Saudi Arabia and the UAE now have 3 gig of renewable energy and more is in the construction phase. By the time this green hydrogen plant is built they should be ready for it.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2261621/business-economy

Present Saudi renewables output is modest, perhaps of the order of 1GW, but unquestionably massive new capacity is being installed, with costs now much more competitive.

Perhaps the dodgiest aspect of Saudi plans are their claims of how effective and economic carbon capture will be:

https://borgenproject.org/developments-for-renewable-energy-in-saudi-arabia/

https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/green-and-black-oil-rich-saudi-arabia-plans-largest-renewable-energy-plant/2-1-1363747

Hi Jim!

See page 54 here:

https://www.energy-transitions.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ETC-Global-Hydrogen-Report.pdf

First a word of caution:
All the actual figures here are now obsolete, as they are prior to the war in Ukraine, massive inflation etc.
For instance, they were putting green hydrogen becoming competitive against grey some way in the future, but in Europe at least very high natural gas prices have meant that it is already very competitive

Similarly rises in commodity prices mean that, for instance, PEM electrolyser prices have been somewhat stickier than projected, as they use precious metals ( other techs don't )

But the picture is valid.
As electrolyser costs fall, then how many hours you need to run them for to be economic drops rapidly, to below 2000 hours per annum, ie around 25% of the time, with the price of electricity determined for solar by how good the resource is, in the case of Saudi, pretty darn good.
And in for instance western Saudi, very good wind resources mean that total capacity figures are way up:

' They assert that capacity factors can reach 60% in the production of renewable power in Saudi Arabia, that it is possible with a PV-Wind hybrid system. In fact, large areas of the country, especially in the western region, are favourable for diurnal (day and night) solar and wind energy production. This greatly surpasses, for example, wind power in Europe with a capacity factor of about 35%.'

https://energy-utilities.com/kapsarc-identifies-hydrogen-opportunities-in-news117889.html

But in any case, although recent events mean that their estimate of $300KW for electrolysis to make them pretty much immune to capacity factors for total cost is now obsolete, and I have no idea what the present figure is, it remains true that relatively cheap electrolysers mean that low capacity factors work OK for total cost.

Of course in Saudi they could always fire up some thermal capacity to keep the electrolysers working 24/7, but it looks as though they might normally be better off getting the kudos of selling 100% green electricity as the cost penalty looks low.

Another major potential supplier of green hydrogen to Europe with similar extensive solar and wind resources, Morocco, has not got oil or gas, so certainly would not be supplementing renewables with them to produce hydrogen.

Jim,

The finance is not really an issue, if the underlying proposition seems sound.

As you say, Saudi can finance whatever it fancies, and another area with wonderful renewables resources, Namibia, is working in conjunction with Germany to develop their resources.

Similarly Australia has Japan, South Korea etc interested in getting as big an involvement as possible.

Jim, I have just spotted that Energy Dome, a tech I follow, which uses compressed CO2 for energy storage, has now reached the stage of commercial deployment, with two fully commercial units of 200MWh/20MW being rolled out for completion this year.

With a high RTE, use of standard industrial components, and half the cost of lithium batteries in my view overnight storage for renewables is now a solved problem.

https://energydome.com/