LONDON: Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) will invest $80 billion over the next decade to keep pace with the Saudi population growth, which will result in an increase in demand for electricity by more than 30, 000 megawatts by the year 2020, its CEO Ali Al-Barrak said during an interview with the London-based The International Resource Journal (IRJ) published Friday. Al-Barrak called on foreign investors to take advantage of what he described as “good investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia.” He said 70 percent of energy consumption in the Kingdom goes to air conditioning, noting that this is largely due to consumers using inefficient devices and the nature of the climate in Saudi Arabia, where the demand will rise dramatically during the daylight hours and during summer when the temperature rises to above 50 degrees Celsius. Work has already begun to keep pace, where “there are projects that have been announced, and there are other projects being planned and will be launched later and the other is applied now and will enter service within three years.”
