As renewable energy technologies accelerate and the world shifts towards them, status quo energy producers have increasingly been taken by surprise. A couple of years back, Saudi ministers were publicly asking at climate change summits: “what about us? how will we make money?” It seems they are finally wising up. Evolve or die. Places like Canada need to do likewise. See Saudi Arabia sees day when nation exports gigawatts:
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister predicted an eventual end to the nation’s fossil fuel exports, anticipating instead the day the world’s largest crude exporter will sell solar power.
“In Saudi Arabia we recognize that eventually, one of these days, we’re not going to need fossil fuels,” Ali Al-Naimi said at a climate conference in Paris on Thursday. “I don’t know when — 2040, 2050 or thereafter. So we have embarked on a program to develop solar energy.
Given the accelerating speed of change in this area today, I think most are dramatically underestimating how quickly the world is evolving away from fossil fuels. Not for the environmental and health benefits so much (although those are huge) but for the enormous economic savings involved. The need to waste less and save more demands greater efficiencies.
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