RIYADH: Saudi ACWA Power intends to save up to 9.5 million tons of carbon per year by 2025, the company’s Chairman Mohammed Abunayyan revealed during the UN Climate Change Conference, or COP 27, taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. 

In doing so, the Saudi-based developer, co-owner and operator of a portfolio of power generation and desalinated water production plants will decommission its Shuaibah Independent Water and Power Project plant, located 120 km south of Jeddah. 

With a capacity of 900 MW of power, the plant uses 63,000 barrels of Arabian light crude per day to burn it and convert it to the desalination, according to Abunayyan. 

This comes in line with the Saudi Green Initiative objective to reach a situation where oil is no longer used in the domestic energy mix by 2030. 

The conversion project of the plant to an energy efficient desalination plant will allow 46 percent of the new plant be powered by renewables. 

“We want to be one of the main pillars of the green initiatives led by our leader, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” Abunayyan said. 

Talking about the Red Sea Project, the chairman said ACWA Power is supplying the project with everything that has to do with infrastructure, adding that it is set to become the biggest storage in the world with 1.3 GW of storage capacity. 

“The biggest storage today installed and operated by batteries is 200 MW. This is almost six times, whatever had been installed, here (at the Red Sea Project) and we will have this plant 100 percent standalone and the whole project will be green,” the chairman explained. 

ACWA Power intends to supply green hydrogen to the world. Accordingly, the firm has many projects in its pipeline dispersed around the world from Oman to Egypt to Thailand and even Morocco, the chairman disclosed.