Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Eng. Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi highlighted Saudi Arabia's efforts in the area of clean energy technologies, pointing out that Saudi Arabia have taken practical steps to integrate carbon management efforts into the economic diversification program. In order to raise Kingdom's resilience to future actions that constrains the use of fossil fuels, five focus areas were identified that are relevant to the work of this important partnership: 1) Energy Efficiency, 2) Solar and wind energy, 3) Carbon capture and utilization (CCUS), particularly enhanced oil recovery, 4) Switching from liquid fuels to gas, 5) Research and development in clean energy. In a speech during the fifth Clean Energy Ministerial currently held in Seoul, Eng. Al-Naimi highlighted the area of energy efficiency in Saudi Arabia since the Kingdom has many accomplishments in its design, rollout and implementation. 'The Kingdom has established through a Council of Ministers' decree the Saudi Energy Efficiency Center (SEEC) in 2010. The center was tasked with the responsibility for the demand-side Energy Efficiency effort in the Kingdom with the mission to improve the domestic energy consumption efficiency and coordinate all related activities between government and non-government stakeholders. SEEC is composed of more than 20 entities from ministries, government entities and companies. The key objectives of SEEC are to: Develop a national Energy Efficiency program; Propose Energy Efficiency policies and regulations, and monitor their implementation; Promote awareness; Participate, as needed, in the implementation of pilot projects. In 2012, SEEC launched the Saudi Energy Efficiency Program (SEEP) with the objectives to improve the Kingdom's Energy Efficiency by designing and implementing initiatives and their enablers,' Eng. Al-Naimi said. 'Since its inception, the Program has been a consensus based inter-government effort involving all government, semi-government and private stakeholders through regular engagements and detailed technical research and studies. In addition, partnerships and collaboration were established with foreign government entities and experts to benefit from their experience,' the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources added. 'The program has currently 35 Energy Efficiency initiatives at different stages of planning or implementation in buildings, industry, funding and ESCOs, cooling, transport, urban planning, and awareness,' Eng. Al-Naimi concluded.
