Saudi industrialisation and energy services company Taqa has joined hands with Reykjavik Geothermal to launch its new venture that will develop geothermal resources for the region and further contribute to its green initiatives' decarbonisation targets.
 
Headquartered in the capital Riyadh, Taqa Geothermal Energy is in full alignment with Saudi Arabia's efforts to reduce carbon emissions towards achieving Net Zero target while diversifying the kingdom's energy mix, in line with Vision 2030.
 
Taqa, which is 54% owned by the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund PIF (Public Investment Fund), innovates, develops and deploys technologies, products and solutions to the energy industry. 
 
With over 5,500 employees across 20 countries, it has an integrated well solutions portfolio powered by Global Product & Technology Centers of Excellence.
 
Headquartered in Iceland, Reykjavik Geothermal is a global leader in the development of sustainable geothermal power.
 
With successful geothermal projects developed around the world, its team of qualified industry experts is now focusing on a significant project pipeline in key high-growth markets.
 
The announcement for the new JV company came at the inaugural Public Investment Fund Private Sector Forum being held in Riyadh.
 
According to Taqa, the new venture with Reykjavik Geothermal will explore and develop geothermal resources in Saudi Arabia and the Mena region contributing to Saudi and Middle East Green Initiatives' decarbonization targets. 
 
Commenting on the new venture, Taqa Group CEO Khalid Nouh 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," he noted. 
 
Nouh said together with Reykjavik Geothermal, Taqa is creating a venture mandated to explore and develop the equivalent of 1GW of Geothermal power from resources in the kingdom.
 
Reykjavik Geothermal Chairman Godmundur Thoroddsson said "We are long-time believers 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," he added.-TradeArabia News Service