It might not make sense at first, but Saudi Arabia, which likely still has the world’s largest proven oil reserves is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to go solar. While the country is filthy-rich with oil it’s currently exporting most of it. The sun-rich country could just as well power its own energy with solar and the wind which sweeps across its sandy landscape.

Now, NREL said Saudi Arabia “plans to install more solar and wind power in the next 20 years than the rest of the world has installed to date.” In 2013 alone, Saudi Arabia could write as much as $7 billion in clean energy contracts. In all, the country plans to invest $109 billion to install more than 50 gigawatts of renewable energy, including wind, solar and other renewable technologies by 2032.

“Saudi Arabia is determined to diversify our energy sources and reduce our dependence on hydrocarbons,” Wail Bamhair, a Saudi project manager who recently visited NREL with eight colleagues, told NREL during his recent visit. “Renewable energy isn’t just an option, but absolutely necessary. We have the means to build renewable energy, and we need to do it.”

To get there the country needs to measure and understand the resources it has available. “The importance of setting up networks to gauge and predict the strength of solar radiation in varying meteorological conditions convinced the Saudis to choose NREL as a partner,” NREL said.

Under that new partnership, NREL and its partner Battelle plan to install more than 50 monitoring stations in Saudi Arabia. The stations will help the Saudis understand where the best spots for solar power plants will be. And they will train Saudis to operate and maintain the instruments and stations.

Given Saudi Arabia’s hot, arid climate and need to desalinate its water supply, the country uses huge amounts of oil to power its desalination plants and generate electricity for air conditioning—particularly in the summer, when temperatures routinely top 110 degrees Fahrenheit and air conditioners are rumbling, according to NREL. And of course all that burning just heats things up more, plus it ties up a valuable export business.

Bamhair said that while Saudi Arabia has a lot of sun, it also has challenges such as a variable climate, sandstorms, and even the occasional snowstorm in the northern regions. He shared photos he took of a sandstorm that in a few short minutes plunged an afternoon into darkness along a busy thoroughfare near the capital, Riyadh. 

“We are working hand-in-hand with experts from NREL and Battelle who have these amazing minds,” Bamhair said. “We are looking for them to build our human capacity. We are here to see, to learn, and to transfer the knowledge.”

The country has been building up to this for a while. The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which was completed in 2009, has a 2 megawatt rooftop array as well as solar hot water heating. Now the kingdom is looking to create an entirely renewably powered city, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, with a planned population of up to 70,000.