To advance net zero climate goals, Saudi Arabia could soon start treating carbon dioxide as a commodity. In line with the principles of a circular economy, Saudi Arabia is considering the concept of the circular carbon economy (CCE). First proposed by William McDonough in 2016, CCE is a closed-loop system for managing CO2 through four Rs: Reduce, reuse, recycle and remove. Strategies include energy efficiency, renewables, fuel switching, and carbon capture and storage.
CCE’s flexibility is particularly useful in countries like Saudi Arabia “that have hard-to-abate sectors,” says Thamir Al Shehri, a Research Fellow in the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center’s Climate & Sustainability program. “The circular carbon economy could be adopted to build bridges between fossil fuel importers and exporters for holistic discussions around the energy transition.”
A 2022 paper co-authored by Al Shehri and other KAPSARC researchers along with international collaborators offers a roadmap for how Saudi Arabia, which is home to 17% of the world’s proven petroleum reserves, could achieve carbon circularity1. Treating CO2 as a resource offers a way to reconcile the Kingdom’s economic interests with the need to manage emissions in a way that aligns with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the authors note.
Published in Climate Policy, the paper identifies two primary challenges that stand in the way of the Kingdom’s CCE transformation: better CO2 accounting that lines up with international monitoring, reporting and verification standards; and ramping up use of carbon capture, utilization and storage and hydrogen, along with renewables and energy efficiency.
“The circular carbon economy could be adopted to build bridges between fossil fuel importers and exporters for holistic discussions around the energy transition.”
Thamir Al Shehri
In the two years since the paper was published, the Kingdom has adopted several key CCE-related policies, such as strengthening its emissions accounting, and has made inroads in overcoming identified challenges, Al Shehri says. Saudi Arabia is working on investing more in emerging technologies and adopting sustainable finance mechanisms.
The easiest of the four Rs for the Kingdom to address is likely ‘reduce,’ through efficiency improvements, adds Jan Braun, who co-authored the paper while at KAPSARC and is now with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Germany. “Direct air capture with CCS is incredibly expensive, and it’s still very much in the pilot phase.”
To help Saudi Arabia and other countries explore their CCE options, KAPSARC has created the Circular Carbon Economy Index, a tool aimed at helping climate policy makers assess their CCE potential and compare strategies across countries and regions.
Reference
Al Shehri, T.; Braun, J.F.; Howarth, N.; Lanza, A.; and Luomi, M., Saudi Arabia’s Climate Change Policy and the Circular Carbon Economy Approach. Climate Policy, 23 (2), 151–167, 2022. | Article
