Saudi Arabia intends to construct a power plant some 500 kilometers from the sea as part of the Kingdom's effort to preserve the environment and achieve sustainable development. This was stated by Abdul Rahman Gastaneyah, Director of the Environmental Protection Department at the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), in an address to the 3rd annual Gulf Environmental and Sustainable Development Forum (GEF), Tuesday. He said that the SEC has devised 40 programs and identified 63 goals concerning the protection of the environment and the rationalization of electric energy consumption. A team of 36 highly qualified staff will work hard for nearly five years to achieve these goals. He said that 16 goals have already been achieved including maintaining a low rate of pollution in the air and on land, reducing waste generation and utilizing world environment standards to monitor and follow up efforts and activities that foster a green environment. Gastaneyah said the national program would tackle each goal separately to reduce electrical consumption by about five percent. “Over 200 SEC engineers are working on improving the percentage in this regard,” he said. Experts and researchers stressed the need to apply thermal insulation technology in all buildings to reduce electrical consumption. “This will contribute to reducing electricity bills by around 50 percent and in turn save up to SR75 billion spent on electricity consumption,” they said. They emphasized the importance of adopting a practical approach to saving energy and protecting the environment from greenhouse emissions especially in Saudi Arabia which is the largest producer of electricity in the Arab world. It is also the largest producer of desalinated water in the world which requires the use of a large amount of natural gas and petroleum. The researchers said that it is obvious that the high rate of consumption of conventional types of energy would significantly affect the environment should the measures designed to cope with it fail. The key element, they said, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to work on the rationalization of energy. __
