Saudi Arabia’s energy transformation is unprecedented in scale, demanding more than new power generation capacity. It requires an integrated approach to energy infrastructure, from transmission and distribution to storage, asset management and long-term operational capability.
For John McAllister, Energy Director at Mott MacDonald, whose career in the energy sector spans more than 3 decades, the challenge is as much about how projects are planned and delivered as it is about the technologies being deployed. As the country pursues ambitious economic and industrial development goals, the ability to coordinate multiple projects, manage complex interfaces and preserve technical knowledge will be critical to long-term success.
“I have never seen a market like this before,” McAllister says. Having spent more than 20 years in the UAE, where he witnessed the development of the country’s power sector, he sees Saudi Arabia’s transformation as several times larger in scale.
“This is probably 4 or 5 times the size in Saudi Arabia. There’s a fundamental transformation here, really, in the scale and the nature of what they need to do.”
McAllister has witnessed a fundamental shift in the skills required to deliver energy infrastructure.
“In the past, we were very technical. Now, energy projects are very interconnected technically, but also commercially,” he says.
In the early 1990s when McAllister’s career with Mott Macdonald and the energy sector commenced, the emphasis was on delivering individual assets successfully, whether a power plant in the Middle East, a transmission project in Asia or another piece of energy infrastructure. Today, the scope is considerably broader.
“We do not really deliver standalone assets now. We tend to look at the whole energy system,” adds McAllister.
That shift reflects the growing complexity of national energy strategies, where generation, transmission, distribution, storage and operations must work together. Infrastructure must also satisfy a wider range of requirements, including reliability, resilience, flexibility, sustainability and financial viability.
“Technical excellence is still fundamental. For an organisation like Mott MacDonald, that has to be our highest priority. But overall, clients need to have a robust delivery model. They need partners they can trust,” he comments.
Commercial understanding and stakeholder engagement are equally important, particularly in markets where projects involve independent power producers, power purchase agreements and multiple public and private sector stakeholders.
“Probably the most important change I have seen, especially in the Middle East, is effective stakeholder engagement. There are so many different stakeholders now. Engineers need the ability to manage all of these interfaces alongside increasingly challenging delivery schedules,” explains McAllister.
The result is a different professional profile from that required a generation ago.
“You just cannot only be an engineer. You have to be an engineer that manages.”
For McAllister, that means understanding the entire asset life cycle and recognising that large energy programmes depend on multidisciplinary teams, effective coordination and the continuity of expertise.
Planning for growth before demand arrives
Saudi Arabia’s development ambitions are driving demand for electricity across new urban centres, industrial projects and wider economic diversification initiatives. McAllister argues that planning must extend beyond the immediate requirements of individual developments.
“It is not just a question of adding more capacity. You have to be ahead of the demand, not reactive,” says McAllister.
The country needs to consider the entire energy value chain, from generation and transmission to distribution, storage, efficient operation and long-term asset management.
McAllister says, “Saudi Arabia is a large country. Everything is dispersed across the country, and its energy mix is changing. The transmission network is going to be a critical piece of the puzzle. They are going to have to move large volumes of power efficiently.”
The growing diversity of generation technologies, alongside changing demand patterns and increasing renewable capacity, makes integrated planning essential. McAllister believes the country needs a coherent, long-term strategy that anticipates the interactions between new generation, grid infrastructure and operational requirements.
“They need to look at almost an integrated long-term plan, and they need to have realistic delivery schedules,” he affirms.
The consequences of insufficient coordination can extend across the entire power system. Generation projects depend on transmission infrastructure being ready, while grid projects can face their own operational and sequencing challenges.
For McAllister, the answer is not simply to accelerate individual projects, but to manage the expansion as a coordinated programme.
“It is not simply about accelerating individual projects and building individual assets. You’ve got to manage the expansion as an integrated programme,” he comments.
The transmission challenge
While new infrastructure is essential, McAllister believes Saudi Arabia must also address challenges in its existing transmission and distribution networks.
His first priority would be to improve the performance of legacy assets, many of which were built decades ago. “The first thing I would do, is prioritise the asset management side of it and develop and implement an asset performance strategy for the existing generation, transmission and distribution assets.”
He says that with a better asset performance strategy, operators would be able to anticipate problems, rather than firefighting issues after they happen. “Operational and maintenance issues are something that operators always have to deal with, but the goal should be to become proactive and predictive, not reactive,” he explains.
An effective asset performance strategy would provide a structured, long-term approach to identifying weaknesses, improving reliability and making better use of existing infrastructure. McAllister draws on the UK’s experience, where asset improvement strategies were rolled out over an extensive period of time and are updated on a continuous basis.
“It is long term, because it’s always changing. But we really need to start with that.”
Legacy infrastructure presents a particular challenge. Some transmission assets, including overhead lines and substations, date back 40 or 50 years. Their limitations are often well understood but addressing them requires sustained investment and planning.
