An integrated approach to the realization of Saudi Arabia’s energy sustainability

As system thinking is a recognized approach to the comprehension and realization of energy sustainability, this paper applies a holistic representation to the World Energy Trilemma Index (WETI) key indicators using Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to illuminate the probabilistic information of their influences in Saudi Arabia’s context. The reached realization is suggested to inform the policies to improve energy sustainability, and thus the country’s rank in the WETI. The analysis used two groups of learning cases, one used the energy statistics of the period from 1995 to 2019 to show the outlook of the Business as Usual path, and the other addressed the projected data for the period from 2018 to 2037 to investigate the expected impact of the new policies. For both BAU and new policies, the BBN calculated the improvement, stability, and declining beliefs. The most influential factors on energy sustainability performance were the electricity generation mix, CO₂ emissions, energy intensity, and energy storage. Moreover, the interlinkage between the influential indicators and their causes was estimated in the new policies model. A back-casting analysis was carried out to show the changes required to drive the improvement belief to 100%. The compiled BBN can be used to support structuring policymaking and analyzing the projections’ outcomes by investigating different scenarios for improvement probabilities of energy sustainability.