Saudi Arabia to ditch oil heritage for solar

Do you ever wake up in the morning and want to be something else? Change your job entirely? Become a tightrope walker or a tattooist? “It’s not that easy Greenbang,” you might say. “I trained for years to become what I am – I can’t change that overnight.” If you’re a little leery of snap changes, then you might want to take a leaf out of Saudi Arabia’s book.

Saudi Arabia isn’t afraid to get a makeover. It’s shedding its oil baron’s ten gallon hat for some eco-biz hemp fisherman’s pants as it prepares to go from an oil exporter to a power exporter, all about solar.

According to AFP, the country’s oil minister said:

“One of the research efforts that we are going to undertake is to see how we make Saudi Arabia a centre for solar energy research and hopefully over the next 30 to 50 years we will be a major megawatt exporter.

“In the same way we are an oil exporter, we can also be an exporter of power.”

Go Saudis!