“There are known legacy issues, and if we can sort them, we will make that grid much more efficient and allow the new-build to be more efficiently integrated as and when it is ready,” he states.
This approach is particularly important as renewable generation introduces greater variability into the power system, and the grid must accommodate new technologies and changing patterns of demand.
Thermal power remains part of the transition
Despite the rapid expansion of renewables, McAllister believes thermal generation will continue to play an important role in Saudi Arabia and across the wider Gulf.
Having begun his career working on conventional thermal power plants, he has seen the technology move from being central to power system development, to being challenged by the growth of renewable energy.
“Everyone is now realising that thermal still plays an important part in the energy mix,” explains McAllister.
Thermal generation can provide the dependable capacity required to meet demand while renewable technologies expand. In Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, the need to secure baseload supply remains an important consideration.
Renewables will continue to make a substantial contribution, but their variable output creates challenges for system operators. McAllister sees battery energy storage and the further evolution of thermal generation as complementary parts of the solution.
“I believe renewables can make a large contribution to the energy mix, but the variable output is always a problem,” states McAllister.
Saudi Arabia’s ongoing recent shift from oil-fired generation towards gas as primary fuel on a number of plants is also significant. McAllister views this as an important transition in its own right, allowing the country to reduce its reliance on burning oil while retaining the dispatchable generation capacity needed to support the grid.
“We have to avoid thinking of thermal and renewable as two competing solutions. We have to see how, by bringing them together, they can contribute to the performance of the overall power system,” says McAllister.
The long-term opportunity, he argues, is to build an intelligent and efficient system that combines different technologies according to their respective strengths.
“Saudi Arabia has the opportunity now to look at the whole energy mix for the next 40 or 50 years and build a system that merges all of this energy mix efficiently.”
BESS and the next generation of grid technologies
Energy storage is becoming increasingly important as Saudi Arabia integrates more renewable generation and seeks to improve grid stability.
McAllister says Mott MacDonald is becoming more actively involved in battery energy storage systems (BESS), particularly large-scale deployments that are pushing the boundaries of the technology.
He describes the ambitious Saudi Arabia programme involving an initial round of 4, 2000GWh installations, followed by a second round of 6 installations of the same capacity. The projects represent a substantial expansion of storage capacity and demonstrate the scale of the country’s ambitions.
“The battery energy storage systems that are coming through are large, right on the edge of technology. No other country in the world is doing this at this scale. So, it is right on the edge of technology with an intensive, overlapping schedule,” says McAllister.
However, batteries are only one part of the investment required to strengthen the grid. McAllister also highlights synchronous condensers, which can help improve system stability as conventional generation is displaced by technologies with different electrical characteristics.
“They are there to really strengthen the grid and reduce that variation. So that is being rolled out as well in Saudi Arabia, but I think they are going to need more given the scale of the renewable and thermal new-build,” he remarks.
Digital technology and artificial intelligence could also play a significant role, particularly in the operation of power networks.
While AI can support planning and design, McAllister sees its greatest potential in helping grid operators respond more effectively to changing conditions. “The most significant place it can add value with investment is in operations.”
Advanced forecasting, digital monitoring and automated controls can give operators greater visibility of the network and help them make faster decisions. The longer-term ambition is to move towards more autonomous systems.
However, the technology alone will not deliver the required improvements. Network redundancy, cybersecurity, maintenance and the ability to recover quickly from major disturbances must remain priorities.
“AI will help you, but the people have to be trained to allow that to happen as well,” states McAllister.
Nuclear power: a long-term commitment
McAllister’s experience of nuclear energy includes a decade in the UAE, where he worked on the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant programme and witnessed the development of the facility through to commercial operation.
The UAE’s experience, he says, has demonstrated that large-scale nuclear power can be delivered successfully in the Gulf.
“They have shown that it can be completed successfully in the Middle East on schedule,” he says.
Barakah’s 4 units provide approximately a quarter of the UAE’s electricity requirements, illustrating the contribution nuclear energy can make to long-term baseload supply and decarbonisation.
For Saudi Arabia, McAllister believes nuclear has the potential to become a significant component of its future energy strategy.
“Nuclear energy has the real potential to become an important part of Saudi Arabia’s baseload long-term strategy,” comments McAllister.
Large nuclear plants could provide substantial volumes of low-carbon electricity over an extended operating life, complementing renewable generation and reducing reliance on thermal power. However, McAllister emphasises that nuclear development requires a fundamentally different approach to programme planning.
“Thermal is a standard 3-year construction schedule, whereas nuclear can be a minimum 10-year construction schedule.”
Technology selection is only one consideration. A successful nuclear programme requires a capable regulator, appropriate financing, a supply chain established years in advance, a skilled workforce and the ability to manage operations over several decades.
