You think electricity is expensive here? Try Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest oil producer in the world and their electricity is produced from their oil. But Peak Oil is driving up the cost in Saudi Arabia which says something very important about the oil reserves of the biggest oil producer in the world. Since Australia is an oil-importing country and increasingly dependent on imported oil ito drive our vehicles we need to take note.
Saudi Arabia gets all of its electricity from the oil field. Flared gas provides 45% heavy fuel oil provides 13% diesel; 22% and crude provides the remaining 20%. So as oil prices rise its domestic desalination and electricity costs rise too.
The kingdom uses one tenth of its oil for its own electricity use.
Considering that Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of oil the kingdom pays an extraordinarily high price for this oil-based electricity. But when oil is $80 a barrel it can’t be wasted at home. So state electricity there now costs the equivalent of paying 25 cents a kilowatt-hour making its wholesale price higher than retail electricity costs in most places elsewhere in the world (such as here in SE QLD).
At prices like that plus an electricity demand that rises 8% a year – and a complete dependence on a dwindling oil supply – Saudi Arabia is thinking solar electricity. As much as 10% of the kingdom’s electricity could be supplied by solar energy and other renewable sources by 2020.