The Kingdom is as sunny as the Sahara having 330+ days of full sun per year. This is prime territory for solar power. Modern solar polysilicon panels contain zero cadmium, mercury,arsenic or gadolinium. They use silicon which the Kingdom is literally covered in thousands of feet deep worth of silica sands all of it useful for panels silicon being one of the top four most prevalent elements on the surface of the earth. The other key ingredient in modern panels is aluminum for the support, base layers current conductors and the top layer wiring. Aluminum is also in the top 5 most abundant elements on earth.
People who are scientifically illiterate don’t have any clue as to the truly staggeringly massive amounts of energy our local star dumps on to our planet every hour every day.
“The total world energy usage (coal+oil+hydroelectric+nuclear+renewable) in 2015 was 13,000 Million Ton Oil Equivalent (13,000 MTOE) – see World Energy Consumption & Stats. This translates to 17.3 Terawatts continuous power during the year.
Now, if we cover an area of the Earth 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels, even with moderate efficiencies achievable easily today, it will provide more than 17,4 TW power. This area is 43,000 square miles. The Great Saharan Desert in Africa is 3.6 million square miles and is prime for solar power (more than twelve hours per day). That means 1.2% of the Sahara desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy. “
Solar is kicking butt and taking names the IEA has confirmed that solar is now the cheapest form of power ever in human history on a dollar for dollar basis.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a34372005/solar-cheapest-energy-ever/
The Kingdom could cover it’s empty quarter with panels and power all of Europe it’s called the empty quarter because it empty not even shrubs grow it’s sands blasted barren hellscape of a desert. The sun can cook things laying on the ground we do this for giggles some times while on exploration in the quarter.
With the kind of massive solar power available even at 60% efficiency it makes sense to go power to liquids via methanol or FT. It would literally be liquid sunshine. Exxon has a methanol to octane process that South Africa uses on a huge scale. Methanol can be turned into DME which runs in diesels and stores like propane while being able to be used in propane appliances as well. FT can go the full gambit from methane to dodecane which is the whole range from natural gas, petrol, jet fuel, diesel range gasoil and lubricants. Pensoil makes it’s synthetic oils from syngas via FT and you can make syngas from solar hydrogen and airborne CO2 it’s chemically identical.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ee/d0ee01187h
Be serious—put a microwave receiver there and beam the power down from orbit. Blasting sand and deposits wreak havoc upon panels—keep them clean for continued operation.