TAQA and Reykjavik Geothermal form joint venture in Saudi Arabia

During the Public Investment Fund (PIF) Private Sector Forum in Riyadh, the Industrialization and Energy Services Company (TAQA)  and Reykjavik Geothermal (RG), signed a Joint Venture agreement to establish TAQA Geothermal Energy, headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

TAQA Geothermal will explore and develop Geothermal resources in Saudi Arabia and the MENA region contributing to Saudi and Middle East Green Initiatives' decarbonisation targets. The new joint venture is in full alignment with the Kingdom's efforts to reduce carbon emissions toward achieving Net Zero while diversifying the Kingdom's energy mix, in line with Vision 2030.

Commenting on this news, Khalid Nouh, Group CEO of TAQA, said: "We started our journey of transitioning into a sustainable future in early 2021, when we created the TAQA Geothermal Center of Excellence (TG-CoE) in Turkey, with the objective of sharing knowledge and experience of Geothermal Development with other stakeholders in the Kingdom. Throughout the past two years, TG-CoE worked closely with universities, research institutes, K A-CARE, and SGS under the directives of the Ministry of Energy. The outcome of these collaborative efforts is a promising potential of Geothermal Resources in the Kingdom, and time have come to take bold steps to further explore this resource and realize its full potential.

I am happy to announce that TAQA is partnering with a world-class, well-established global leader in the development of Geothermal Resources (Reykjavik Geothermal (RG)). KSA mandated to explore and develop the equivalent of 1GW of Geothermal power from resources in the Kingdom and to further contribute to the realisation of the Saudi & the Middle East Green Initiatives decarbonisation targets."

Godmundur Thoroddsson., Chairman of the board of RG, added: "The RG team is a long-time believer in the geothermal potential of the Kingdom; we first started exploring the local resources in 2009. This clean, stable and inexpensive baseload energy source has enormous potential. It goes beyond the 1+ GW of high-enthalpy power generation, our new joint venture aims to develop to large-scale direct-use of geothermal cooling and desalination projects using the Kingdom's plentiful low-and medium enthalpy resources."