# Saudi digital sustainability: what the new report proves — and what it doesn’t Saudi Arabia’s latest digital and space sustainability report is unusually broad. It puts telecom access, e-waste regulation, data-centre power, Earth observation, AI training and electric logistics in one document. That breadth is useful, but it also makes the report easy to read as a scorecard when it is closer to a portfolio. Some figures are national indicators. Some are forecasts drawn from international research. Others are impact claims supplied by participating organisations. For CTOs, infrastructure buyers and policy teams, the useful question is not whether the report is optimistic. It clearly is. The useful question is which parts can support a decision now, and which still need project-level evidence. ## What the report actually adds The [fifth Digital and Space Sustainability Report](https://www.cst.gov.sa/en/knowledge-center/reports/digital-space-sustainability-2026), published by Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space and Technology Commission with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and support from the International Telecommunication Union, covers activity during 2025. It packages 14 success stories involving more than 25 public and private entities. The strongest contribution is the operating model behind those stories. CST groups its work under a seven-part C.I.R.C.L.E.S framework that spans circular economy, infrastructure, regulation, capability and cross-border cooperation. That turns “digital sustainability” from a general ESG phrase into a list of regulatory and operational workstreams. The accompanying [Saudi Press Agency announcement](https://www.spa.gov.sa/en/N2659799) highlights four: an e-waste policy toolkit, Saudi participation in international digital regulation, a national Earth Observation Platform and the SHMS space-weather satellite. The report also connects those programmes to familiar national indicators. It cites 99% internet penetration, fibre coverage of 3.9 million homes, women holding 35% of digital-sector roles, and a digital economy worth SAR 459 billion in 2024, or 15% of GDP. Those figures describe scale and access. They do not, by themselves, measure the energy, water or material efficiency of the systems delivering that access. ## E-waste is the clearest policy-to-operations story The most transferable part of the report is the e-waste work. The [Global E-waste Monitor 2024](https://ewastemonitor.info/the-global-e-waste-monitor-2024/) recorded 62 billion kilograms of e-waste generated in 2022, with 22.3% formally collected and recycled. Against that baseline, CST and the ITU released a [Global Toolkit for Policy and Regulation Practices for E-waste Management](https://www.itu.int/itu-d/sites/environment/e-waste/toolkit/) based on implementation work in Zambia, Rwanda and Paraguay. That matters more than a recycling campaign. A regulator needs definitions, producer obligations, collection rules, treatment standards, financing, enforcement and a plan for informal workers. The toolkit provides a path through those decisions rather than presenting one country’s system as a universal template. Saudi Arabia’s local device-donation initiative gives the policy work a practical counterpart. Across two editions, the report says more than 400,000 devices were donated, over 960 tonnes were recycled or repaired, and donated equipment had a market value above SAR 120 million. Those are concrete counts, but buyers should still ask how devices were classified, how data was destroyed, what share was reused rather than recycled, and where residual material went. Circularity is a chain of custody, not just a collection total. ![What Saudi Arabia’s 2026 digital sustainability report measures: access, circularity, compute, space data and delivery evidence](https://cdn.hashnode.com/uploads/covers/60ecf4a0fc37a15ec15655e8/c706c470-b1ab-4d28-b17d-063ab43e77a7.png) *Credit: SultanByte, using figures reported by CST, ITU and the Global E-waste Monitor. Reporting periods differ and are labelled in the visual.* ## Data-centre growth makes resource disclosure urgent The report arrives as AI infrastructure is raising the cost of weak sustainability accounting. The [IEA’s Energy and AI analysis](https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai) estimates global data-centre electricity consumption could rise from about 415 TWh in 2024 to around 945 TWh in 2030. Saudi Arabia is simultaneously building a larger domestic compute market. The CST report points to a 1.5 GW national data-centre capacity target for 2030 and highlights planned renewable-powered projects. Capacity is not consumption. A 1.5 GW target says little about utilisation, power usage effectiveness, cooling water, grid carbon intensity or the share of contracted renewable generation that is additional. “Net zero from day one” is therefore a project claim to verify, not a conclusion that follows from capacity or location. For a Saudi cloud or colocation tender, buyers should request five items at site level: - metered energy consumption and PUE, not only design PUE; - water usage effectiveness and the cooling method used during peak heat; - hourly or location-based electricity emissions alongside renewable certificates; - hardware reuse, resale and certified downstream recycling records; - a capacity label that separates designed, commissioned, occupied and utilised load. Without those fields, two facilities marketed as green may have very different operational footprints. The report includes a useful local example: Strataphy says its PrimeLoop geothermal cooling system operates without water and can reduce capital expenditure by more than 40% through a cooling-as-a-service model. That is commercially interesting for an arid market. It still needs independently comparable field data across seasons, loads and facility designs before a buyer treats the percentage as a general outcome. ## Space sustainability is becoming infrastructure policy CST frames Earth observation as a marketplace rather than a science programme alone. Its national Earth Observation Platform is intended to connect satellite-data providers with domestic demand in agriculture, water management, desertification tracking, disaster response and climate monitoring. The economic case is substantial. The [World Economic Forum’s Earth-observation analysis](https://www.weforum.org/publications/amplifying-the-global-value-of-earth-observation/) estimates the technology could generate $700 billion in cumulative economic value and help avoid two billion tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions annually by 2030. These are global modelled estimates, not a forecast of Saudi revenue or emissions savings. That distinction should shape procurement. Public agencies need to define the decision the data will change: irrigation allocation, flood alerts, land-restoration verification or emergency response. They then need service-level targets for revisit time, cloud cover, spatial resolution, latency, provenance and ground-truth validation. The report also profiles SHMS, a Saudi-built satellite designed to observe solar radiation, energetic particles and magnetic fields from high Earth orbit. Space-weather monitoring can protect satellites, communications and aviation. The value will depend on data availability, calibration and integration into forecasting services, not only a successful mission. ## The 14 success stories are leads, not one evidence tier The case studies range from a Saudi industrial quantum computer and AI disease forecasting to municipal computer vision, Red Sea microwave backhaul and an electric delivery van. Several provide useful operational measures. Balady Lens is reported as deployed across 17 municipalities, processing 7.7 million inspection rounds and 1.2 million reports. A Zain KSA and Nokia microwave link is described as carrying 3 Gbps across 50 kilometres with 99.99% reliability and no seabed excavation. Maersk and Unilever report an electric delivery van covering up to 3,500 kilometres per month from a solar-equipped logistics park. These numbers are specific enough to investigate. They are not automatically comparable. Availability over what period? Cost reduction against which manual process? Emissions avoided using which grid and vehicle assumptions? The report does not apply one common assurance method across all 14 stories. That is the next opportunity. Future editions could publish a compact evidence table for every case: baseline, measurement period, system boundary, data owner, assurance status and whether the number is measured, estimated or projected. ## A practical reading for buyers and operators The report shows that Saudi digital sustainability is moving beyond connectivity targets. Regulation, circularity, compute, space data and operational technology are now part of the same policy conversation. For regulators, the e-waste toolkit is the strongest exportable asset because it turns experience into a repeatable policy sequence. For CTOs and infrastructure buyers, the report is a map of programmes and suppliers worth examining. It should not replace due diligence. The standard to push for is straightforward: keep national indicators, global forecasts, project measurements and vendor claims in separate columns. Add boundaries and dates. Publish resource intensity alongside capacity and growth. That would make the next report more than a catalogue of progress. It would make it a tool for comparing decisions.