The Saudi Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources reiterated on Tuesday its plans to make the Kingdom’s power sector more diversified, sustainable, competitive and efficient in line with its Vision 2030. Contrary to recent media reports, the ministry, alongside the Public Investment Fund, SoftBank and other Kingdom’s stakeholders continue to work on a number of large-scale, multi-billion-dollar projects in the solar industry. The long-term goal of these investments is to manufacture 200 GW of PV capacity by 2030. Investors, technical advisors, and contractors have been invited to take part in this program. Plans are also underway to develop shorter-term pilot projects. Further detailing the Ministry’s role, Abdulrahman Abdulkareem, advisor to the Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, outlined on Monday the Kingdom’s plan to become a global solar energy leader and to develop $200 billion of investment opportunities in this promising sector. The ministry has also outlined the power sector transformation plan which will be comprised of three main components. The first calls for restructuring the power market to bolster its competitiveness for consumers and its attractiveness for private sector investments. The second calls for transitioning the Kingdom’s fuel and technology mix to include a significant capacity of renewables, primarily solar, but also wind. There will also be substantive investment in new high efficient gas-powered generation capacity. The third calls for investing, industrializing and localizing the full value chain of the power industry for domestic and export-oriented manufacturing of conventional power components and services, as well as new technologies.