In August 2023, Jens Madrian considered the final question arising from his presentation to researchers at Stanford on designing a 100 percent renewable energy system for an ambitious development initiative named NEOM, signifying new future, in Saudi Arabia. NEOM encompassed the development of several regions across a landmass of 26,500 square kilometers in the northwestern province of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. NEOM was funded by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund with an initial investment commitment of $500 billion. Madrian was the managing director of energy at ENOWA, a wholly owned subsidiary of NEOM. ENOWA was launched in 2022 to build and manage the water and energy infrastructure of the entire region. Madrian was responsible for the design and delivery of a sustainable energy system, at the lowest cost, to power NEOM. Interest in ENOWA’s progress was immense: the components of the planned greenfield energy system—wind, solar, a digital energy platform, storage, and eventually green hydrogen—allowed Madrian “to focus on effectiveness—doing the right things—rather than efficiency,” an unavoidable anchor of legacy energy systems. The final question was one the energy modeling team at ENOWA had been working intensely on: what would a cost-efficient energy system for NEOM require in terms of power generation and energy storage capacity?
