It’ll be interesting to see how the Arab states will diversify their economies in the next decade. There’s really not much to exploit there except oil, so unless they pump out enough money to basically rest on their investments in perpetuity I’m really not sure what to expect.
They have deserts for solar energy and cheap workers. What else do they need?
Desalination is cheap enough for human consumption. It can be too expensive to grow food but food can be imported.
It’s hard to load solar energy on oil tanker.
Joke apart, how would they make money with solar energy? Oil is a very limited resources that can be transported very easily. Every country in the world needs oil but only a few country can supply it so the business model is extremely straight forward: export oil to the countries that has the money to buy it.
Now what is the business model with solar energy? Every country in the world has sun and electricity is hard to export over long distance so what are they doing with it ?
They can do anything, from data centers to any industrial production line. At worst they recycle aluminum.
Not every country has that much sun and the space. You don’t want to clear forests or farmland for solar energy.
Tourism. The plan is tourism. These projects are to attract tourists to look at them
Paywall
They (the royal family) have grown up pissing away massive amounts of money. Why stop now?
Nothing wrong with it especially since they’ve more than enough reserves to maintain their Dollar peg.
Better mega projects than bombing Yemenis and feuding pointlessly with Iran.
