as Neom (dock your mega yacht here) and investing in combustion engine tech shows that Saudi Arabia is planning that its oil reserves will be relevant for generations to come.

The world experienced the two hottest days on record this year, on Sunday and then again it broke the record on Monday, due to climate change but for oil companies like Aramco its business as usual. Or rather, bringing business back to the 80s by investing in combustion engines.

Aramco’s market cap in 2024 was $1.814 trillion with its primary business as the exploration, production, refining, and distribution of petroleum and petrochemical products. The company is significant to Saudi Arabia´s economy, which relies heavily on oil revenues although the country is trying to be open to Western values and tourism and development in the last 5 years.

Saudi Aramco went public in 2019, leading to the largest IPO in history, raising $29.4 billion USD. Despite the large amount of cash raised, only 1.5% of the company was actually floated, with the rest still owned by the Saudi government.

Among the many directions that Aramco is taking – including investing in AI chips – Saudi Aramco is betting that the  internal combustion engine found in cars, trucks, ships and airplanes, will be around for a “very, very long time”. The world’s largest oil company does see opportunity from the rise of the electric car from its $500bn in revenues last year to take a $800 million or 10 per cent stake in Horse Powertrain, a company based in London and dedicated to building fuel-based engines.

Saudi Aramco, Chinese carmaker Geely and the French Renault, are investing in London-based Horse as the as the industry stops designing and developing its own combustion engines, it will need to start buying them from third parties:

“It will be incredibly expensive for the world to completely stamp out, or do without internal combustion engines,” said Yasser Mufti, the executive VP at Saudi Aramco responsible for the deal. “If you look at affordability and a lot of other factors, I do think they will be around for a very, very long time.”

Asked if he thought there would be internal combustion engines forever, Mufti said yes. Saudi Aramco has previously said it believes that even in 2050, more than half of all cars will still run on some sort of fuel. Horse is the “horse” they are better on.

Horse is headquartered in London with operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Türkiye. The powertrain plant in Bursa, which was part of Oyak Renault until recently, is now Oyak Horse, a new company set up under a partnership between Oyak and Horse Holding.

Horse Powertrain Limited is a joint venture holding aimed at producing powertrains, including internal combustion engines and hybrid systems.

The venture holding was established in May 2024 and is equally owned by Renault and Geely. It is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co commonly known as Geely, is a Chinese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The company is privately owned by Chinese entrepreneur Li Shufu, and mainly engaged in the automotive industry.

So while car companies such as Ford and GM are pressured by shareholders to shift over to electric engines, the Chinese and Europeans are opening new businesses based on what was supposed to be “past” technology.

Consider that in 2021, GM announced its intention to sell only electric vehicles by 2035.

Electric vehicles are supposed to be the only kind of vehicle on the road in countries like Canada by the year by the year 2035. The new Canadian standard requires all new light-duty vehicle sales in Canada to be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035. There are also interim targets of at least 20 percent of all sales being EVs by 2026 and 60 percent by 2030.

A growing number of people are buying electric cars, but range anxiety while towing boats or driving hours between cities in northern areas in North America is still a major concern. In rural areas of Canada and the US, locals are concerned about regular access to the grid and blackouts that can be regular during summer and winter storms.

We drove a Tesla this summer and enjoyed the acceleration speed and the cost of $20 a fill up versus $90 for the same sized car. My cousin loved hers so much that she traded in her second vehicle, a Ford truck, for a second Tesla. In her case, rural living means so much more driving for the kids. She estimates saving about $500 or more per car per month, on fuel alone.

Saudi Arabia needs to bet on the combustion engine because the lifestyle of Saudi Arabia depends on it. The moment we stop the oil and gas industry, we will solve the biggest problems with climate change and conflict in the Middle East. I find it interesting that London and the French are in on the game. We expect this from China and Saudi Arabia but opening new businesses for combustion engines? Sounds criminal to the climate movement.

::Horse

The post Saudi’s Aramco, London, China and France bet on combustion engine company Horse appeared first on Green Prophet.

As the largest exporter of crude oil, Saudi Arabia has kept international oil prices reasonably steady. Until now. The recent instability in the region coupled with overambitious estimates and slowing production has cast serious doubt on the country’s ability to keep prices low. Even more troubling, The Guardian reports that recently leaked confidential cables show that peak oil could occur as early as 2012. Peak oil’s inevitability has long been known, but it was earlier thought that we had until 2020.

The United States Consul met with Sadad al-Hussein, a Geologist and former head of exploration at Aramco, the Saudi Oil Company responsible for so much of the world’s crude oil supply. Mr. al-Hussein disputes claims by Mr. Abdallah al-Saif, the current Aramco Senior Vice President, that the company will be able to produce 900 billion barrels of oil within the next twenty years.

According to one of a series of cables exchanged between the American Embassy in Riyadh and Washington, this number represents a 300 billion barrel or 40% overestimation. In one cable, the consul sums up Mr. al-Hussein’s reasoning:

“According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is twofold. First, it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described, and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco and energy optimists would like to portray.”

Mr. al-Husseini believes that output will plateau for the next fifteen years and that it will thereafter decline.

This is in keeping with an earlier projection made by the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s chief economist Faith Birol, who told the Guardian that oil production would peak in 2020.

Putting an additional strain on international supply, Saudi’s local economic and population growth is usurping oil otherwise slated for export. A cable dated October, 2009 demonstrates that Saudi will have to double its generation capacity to 68,000 MW by 2018 in order to sustain its own demand.

Other Gulf countries such as Abu Dhabi, are experiencing similar conundrums, though to a less disastrous degree. As a result, belated efforts are being made to develop alternative resources such as solar in order to lessen the local demand for oil. Some of Saudi’s desalination plants, for example, will be solar-powered.

China – a major importer of oil – has set its sights on hard-to-reach African oil to compensate for Saudi’s dwindling monopoly, but it is only a matter of time before global demand outstrips supply. And the experts are gravely concerned.

“We are asleep at the wheel here: choosing to ignore a threat to the global economy that is quite as bad as the credit crunch, quite possibly worse,” Jeremy Legget, head of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, told the Guardian.

:: The Guardian

More on Saudi Arabia and Oil:

Saudia Arabia To Replace Oil With Sun Power for Desalination Plants

Summer Heat Jams Oil Production In Oil-Rich Saudi Arabia

With Peak Oil Looming, Gulf States Consider Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies

image via madaboutasia

The post WikiLeaks: Former Aramco Head Warns US About Saudi’s Strained Oil Production appeared first on Green Prophet.