Saudi Arabia to establish national water and energy efficiency program

Saudi Arabia has announced it will establish a national program to optimise water and energy consumption. The program will review current policy incentives in place for the energy and water sectors, taking into account both economic productivity needs and inequality within society.

The announcement comes in the middle of major restructuring of the kingdom’s energy and water sectors, intended to support economic reform plans to wean the world’s largest crude exporter off its dependence on oil. Saudi Arabia aims to reduce electricity and water subsidies by 200 billion riyals (US$53b) and reduce non-oil subsidies by 20% by 2020.

In mid-2016, King Salman restructured the ministries responsible for handling water and energy policies. The King broke up the Water and Electricity Ministry and handed responsibility over to a new Energy, Industry and Natural Resources Ministry headed by Khaled al-Falih, chairman of state oil company Aramco.

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