The Prospects for Coal-fired Power Generation in Saudi Arabia

Key Points:Almost all of Saudi Arabia’s electric power generation is fueled by oil and gas. Plans for future capacity envisage nuclear and renewables supplementing this mix and freeing up oil for other revenue-generating opportunities. Coal-fired generation has been promoted in some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries but not, so far, in the Kingdom. Our analysis finds that: At current administered prices of oil and gas, other resources of energy such as solar, nuclear, or imported coal are not competitive for power generation.If decisions were made based on deregulated oil and gas prices: with the reference coal price, only moderate levels of coal-fired capacity would be introduced. If the remaining capacity were made up of nuclear and solar, this would result in lower Saudi CO2 emissions from power generation than under a ‘business as usual’ scenario. with the low coal price, CO2 emissions in 2030 cannot be maintained at their current level since coal, rather than solar and nuclear, is used to displace oil and gas from the generation fuel mix.Some forecasts of coal markets anticipate significant increases in real export prices, which would make coal-fired power generation unattractive compared with constructing nuclear power.About the Project We developed the KAPSARC Energy Model for Saudi Arabia (KEM-SA) to understand the dynamics of the country’s energy system. It is a partial equilibrium model formulated as a mixed complementarity problem to capture the administered prices that permeate the local economy. KEM-SA has been previously used to study the impacts of various industrial fuel pricing policies and improved residential efficiency on the energy economy. In the present paper, we use it to assess the feasibility of a power generation technology.

关键要点：沙特阿拉伯的电力生成几乎完全依赖于石油和天然气。关于未来产能的规划，预期核能和可再生能源将补充这一能源组合，并释放石油资源以开拓其他盈利机会。在某些海湾合作委员会（GCC）国家中，煤电生成已得到推广，但至今尚未在沙特王国实施。我们的分析发现：在当前的石油和天然气管理价格下，太阳能、核能或进口煤炭等其他能源资源对于电力生成而言不具备竞争力。若决策基于去管制的石油和天然气价格：以参考煤价为基准，仅有适度的煤电产能将被引入。如果剩余的产能由核能和太阳能构成，这将导致沙特电力生成领域的二氧化碳排放量低于‘现状持续’情景下的水平。在低煤价的情况下，由于煤炭而非太阳能和核能被用于替代石油和天然气在能源生成燃料组合中的地位，2030年的二氧化碳排放量无法维持当前水平。关于煤炭市场的某些预测预计实际出口价格将显著上升，这将使煤电生成相较于建设核能变得缺乏吸引力。关于项目：我们开发了针对沙特阿拉伯的KAPSARC能源模型（KEM-SA），以理解该国能源系统的动态。该模型是以混合互补问题形式构建的局部均衡模型，旨在捕捉渗透于当地经济中的管理价格。KEM-SA此前已被用于研究各种工业燃料定价政策以及提高住宅效率对能源经济的影响。在本文中，我们利用该模型评估电力生成技术的可行性。