Is Big Oil “reading the room” and becoming more serious about a post-hydrocarbon future? 

What better place to look into that question than Saudi Arabia, an oil epicenter now touting an initiative that includes a carpet of vegetation and the big-scale production of renewables? The Monitor’s Taylor Luck traveled to the kingdom for a recent cover story.

To have a country accused of being a spoiler at climate negotiations “all of a sudden say, ‘we want to be part of the new green era’ is quite a big claim,” Taylor says on the Monitor podcast “Why We Wrote This.” “And I think it’s one that you can only examine from on the ground.”

He saw action, some of it aimed at gaining a new edge. 

“They’re putting more money into green hydrogen development than any other country in the world,” Taylor says. Countries like Japan and South Korea hope to be beneficiaries.

Taylor spoke with a Saudi princess, with “a Saudi Johnny Appleseed,” with young Saudis accustomed to oil-enabled lifestyles but receptive to innovation toward cleaner energy. He invested time with sources, sorting through speculation and spin. 

“I came away feeling that, yes, progress is on the way,” Taylor says. “But it’s in all these little different spurts and starts and stops.” And the massive, comprehensive plan? Hard to say, Taylor reports, but worth watching.

“They’re one of the few countries in the world that has the resources and the kind of centralized decision making,” he says, to help make a major power shift happen. – Clayton Collins and Jingnan Peng

You can find related story links and an episode transcript here.