You know that horror movie trope where the babysitter gradually realises the crazed killer is phoning, not from some distant location, but from inside the house? Something similar is happening in the oil market.

That’s because Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest net exporter of crude, is using renewables to drastically reduce its petroleum consumption. The threat to the kingdom’s producers isn’t coming from the heartlands of electric vehicle adoption in Shenzhen, Oslo, or San Francisco — it’s right inside the house.

Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. The kingdom is the world’s biggest net exporter of crude.Credit: AP

This is an extraordinary reversal. Since the start of the 21st century, Saudi Arabia’s oil consumption has increased more than any other country barring China and India. It’s doubled to 2.3 million barrels a day, greater than the incremental demand from Africa, Latin America or the former Soviet Union.

Between a quarter and a third of the country’s consumption goes into crude- and fuel oil-fired generators that provide electricity to ride out summer heatwaves. The government wants to replace all of that with renewables, with a target of 130 gigawatts by 2030 – roughly equivalent to all the solar power in India. Such a switch could represent the single largest decline in oil demand over the next five years,........

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