PIF lifts its renewable energy bet past $17 billion

Published: 2026-06-02T08:12:45.000Z

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund is pressing harder on clean power. The Public Investment Fund is now backing a renewable portfolio of about 28.6 gigawatts, with total investment past $17 billion. For a fund built on oil wealth, that is a pointed bet on the future.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund is pressing harder on clean power, and the latest numbers show just how far it is willing to go. Through a set of agreements tied to its utilities arm and partners, the Public Investment Fund is now backing a renewable energy portfolio whose combined capacity reaches about 28.6 gigawatts, with total investment running past $17 billion, the equivalent of roughly 63.75 billion riyals. For a fund built on the wealth of an oil exporter, that is a pointed statement about where it sees the future. The work is being carried out mainly through three players, the listed developer ACWA Power, the PIF owned Water and Electricity Holding Company known as Badeel, and Saudi Aramco Power Company, a subsidiary of the oil giant. Together they have been signing power purchase agreements with the Saudi Power Procurement Company, which acts as the buyer for the electricity these plants will eventually produce. One recent batch alone committed around $8.3 billion toward roughly 15 gigawatts of new solar capacity, a chunk of the larger pipeline. The individual projects read like a map of the country's sunniest stretches. Names such as Haden, Muwayh, Al Khushaybi, Sudair, Shuaibah 2, Ar Rass 2, Al Kahfah and Saad 2 make up the bulk of the program, most of them large scale solar farms. Shuaibah 2 is set to rank as the largest of its kind in the Middle East, while Sudair is expected to cut emissions by close to 2.9 million tons a year once it is fully running. These are not pilot schemes but utility scale builds meant to feed the national grid. The strategy behind the spending is straightforward. PIF has taken on responsibility for developing about 70 percent of the kingdom's renewable energy targets, which themselves aim to push clean sources to half of the national power mix by the end of the decade. There is an industrial angle too, since the fund has been localizing the manufacture of solar and wind components, targeting domestic production of around three quarters of the parts these projects need. The goal is to turn Saudi Arabia into an exporter of renewable technology rather than just a buyer. For the wider region, this push sets a pace that neighbors are watching closely. The shift fits a broader Gulf pattern in which oil rich states are using sovereign capital to hedge against a lower carbon future, with the UAE pouring money into solar and nuclear and pursuing its own net zero timeline, and other Arab economies courting similar investment. What makes the Saudi effort stand out is the scale and the deliberate pairing of generation with local manufacturing, a combination that could reshape how clean energy supply chains develop across the Middle East and North Africa in the years ahead.