The development of local expertise is especially important. The UAE invested in building a national workforce of nuclear engineers, and McAllister believes Saudi Arabia would need to follow a similarly long-term approach.
“Nuclear power is a long-term commitment. It’s a 60-year commitment at least. You can build it, but that programme governance and the institutional knowledge and capability have to be there,” he states.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) could offer another option, particularly for locations where large nuclear plants may be less practical. Their smaller units and modular construction approach could provide flexibility in deployment, including in inland locations such as Riyadh.
However, McAllister cautions that the technology is reaching ‘new-build’ status with construction commenced globally however, its commercial maturity should not be taken for granted with commercial operation only active in a few countries with more under construction or planning.
“SMRs have been a long-term development however, they are now becoming a reality.”
Their potential advantages do not remove the need for regulatory preparation, financing, workforce development and long-term operational planning.
For McAllister, the central question is not simply which technology Saudi Arabia should adopt, but how to ensure that the institutions, capabilities and governance arrangements are in place to support the facility throughout its operating life.
Protecting institutional knowledge
As energy systems evolve, retaining technical expertise is becoming an increasingly urgent issue. McAllister describes institutional knowledge as one of the industry’s most important yet underestimated assets.
“When I started my energy sector career, it was thermal plants fired on coal, gas and fuel oil, together with large hydro and nuclear plants in the energy mix. The experience and knowledge of our energy engineers was top-tier, and I learned from these engineers over the early years of my career,” remarks McAllister.
Today, experienced specialists in conventional technologies are becoming harder to find. This creates a risk for projects that require decades of planning, construction, commissioning and operation.
Thermal power projects can take 3 to 4 years to develop through to commercial operation, while nuclear power projects can take a decade or more. Maintaining continuity throughout these periods is essential.
“The most significant risk I see is losing that knowledge as you travel that path,” he mentions.
The problem extends beyond personnel. Technical records, drawings and information about existing infrastructure can also be lost, making later modifications, expansions or life-extension projects more difficult.
McAllister argues that digital engineering platforms and common data environments have an important role to play however, insufficient on their own.
“A lot of people say to me, ‘digital engineering platforms, digital twins, common data environments. But that, to me, is not enough. You have to have experienced professionals like myself, mentoring our younger engineers,” exclaims McAllister.
Mott MacDonald’s approach in the region includes recruiting and developing local engineers, helping them build experience across the energy mix and preparing them for key technical roles. McAllister advised that Saudi nationals account for 50% of his team in Riyadh.
The aim is to develop engineers organically, combining practical experience with training, mentoring and exposure to different energy technologies, systems and asset lifecycle. This is particularly important as Saudi Arabia continues to build its technical workforce needed to support its expanding energy infrastructure.
Knowledge transfer must also extend to the organisations responsible for operating completed assets.
“You cannot just hand over a standalone asset. You have to make sure that the workforce and companies responsible for operating that asset can do it safely and effectively throughout its operating life,” he explains.
Lessons for the next generation
For young energy professionals, McAllister believes technical competence remains essential, however it should be complemented by a broader understanding of project and asset lifecycle together with long-term responsibility.
His first piece of advice is straight-forward: remain curious.
“The energy sector changes rapidly. You have to understand new technology and you have to adapt,” he states.
His own career has taken him from coal-fired plants to gas, hydro, renewables, nuclear and asset management across generation, transmission and distribution business lines. That experience reinforces the value of continuing to learn as technologies and priorities evolve.
Second, he encourages engineers to understand the entire project life cycle, from concept and planning to design and construction to commissioning, operations and maintenance, then extended life. Experience and time spent on the consultant, contractor and client sides is important to provide a more complete understanding of the challenges involved and a 360-degree project insight.
Third, he stresses the importance of communication and relationships, particularly in the Middle East, where trust and personal engagement are integral to project delivery.
“The culture here in the Middle East is that you have to have that relationship first and foremost and that communication before you successfully win and deliver projects. It is fundamental to business to have these trusted partnerships,” he explains.
Finally, he highlights professional integrity. Engineers have a responsibility to challenge assumptions, raise concerns and protect safety, quality and long-term reliability.
“We have a responsibility as engineers for the long-term development for our future generations. We have got to raise concerns, we have to challenge assumptions, and we have to continue to prioritise safety, quality and long-term reliability. We do not compromise on these elements as engineers,” he adds.
For Saudi Arabia, the stakes extend well beyond the delivery of individual projects. The energy infrastructure being developed today will shape the country’s economic and industrial capacity for decades to come.
“You have to think decades in advance. Do not compromise something now as engineers, that is going to impact the future,” concludes McAllister.
For McAllister, that is the defining challenge of the energy transition: not simply building more infrastructure, but creating an integrated, resilient system supported by the technical expertise, institutional knowledge and professional standards needed to sustain it for the next 40 to 50 years.
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